Brillumanninum til verju

Abstract

This article challenges the traditional assumptions about one of the famous villains of Faroese history, Charles Baron Hompesch, who paid a visit to Tórshavn in his capacity as a privateer in the summer of 1808, sailing under British letters of marque, and removed both the public money chests and the stores in the warehouses of the Royal Danish Monopoly. The Faroese view of Baron Hompesch has usually been that he was a cruel plunderer, indifferent to the suffering he caused, but
intent only on enriching himself at the cost of a defenceless people. The author first shows that this opinion was held in England, too, in Hompesch's time; but he goes on to demonstrate that the view arises from an account of the affair by the Danish commandant of the Tórshavn fort, Emilius Lobner, which can be shown in part to be false and one-sided. The money and goods were eventually returned to the Faroe Islands, the Prize Court having refused to award them to Hompesch. The
judgement did not, however, arise from any misconduct of Baron Hompesch in Faroe, but from a prior claim of the British Crown, based on the capitulation signed by Løbner when the Clio, a British naval brig, disarmed the Tórshavn fort two weeks before Hompesch's visit.