New Trade Routes Via Heligoland and Sweden (1808)

The effect of this, however, was a new change in the channels followed by trade. To begin with, Heligoland now showed its immense importance as an emporium or base for the smuggling of British goods into north Germany. In 1808, according to Rist's dispatches, Great Britain expended £500,000 in building a port, fortifications and warehouses on the little island covering about 150 acres. A number (stated to be 200) of British merchants and representatives of commercial houses settled there and formed a special chamber of commerce; and this peculiar centre of trade was jestingly called 'Little London'. According to the statements of the British merchants themselves, during three and a half months (August-November 1808) nearly 120 vessels discharged their cargoes there, and the yearly imports were estimated—though, to judge by the commercial statistics, this estimate was almost certainly too high—at £8,000,000, or nearly a sixth of the total exports of Great Britain for 1808 (£50,000,000). It is not surprising, therefore, that great quantities of goods had to lie exposed to wind and weather, and that there was scarcely standing room on the island. The difficulty consisted, of course, in smuggling the goods into the mainland afterwards; but the Continental blockade had again been weakened by the fact that in the beginning of the year Napoleon had been obliged to evacuate Oldenburg out of regard to his Russian ally, who was related to the Duke of Oldenburg. It is difficult to determine from accessible sources what routes the goods afterwards followed. From Bremen a certain amount reached Leipzig for the Easter Fair, but after that nothing; and both the shipping of Hamburg and the trade of Bremen had, according to their own sources, almost ceased to exist. But there were many possibilities left, especially through Holstein, where the population and the officials alike did their best to neutralize the loyalty of the Danish government to the system. They succeeded admirably, and it is certain that there are no symptoms at all of decline in the traffic via Heligoland.

During 1808, moreover, Sweden had begun to serve as a storing place for British goods. The Swedish trade statistics had previously shown an excess of exports during the century, especially as regards Great Britain; but during 1808 there was a complete reversal, so much so that the imports from there amounted to 6,650,000 riksdaler, as against exports amounting to 2,610,000 riksdaler. It was colonial goods that went this way, for the most part through Gothenburg, the position of which as one of the foci of the commerce of the world had, to judge by its export statistics, been coming into view even in the previous year. Imports more than doubled in one year. What were for the circumstances of the time very considerable quantities of sugar and coffee (2,900,000 lb. and 1,300,000 lb., respectively) were exported from there in 1808; and when Admiral Saumarez was in the town, in May, he wrote to his son: 'Gothenburg is a place of great trade at this time; at least 1,200 sail of vessels of different nations are in the port.' From there the goods tried to find their way into Germany through the South Baltic ports.

Thus Napoleon was still far from his goal, and the Spanish rising in particular was to carry him farther and farther away. As early as October 1, 1808, his brother Louis—who was always pessimistic, it is true—wrote to the eldest of the brothers, Joseph Bonaparte, the newly created King of Spain: 'Far from settling down, matters get more and more tangled, and—perhaps I speak too much as a Dutchman, but I find something revolutionary in the way in which war is made on commerce—it seems to me that they never will attain the object that they have set before them'. At the same time as Spain and Portugal, he thinks, South America and Mexico have thrown themselves open to the English; 'and for a chimerical system the whole Continent is losing its trade and shipping, while that of England grows prodigiously'.