Billy Ruffian

ELEVEN The West Indies 1798-1804

More than two months passed before the news reached London that Nelson's squadron had annihilated the French fleet at the mouth of the Nile. The first despatch which Nelson sent was intercepted by the enemy. On 6 August he had sent his flag captain Edward Berry in the Leander, under the command of Captain Thompson, with his official report addressed to Lord St Vincent at Cadiz. In light winds off the coast of Crete the Leander, a 50-gun ship, was attacked by a powerful French warship, Le Généreux of 74 guns, one of the ships which had managed to escape from Aboukir Bay the day after the battle. In the ferocious action which followed, the Leander was reduced to a dismasted wreck and forced to surrender. Tim Stewart, one of her lower deck gunners, was scathing about the way the French ship was handled. Long before she was in range she wasted powder and shot by blazing away to left and right:

We fought six hours; just think of that. Why, if she had handled her guns in a seamanlike manner, she ought to have sunk us in little more than six minutes. We had to cut through the main topsail, lying over our larboard side to make room for the muzzles of the guns, for our ship was quite a wreck - not a stick standing - but still the brave hearts would not give in.

The effectiveness of the Leanders gunnery was grimly demonstrated by the fact that Le Généreux lost about 100 dead and more than 150 wounded from her enormous crew of more than 900 men. The Leander, with a crew of 282, lost 35 killed and 57 wounded, and when Captain Thompson eventually faced a court martial for the loss of his ship he was praised for his 'gallant and almost unprecedented defence' against a far superior force.

Nelson had initially sent only one copy of his despatch because he was short of frigates but on 12 August he decided to send a duplicate copy to Sir William Hamilton in Naples. He promoted his flag lieutenant, Thomas Capel, to the rank of master and commander and sent him on his way in the brig Mutine. Capel arrived in the Bay of Naples on 4 September where his news was received with a sense of relief and rejoicing which was soon to be echoed all over Europe. Capel wrote, 'I am totally unable to express the joy that appeared in everybody's countenance and the burst of applause and acclamation we received.' Sir William Hamilton wrote to Nelson, 'It is impossible, my dear Sir Horatio, for any words to express, in any degree, the joy that the account of the glorious and complete victory you gained . . . occasioned in this court and in this city.' Lady Hamilton fainted when she heard the news and then she too wrote to Nelson to tell him she was delirious with happiness: 'Good God, what a victory! Never, never' has there been anything half so glorious, half so compleat . . .'

In Vienna the Chancellor 'manifested the greatest pleasure at this memorable event' and in Berlin a British diplomat passed the news on to the King of Prussia and reported that the joy was universal. It was widely recognised that Nelson's action was more than a decisive naval victory. It was the first serious check to the hitherto invincible French nation and gave fresh heart to all the opponents of revolutionary France. During the course of one long night Nelson's squadron had eliminated French naval power in the Mediterranean and, although Napoleon would later institute a massive shipbuilding programme, the French Navy never recovered from the blow.

When Capel eventually arrived in London on the morning of 2 October and delivered Nelson's despatch to the Admiralty the reaction and the rejoicings eclipsed the celebrations which had greeted the news of the Battle of the Glorious First of June four years previously. Lord Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, immediately passed on the news to the Lord Mayor of London and by midday the church bells were ringing all over the capital and guns were firing salutes in Hyde Park and the Tower. Lady Spencer wrote, 'My heart is absolutely bursting with different sensations of joy, of gratitude, of pride, of every emotion that ever warmed the bosom of a British woman,' and she reported that huge crowds had gathered in the streets. 'London is mad - absolutely mad - Capel was followed by a crowd of several thousands, huzzaring the whole way . . .'

Lord Spencer sent a messenger to convey the news to Weymouth where the King was taking the waters. According to the newspapers the messenger was held up on the road by a highwayman who decided not to rob him when he learnt of the contents of the despatches and told him 'to proceed with all possible expedition with the good news to his Majesty'. The King was so delighted by the news that he read Nelson's letters aloud four times to different noblemen and gentlemen on the esplanade at Weymouth. All over the country there were celebrations. Hotels and shops were illuminated, and patriotic songs were sung by audiences in theatres. In Norwich an ox was roasted in the Market Place and in the village of Chew Magna, near Bristol, 'a sheep was roasted whole and given, with plenty of beer, to the populace'.

