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T H E P L A C E O F T H E R I C H L E H N F A M I L Y
The new owner was Abraham Lehn a prosperous merchant and shipowner.
His son, Abraham jr. (ill. p. 69) has a rather w ry claim to fame in that he was
the innocent cause of the most historic duel in Denmark’ s history. It resulted
in the death of the national naval hero, Tordenskjold who was then living in
Lehn’ s house.
The hitherto unreclaimed area between Strandgade 4 and the powder
works was taken over and built on by the learned historian and Royal Archivist
Frederik Rostgaard (ill. p. 71). His friend and associate Ole Romer sketched
a map of the area and this is now preserved in the Royal Danish Archives (ill.
p. 70). Romer, apart from being chief of the Copenhagen police force, was an
astronomer of international repute and the first to establish the velocity of
light.O
A C E N T E R F O R T H E T R A D E T O T H E W E S T I N D I E S
Part of Lehn’ s property was taken over in 1 728 by the Danish »West Indian
and Guinea Company« as a site for a sugar refinery (ill. pp. 73, 737). This
originally had four sugar pans, or kettles, but the capacity was later trebled.
The staff, consisting of some 40 workers, lived on the prem ises; as was the
custom at that period. As directly indicated by its name, the company carried
on trade with what is now part o f Ghana (ill. p. 77) as well as with the Danish
colonies in the West Indies —the islands of St. Thomas, St. John and, from
1 7A3 ? St- Croix as w e ll: Now named the Virgin Islands they have been a non
self governing territory o f the USA since 1 91 6 .
The company was far more than just a trading organization, in that it
owned the areas with which it traded and governed them, virtually inde
pendently of the Danish Crown from whom it derived its charter. Even at that
early date plans were made for the abolition o f slave trading between these
Danish possessions and encouragement was given to emigration to these ter
ritories from Denmark (ill. p. 76).
In the 1 7 3 0 ’ s the refinery was handling in the region of a million pounds of
raw sugar annually, but it became increasingly difficult for the Company to
provide ships sufficient to handle the trade. To deal with this situation it
entered into agreement with several Copenhagen merchants and shared the
transport business with them. One o f these, Andreas Bjørn, (ill. p. 8 1) had
recently laid-down a large shipyard on Christianshavn, and his old yard in
Strandgade was taken over by the company. As a result the remnants of what
had originally been Grønnegaards Havn became the Company’ s property and
they rebuilt it as their own shipyard and harbour (ill. p. 79).
1 8 6