Billy Ruffian

FOURTEEN Voices from the Lower Deck 1805-7

The storm which followed the battle lasted for nearly five days and was one of the worst that even the most experienced seamen could remember. More than fifty ships, many of them dismasted and severely damaged, were exposed to the full force of a westerly gale less than 7 miles from a dangerous lee shore - the rocks and shoals of Cape Trafalgar. Collingwood later wrote, 'I can only say that in my life I never saw such efforts as were made to save these ships, and would rather fight another battle than pass through such a week as followed it.' The entries in the Bellerophon's log-book describe several days of fresh or strong gales with squalls, lightning and rain, with a heavy swell from the westward, but give little idea of the peril that faced so many of the ships. Captain Blackwood, of the frigate Euryalus, summed up the dangers in a letter to his wife Harriet. 'It has blown a hurricane,' he told her. 'All yesterday and last night the majority of the English fleet have been in the most perilous state; our ships much crippled, with damaged prizes in tow; our crews tired out, and many thousand prisoners to guard; all to be done with a gale of wind blowing us right on the shore . . .'

Those ships which were dismasted and unable to hoist any sail were at the mercy of the wind and waves unless they could secure a tow from an operational ship, but securing a tow in the heavy seas was a difficult and dangerous operation. The Belleisle had been reduced to a hulk by the sustained fire of no fewer than nine enemy ships and had lost all three masts, her bowsprit, her figurehead and her anchors. The frigate Naiad managed to get a cable across to her but the cable parted and when they attempted to get another line across to her the Belleisle collided with the frigate and carried away most of her starboard quarter gallery. According to the Naiad's log they had to abandon any further attempt to take a line across with boats because the sea was running so high. The Naiad's main topsail then split across and had to be hacked free to save the topsail yard. The sail went overboard and soon afterwards the foretopmast staysail was blown to pieces. By the time they had sorted things out the Belleisle was far away, drifting perilously close to the shore to the eastward of Cape Trafalgar and in sight of breakers. At the last moment her crew managed to set a boat's sail on a jury foremast and beat clear of the immediate danger. When the wind moderated, the Naiad finally managed to get a boat alongside and take her in

All the British ships survived the storm but many of the French and Spanish ships did not. The British prize crews were horrified by the sights which faced them when they boarded the enemy ships which had surrendered. Midshipman Badcock, who went aboard the Santisima Trinidad, found her beams covered with blood, brains and pieces of flesh, and her decks littered with the dead and dying, some without legs and some missing arms. On the Bucentaur the dead were lying on the decks in heaps where they had fallen. Captain Atcherley, a marine who had been sent to secure her magazine, reckoned that more than 400 had been killed, 'of whom an extraordinary proportion had lost their heads.' A raking shot had entered the lower deck, and had glanced along the beams causing carnage among the men working the guns. A French officer declared that this one shot alone had killed or wounded nearly forty men.

Henry Walker, one of the Bellerophon's midshipmen, was a member of the prize crew which Lieutenant Cumby had sent across to the Spanish ship Monarca during a brief lull in the action and he later described the dangerous situation which he and his shipmates had to face: 'Our second lieutenant, myself, and eight men, formed the party that took possession of the Monarca: we remained until the morning without further assistance, or we should most probably have saved her, though she had suffered much more than ourselves.' At no point during the battle itself, Walker said, had he felt any fear of dying:

but in the prize, when I was in danger of, and had time to reflect upon the approach of death, either from the rising of the Spaniards upon so small a number as we were composed of, or what latterly appeared inevitable, from the violence of the storm, I was most certainly afraid, and at one time, when the ship made three feet of water in ten minutes, when our people were almost lying drunk upon deck, when the Spaniards, completely worn out with fatigue, would no longer work at the only chain pump left serviceable, when I saw the fear of death so strongly depicted on the countenances of all around me, I wrapped myself up in a Union Jack, and lay down upon deck for a short time, quietly awaiting the approach of death; but the love of life soon after roused me, and after great exertions on the part of the British and Spanish officers, who had joined together for the mutual preservation of our lives, we got the ship before the wind, determined to run her on shore.

