gamleskibegamlehuse

T H E P L A C E O F T H E R I C H L E H N F A M IL Y

The new owner was Abraham Lehn a prosperous merchant and shipowner. His son, Abraham jr. (ill. p. 69) has a rather wry 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 h ithe rto unreclaimed area between Strandgade 4 and the powder works was taken over and bu ilt 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 repu te and the first to establish the velocity of light. o Part of Lehn’s property was taken over in 1728 by the Danish »West Indian and Guinea Company« as a site for a sugar refinery (ill. pp. 73, 75'). This originally had four sugar pans, or kettles, bu t the capacity was later treb led . 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 w ith what is now part of Ghana (ill. p. 77) as well as w ith the Danish colonies in the W est Indies —the islands of St. Thomas, St. John and, from 17A3 j St- Croix as w ell: Now named the Virgin Islands they have been a non self governing te rrito ry of the USA since 1916. The company was far more than just a trading organization, in that it owned the areas w ith 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 of slave trading between these Danish possessions and encouragement was given to emigration to these te r ­ ritories from Denmark (ill. p. 76). In the 1730’s the refinery was handling in the region of a m illion 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 w ith them . One of these, Andreas Bjorn, (ill. p. 81) 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 Gronnegaards Havn became the Company’s p roperty and they rebu ilt it as their own shipyard and harbour (ill. p. 79). 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

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