One of the few people to take the news calmly was Napoleon who was now marooned in Egypt with an army of 30,000 troops. 'Well, gentlemen, now we are obliged to accomplish great things,' he told his companions, 'The sea of course, of which we are no longer master, separates us from our homeland, but no sea separates us from either Africa or Asia.' He told them that they had the men and the munitions and they would found a great empire. This he signally failed to do, but in a matter of months he left his mark on Egypt. He began work on a hospital for the poor, and established quarantine stations to check the spread of bubonic plague which was endemic in the country; he built windmills to raise water and grind corn; he set up a postal service; and he erected the first street lamps in Cairo. He also established the Institute of Egypt and it was the work of the French scientists, historians and archaeologists working for the institute which was to prove his most lasting legacy. They measured the Pyramids, they studied the history, zoology and anthropology of Egypt and eventually published their findings in ten magnificently illustrated folio volumes. Above all they discovered at Rosetta a basalt stone with inscriptions which led to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs and revealed for scholars and the Egyptian people themselves the hitherto unknown world of ancient Egypt.

Napoleon's attempt to govern a Muslim country which was twice the size of France was never likely to succeed and was doomed when he had to return to the battlefield within months of his arrival in Egypt. In October 1798 the Turks declared war on France and that winter they assembled an army in Syria and prepared to invade Egypt. Napoleon marched his army northwards, captured the fortress at Gaza, took the town of Jaffa, and then laid siege to the medieval fortress of Acre. A British force under the command of the dashing Sir Sydney Smith reinforced the Turkish troops defending the town and between them they successfully resisted the French bombardment. After two months Napoleon withdrew his troops, crossed the Sinai desert and returned to Cairo. His soldiers were demoralised and, although they went on to defeat the Turks at Mount Tabor and at Aboukir, Napoleon decided he must abandon them and return to Paris. He had learnt that the French republic was in serious danger from within and without. France's economy had collapsed, civil servants were unpaid, most of the artisans in Paris were unemployed, and bandits were roaming the countryside. And a new coalition of France's enemies, including Austria, Britain and Russia, was threatening her borders. On 22 August 1799, a year after the Battle of the Nile, he embarked on a frigate and arrived in Paris on 16 October. Within three weeks he had organised a coup, disbanded the ruling Directorate, and set himself up as First Consul. Far from being finished by the ill-fated Egyptian expedition he was on the threshold of an era which would lead to him extending his rule across Europe and being proclaimed Emperor of France.

Seven years passed between the Battle of the Nile and the next major event in the Bellerophon's life which was the Battle of Trafalgar. During those seven years she cruised the Mediterranean, escorted convoys of merchant ships, and resumed her old task of blockading the French coast. Her log-books for these years are a monotonous repetition of earlier log-books: daily notes of the wind and the weather; the passing of other ships, sail changes, taking on board water and stores, carrying out repairs to sails and rigging, and the punishment of crew members with floggings for drunkenness or neglect of duty. The only break in the routine was a spell of two years in which the ship was based on the Jamaica station in the West Indies.

The economic rivalry between Britain and France in the Caribbean had begun in the seventeenth century. During the eighteenth century it led to a series of military expeditions and sea battles as both nations attempted to capture and recapture islands whose sugar and tobacco plantations were a major source of wealth. Britain developed two naval bases to service the ships engaged in the long-running conflict. English Harbour in Antigua became the base for ships operating in the eastern Caribbean, and in particular for the ships of the Leeward Squadron which were stationed out there. Port Royal, on the south coast of Jamaica, was the base for the Jamaica Squadron and for ships patrolling the western Caribbean.

On 2 March 1802 the Bellerophon, in company with five other ships of the line, weighed anchor and proceeded slowly out of Torbay. The day was so calm that it was necessary for the boats of the squadron to tow the ships clear of the land until they picked up a light breeze off Berry Head. Two days later they were sailing past the Lizard and a week later they were off Madeira and heading for the West Indies. With the trade winds behind them all the way from the Azores they made good progress and sighted Barbados on the morning of 27 March 1802. They had covered the 4,700 miles from Plymouth in twenty-five days. This was an average of 188 miles a day, travelling at between 7 and 8 knots most of the time - a good average for a cruising yacht today and a surprising, though by no means unusual, speed for sailing warships each carrying more than 500 men and loaded with 74 guns, 300 tons of ballast and more than 700 tons of ammunition, stores and equipment.

