Copenhagen's defences and Hardy's soundings

The Danes turned ships into a floating battery line near Amager and Tre Kroner, while the middle ground shoal narrowed the approaches. Britain lacked dependable local charts, so Thomas Hardy sounded the channel at night before the attack. Fixed shore batteries offered stable platforms and heavier guns, but limited preparation, reinforcement arrangements, and naval infrastructure kept Copenhagen from exploiting those advantages fully. Danish assumptions about the likely line of approach and the failure to keep more ships ready for sea created openings that a mobile combined Danish-Swedish force might have denied.