After four dreadful days in the storm they were rescued by the Leviathan which sent boats across and took off the prize crew and all the Spanish crew except for 150 men who were afraid of getting into the boats. Soon afterwards the Monarca was driven ashore and wrecked. Altogether ten enemy ships were wrecked in the storm and three were scuttled or burnt. The Redoutable and the magnificent 140-gun Santisima Trinidad foundered at sea with great loss of life. Of the fifteen ships taken during the battle, only four weathered the storm and were towed into Gibraltar.

The Bellerophon sailed into Gibraltar Bay on 28 October in company with the Agamemnon and the Colossus. There was still a heavy swell running but the westerly wind had moderated. She dropped anchor in 15 fathoms beneath the soaring crags of the Rock of Gibraltar. The strongly fortified harbour commanding the entrance to the Mediterranean was filled with warships and merchant vessels of all types. Coleridge had called in the year before, en route to Malta, and had noted the extraordinarily colourful, polyglot atmosphere of the naval base and the town. Soldiers of all regiments, naval officers and runaway sailors mingled with Arabs, Jews, Spaniards, Italians and Greeks. He had climbed to the summit of the Rock and found it to be a mysterious place full of warlike shapes and impressions: 'What a complex thing! At its feet mighty ramparts establishing themselves in the Sea with their huge artillery - hollow trunks of Iron where Death and Thunder sleep; the gardens in deep Moats between lofty walls; a Town of all Nations & all languages . . .'

The day after the Bellerophon arrived at Gibraltar the Victory was towed into the bay by the Neptune. The sun, breaking through the clouds for the first time for a week, illuminated her battered hull. She had lost her mizenmast and her foretopmast; her main mast was severely damaged; her main yard and her main topsail yard had been shot away; and her rails, gunports and the timbers of the head and stern were much cut by cannon shot. The white ensign flying from the staff at her stern was at half mast in honour of Nelson whose body lay below. Dr Beatty, the surgeon, had carried out a brief autopsy and then put the body in a cask of brandy to preserve it. The cask was lashed securely on the middle deck and was watched over by a marine sentry.

After less than a week in Gibraltar, where emergency repairs were carried out to her hull, masts and rigging, the Victory was ready to put to sea again. On 4 November she weighed anchor and set sail for England. She was accompanied by the Belleide and the Bellerophon. Both ships needed urgent attention from the shipwrights and riggers of the royal dockyards but in view of the heroic performance of their crews in the recent action it was appropriate that they should accompany the flagship which carried Nelson's body on the voyage back home.

The Bellerophon was now under the command of Captain Edward Rotheram. He took over from Lieutenant Cumby on the morning they sailed from Gibraltar. Rotheram had been Collingwood's flag captain on the Royal Sovereign and, although he had put up a brave performance during the battle, Collingwood was no doubt glad to see the back of him because he thought him a stupid man. They had got on so badly that they had to be reconciled by Nelson before the battle, and afterwards Collingwood wrote, 'but such a captain, such a stick, I wonder very much how such people get forward . . . Was he brought up in the Navy? For he has very much of the style of the Coal Trade about him, except that they are good seamen!' As it happened, Rotheram, who was the son of a Newcastle doctor, had spent his early years on colliers before joining the navy but unlike Captain Cook, the celebrated explorer, he had evidently not benefited from the exacting demands of the coal trade which involved navigating the shifting shoals and mudbanks of the East Coast in all weathers.

They sighted the coast of Devon on 2 December. When they were off Start Point the Victory parted company and headed eastwards up the Channel towards Portsmouth. The Belleisle and the Bellerophon made for Plymouth and dropped anchor in Cawsand Bay. Three weeks later the Bellerophon was alongside the sheer hulk and the riggers from the dockyard came aboard, stripped down the rigging and hauled out the main and mizen masts. On Boxing Day Lieutenant Cumby left the ship. In recognition of his conduct at Trafalgar he had been promoted to the rank of post-captain, with effect from 1 January 1806. In theory this was great news but it was a bad time to be a captain because there were not enough ships available. He lacked influence and for eighteen months was unemployed (and on half pay) before being given temporary command of a frigate on the Irish station.

The Bellerophon remained under the command of Captain Rotheram for the next two and a half years. For much of the time the ship was stationed off Ushant with the squadron blockading Brest, and it was back to the familiar routine of two months patrolling the coast of Brittany and two or three weeks back in Torbay or Cawsand Bay to take on provisions and carry out repairs. At some point during this period Rotheram produced a remarkably detailed survey of the Bellerophon's crew.