On 28 March they saw the twin peaks of St Lucia on the horizon and the next day they sailed into Fort Royal Bay at Martinique to stock up on water and provisions before sailing the final leg of the journey to Jamaica. They arrived during the brief period when the island was under British rule. For nearly 200 years Martinique had been a French colony but in 1794 a British expedition had captured the island and for eight years the British flag flew over the fort which guarded the entrance to one of the most beautiful bays in the Caribbean. Napoleon's wife Josephine had been born in a house overlooking the bay in 1763 and had spent the first sixteen years of her life on the island. She had enjoyed a genteel upbringing as the daughter of a noble French family but after completing her convent education she had been sent to Paris to marry a rich aristocrat. Her husband had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror in 1794 but Josephine (then called Rose de Beauharnais) had survived and rejoined the fashionable life of the capital. She had met Napoleon during the summer of 1795 and had so enchanted him that he persuaded her to marry him the following spring. She was then thirty-two years old with two children. Napoleon was twenty-six and had just been put in command of the Army of Italy.

The chief concern of the Bellerophon's crew was to provision the ship for the next stage of the journey and carry out essential repairs. The launch was hoisted overboard and sent ashore to fill up the water casks. Barrels of fresh beef were brought across in boats and stored down below. Fruit and vegetables were purchased from the local men and women in the bumboats which swarmed around every ship which arrived in the port. The sails on the yards were loosed and allowed to flap in the light breezes to dry out. Damaged and torn sails were spread out on the decks so the sailmaker could carry out repairs, and the standing rigging was overhauled and set up. Within a few days the Bellerophon was ready to set out. On 7 April she weighed anchor and beat out of the bay in company with the 74-gun ship Audacious, heading for Jamaica.

The weather kept the sailors busy during the passage. Fresh breezes alternated with sudden fierce squalls, constantly forcing them to shorten sail and take in reefs, then shake out the reefs and set more sail. One squall carried away the head of the mizenmast and the main topsail yard of the Audacious and another squall tore the main topsail of the Bellerophon, but these were minor problems for ships used to coping with the winter storms in the Bay of Biscay. The damage was repaired and, with the wind on the beam, they made rapid progress. On the afternoon of 11 April they sighted the mountains of Jamaica on the horizon, and early the following morning they sailed past the rocky islets strung across the approaches to Port Royal, rounded the low promontory dominated by the stone walls of Fort Charles and headed into the vast, glittering expanse of Kingston Harbour. A fleet of eleven ships of the line, and several frigates and smaller vessels were riding at anchor in the middle of the bay, their decks shaded from the tropical sun by canvas awnings, their colourful flags streaming out in the breeze.

As the guns of the Bellerophon boomed out a salute to the port admiral, a flock of pelicans took off and headed across the water, flying low with steady, rhythmic wingbeats. Beyond the flight of birds and the anchored ships lay the distant town of Kingston. And, rising up behind the town, and providing a dramatic backdrop to the harbour, were the thickly wooded slopes of the Blue Mountains, their highest peaks hidden in the clouds. At 8.30 am the Bellerophon dropped anchor in 9 fathoms of clear water. For the next two years the great natural harbour and the dockyard at Port Royal would be her base. Here her crew would provision the ship and from here they would set off to patrol the Jamaica Passage and embark on an extended cruise up the American coast to Nova Scotia.

Port Royal today is a shadow of the town it once was. It is off the beaten track for most tourists and remains what it has been for a century or more, a sleepy fishing village set at the end of a long, snaking promontory. The ramparts of the old fort and the naval hospital are the most prominent of the few elderly structures which have survived the onslaught of earthquakes, fires and hurricanes. It is hard to believe that in the 1660s it was the richest of all the towns in the British colonies across the Atlantic. The daring raids of Sir Henry Morgan and the buccaneers on the Spanish treasure ports had brought fabulous wealth to a town already rich on the profits of the slave trade and the sugar plantations. The harbour swarmed with merchant ships, and the taverns and brothels along the waterfront did a roaring trade. All this ended dramatically in 1692 when a devastating earthquake shook the town to pieces. The old stone church, where the funeral of Sir Henry Morgan had been held, crumbled and collapsed. Two entire streets along the waterfront with shops, houses and wharves slid beneath the sea. A tidal wave following in the wake of the earthquake caused further devastation. It was estimated that 2,000 people died that day and a further 2,000 died later from their injuries or from disease.

