The account of the duel between his first frigate, _Lövendahl's
Galley_, of eighteen guns, and a Swede of twenty-eight guns reads
like the doings of the old vikings, and indeed both commanders were
likely descended straight from those arch fighters. Wessel certainly
was. The other captain was an English officer, Bactman by name, who
was on the way to deliver his ship, that had been bought in England,
to the Swedes. They met in the North Sea and fell to fighting by
noon of one day. The afternoon of the next saw them at it yet. Twice
the crew of the Swedish frigate had thrown down their arms, refusing
to fight any more. Vainly the vessel had tried to get away; the Dane
hung to it like a leech. In the afternoon of the second day Wessel
was informed that his powder had given out. He had a boat sent out
with a herald, who presented to Captain Bactman his regrets that he
had to quit for lack of powder, but would he come aboard and shake
hands?

The Briton declined. Meanwhile the ships had drifted close enough to
speak through the trumpet, and Captain Wessel shouted over from his
quarter-deck that "if he could lend him a little powder, they might
still go on." Captain Bactman smilingly shook his head, and then the
two drank to one another's health, each on his own quarter-deck, and
parted friends, while their crews manned what was left of the yards
and cheered each other wildly.

Wessel's enemies, of whom he had many, especially among the
nobility, who looked upon him as a vulgar upstart, used this
incident to bring him before a court-martial. It was unpatriotic,
they declared, and they demanded that he be degraded and fined. His
defence, which with all the records of his career are in the Navy