The town never recovered its former prosperity as a trading port but developed instead into a British naval base. The damaged and derelict waterfront was transformed into a small but remarkably efficient naval dockyard. When Admiral Vernon visited Port Royal in 1740 to refit his squadron he was able to write approvingly, 'I believe I may say never more work was done in less time, and with fewer hands, than what has been done since my coming in.' By the time the Bellerophon dropped anchor in the harbour in April 1802 the dockyard had expanded further and was capable of repairing and victualling a fleet. Protected behind a retaining wall were blacksmiths' shops, sawpits, a mast house, a boat house, a pitch house, and a shed for the coopers to make and repair barrels. There was a fine house for the port admiral and a row of houses for visiting naval captains. And although there were no dry docks there were two careening wharves with capstan houses. Ships were hauled alongside these wharves, and then heaved on their sides with the aid of the capstans. The weed, worms and barnacles which grew so rapidly on ships' bottoms in the warm tropical waters were then burnt and scraped off, and the copper plates were repaired.

The Bellerophon remained just over a week at Port Royal before setting sail to join a squadron of warships which was stationed in the Jamaica Passage. Although hostilities between Britain and France had been temporarily suspended, following the signing of the Peace of Amiens on 25 March, the Admiralty had no intention of easing up on the patrols of a region so critical for Britain's trade. Spread out in a line in the vicinity of Navassa Island, the squadron commanded the eastern approaches to Jamaica and was in a good position to keep an eye on French warships based at San Domingo, as well as providing some protection for the numerous British merchant ships using the Windward Passage and voyaging to and from Jamaica.

After only four months on the Jamaica station the Bellerophon was despatched to Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a squadron of ships of the line. This was to avoid the worst of the hurricane season in the Caribbean, to show the flag in northern waters, and to remind France that Britain still maintained a presence in North America. The British had established a fortified naval base at Halifax back in 1749 in order to counter the threat to Britain's interests posed by the massive fortress which the French had built at Fort Louisbourg on the northern tip of Nova Scotia. With the loss of the American colonies in 1782, Halifax assumed a special importance as a base from which to defend British merchant ships trading with America and the fishing fleets operating off Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

The voyage from Jamaica, through the scattered islands of the Bahamas and up along the coast of America, took three weeks. On 14 September 1802 they sailed past the rocky headlands guarding the approaches to Halifax and dropped anchor among the ships gathered in the harbour. They were greeted by a steady downpour of rain, and the weather continued damp and overcast for the next few days. The squadron remained at Halifax for just under a month before heading back to the West Indies.

By 8 November they were once again moored off Port Royal. For the next eighteen months the routine for the Bellerophon and for the other ships of the line on the Jamaica station settled into a regular pattern: two or three months at sea patrolling the stretch of the Caribbean which lay between Jamaica, Cuba and San Domingo, and then two or three weeks at anchor off Port Royal. The tasks were much the same as they would have been at Portsmouth or Plymouth: taking in stores, carrying out repairs, and providing assistance to the workers in the dockyard. However, there were a few additional tasks due to the climate. The heat caused the planking of the decks and sides to open up and the caulkers were kept busy caulking the seams; for a similar reason canvas covers were made for the ships' boats when they were stored on deck to prevent their planks opening in the heat; and windsails were erected to catch the breeze and provide some ventilation below decks.

The routine was interrupted when news reached Jamaica that the Peace of Amiens had come to an end on 16 May 1803 and Britain and France were once again at war. The peace had never been more than an uneasy truce. For Britain it had provided a much-needed breathing space and an opportunity to tackle her economic difficulties. Her national debt in 1802 amounted to £507 million and the gold reserves at the Bank of England were dangerously low. Large numbers of British tourists had crossed the Channel to visit Paris and to see for themselves the changes brought about by the French Revolution but the terms of the peace treaty were so unfavourable to Britain that there was little chance of a lasting peace. Under the terms of the treaty, signed on 27 March 1802, Britain had agreed to return to France, Spain and Holland all her recent conquests except Trinidad, Ceylon and the Spice Islands. So Minorca went back to Spain; and St Lucia, Tobago, Martinique and St Pierre went back to France. It was agreed that Malta, which Britain had captured from the French in 1800, should be returned to the Knights of Malta.

While Britain used the peace to take stock, Napoleon took advantage of the cessation of hostilities to pursue his territorial ambitions. In the words of his biographer J.P. Thompson, 'Bonaparte was conscious of a revolution behind him, a republic beside him, and an empire ahead of him.' During the summer and autumn of 1802 he annexed Elba and Piedmont, he incorporated Parma into the French Republic, and he invaded Switzerland. By December he was blocking British exports to Italy and Holland, and by March 1803 he had set in train a shipbuilding programme for warships as well as for large numbers of landing craft. These aggressive actions caused increasing suspicion and resentment in Britain. In his speech from the throne on 8 March 1803 George III announced that 'as very considerable military preparations are carrying on in the ports of France and Holland, he has judged it expedient to adopt additional measures of precaution for the security of his dominions.' Britain had already delayed the evacuation of Malta, which was a strategically valuable naval base in the Mediterranean, and by the time she declared war on 16 May she had passed two Militia Acts to raise men for the army and had fifty-two ships of the line in commission.

When the news of the resumption of hostilities reached Jamaica the British squadron immediately went on the offensive. On 29 June they captured the French corvette Mignonne and a French brig. And in July they gave chase to two French ships of the line as they left the shelter of their harbour at San Domingo. The Bellerophon captured the 74-gun Duquesne after a few shots had been fired, but the second warship, the Duguay-Trouin, escaped and set sail for France. Apart from the capture of an American schooner in March 1804 this was the only action seen by the crew of the Bellerophon during their two years in the Caribbean.

The ship had lost only one man in the taking of the Duquesne but her crew had not been able to escape the ravages of disease. In this they reflected the experience of almost every ship and army unit which served in the West Indies. The greatest killer in the navy in this, as in earlier periods, was not enemy action but the ravages of scurvy, typhus, malaria and yellow fever. It has been calculated that during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France of 1793 to 1815 approximately 100,000 British seamen died. Of this number, 1.5 per cent died in battle, 12 per cent died in shipwrecks or similar disasters, 20 per cent died from shipboard or dockside accidents, and no less than 65 per cent died from disease.

Scurvy, caused by a lack of vitamin C in the diet, had decimated the crews of ships on long ocean voyages in the past but, thanks largely to the work of Dr James Lind, physician to the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar, much progress had been made in tackling this horrible disease. By following most of Lind's recommendations, Captain Cook had almost eliminated deaths from scurvy on his three great voyages of discovery although he had not realised that citrus fruits were the most effective cure. In 1795 the Navy started issuing ships with lime and lemon juice on a regular basis and captains were expected to see that every crew member got his share. On 1 June 1797, for instance, a few days after the Bellerophon arrived at Cadiz, there is a note in the captain's log which reads, 'Served lemons to the ships company,' and on 26 August 1803, when the ship was at anchor in Port Royal harbour, '220 gallons of Lime Juice was received on board to which 40 gallons of rum was added for its preservation.'

Scurvy continued to affect naval crews during the course of long cruises but deaths from the disease dropped dramatically. Alexander White, who had taken over from George Bellamy as the Bellerophon's surgeon, noted that thirty-one men were sick with scurvy during the course of the year from June 1803 to June 1804 but none of them died. Malaria and yellow fever were a different matter and during that same period White's journal records that 212 members of the crew were ill with fever. Seventeen of these men died on board and the rest were sent to the naval hospital. White's entry for 4 February 1804 records their fate: 'This morning sailed from Port Royal where we have been near 9 weeks at our anchor; during which upwards of one hundred men have been sent to Port Royal Hospital with fever, about 40 of which have already died.'

Many ships suffered even higher death rates. In 1801 James Gardner went out to the West Indies on the Brunswick, which had fought with the Bellerophon at the Battle of the Glorious First of June. The Brunswick soon had 287 men sick 'and buried a great many' but worse still was the fate of the frigate Topaze which had a crew of 255. Gardner wrote that 'a short time before we arrived, the Topaze, 36, on a cruise, buried all hands except fifty-five; the captain (Church) and all the officers died, and the ship was brought in by the gunner.'

It would be many years before the medical profession realised that malaria and yellow fever were spread by mosquitoes. At this period there was no known cure so it is little wonder that a posting to the West Indies was regarded by many sailors as a death sentence and that officers with influence did their best to avoid it. The crew of the Bellerophon must have been greatly relieved when they received the news that the ship had been ordered home.