He concentrated his attention on the 387 seamen in the ship's company. He did not include the marines, and although he listed the names of the officers and warrant officers he did not record any details for them. However the resulting survey provides a unique picture of the composition, background and outward appearance of the crew of a British ship of the line in the years immediately following Trafalgar. Exactly why Rotheram decided to embark on such a survey is a mystery. Was it simply an exercise to pass the time during the monotonous days and weeks spent on blockade duty, or was there a more serious purpose? The two volumes of his journals and letters in the National Maritime Museum provide no obvious explanation. He was in the habit of making detailed notes on harbours and anchorages visited during the course of his voyages but this was a seamanlike exercise which many officers carried out, some even illustrating their notes to help them identify landmarks and coastal features on future occasions. A possible explanation for the survey is that it was carried out as an academic exercise. Rotheram's father, who was for a time the Senior Physician of a Northumberland infirmary, was described as 'a gentleman of high estimation . . . and a person of general science', and his brother John Rotheram studied under Linnaeus in Sweden and became Professor of Natural Philosophy at St Andrews University. It was Linnaeus who devised the system for classifying animal and plant species. It is therefore possible that his brother's researches may have prompted Captain Rotheram to carry out his survey in the spirit of scientific enquiry, although he does not appear to have made any attempt to analyse the data he gathered.

Whatever the reasons behind Captain Rotheram's survey, the results are fascinating. We find that most of the men are surprisingly short. The average height is 5 foot 5 inches. There is nobody of 6 foot or over and several men are under 5 feet tall. Since the effective standing headroom on the gun deck of the Bellerophon was only 5 feet 8 inches, Captain Rotheram's crew would have found it much easier to work in the confined space than the taller men likely to be found on a naval ship today. This also puts Nelson's height in perspective. It is commonly believed that Nelson, like Napoleon, was an unusually small man. In fact recent research has shown that he was between 5 foot 6 inches and 5 foot 7 inches tall, which means that he was above the average height of his seamen, and confirms the observations of many of his contemporaries. His nephew George Matcham, for instance, wrote, 'He was not as described, a little man, but of the middle height and of a frame adapted to activity and exertion.'

A breakdown of the nationalities of the crew reveals that nearly half were English (49 per cent), and the rest were made up of a large contingent of Irishmen (24 per cent); a number of Scotsmen (12 per cent), and Welshmen (7 per cent); and a variety of foreigners (8 per cent). The foreigners included 13 black sailors (9 from the West Indies, 3 from Africa, 1 from America) as well as 2 Dutchmen, a Frenchman, a Swede, a Portuguese, a Maltese, a Bengal Indian, one man from Guernsey and one from the Isle of Man. It is not surprising to find that more men came from coastal towns and cities with ports than came from inland towns: 30 men came from Dublin, 26 from London, 10 from Bristol and 10 from Liverpool, with other ports like Swansea, Newcastle, Cork and King's Lynn being well represented.

The average age of the crew in Rotheram's study is thirty. There were 55 men in their forties, 11 in their fifties and the oldest man in the crew was 56. Since the life of a seaman in the age of sail was extremely tough and physically demanding, particularly for those hands required to work aloft, we find that most of the older men had less demanding duties. James Gill, aged 51, and Thomas Nichols, 50, were both quartermasters - experienced petty officers - whose job it was to keep an eye on the helmsman at the wheel and relay the orders of the officer of the watch. The majority of the crew (72 per cent) were unmarried, and 6 were widowed. The 102 seamen on board who were married would have had little chance to see their families during the long period of the war against France. Some wives made heroic effforts to travel to Portsmouth or Plymouth for a chance to see their husbands but all too often the men were refused shore leave in case they deserted. One of the later captains of the Bellerophon gave specific orders to his lieutenants to prevent any men getting away from the ship when she was anchored off Spithead. No boats were to go ashore unless absolutely necessary and those that went were to have a sufficient number of officers 'to prevent the men from running'. This was one of the biggest sources of grievance for many sailors. William Richardson, who was pressed from a merchant ship and served on several warships between 1790 and 1815, spoke for many when he wrote, 'I think it only fair and just, that when seamen are pressed, in coming home from a long voyage, they should be allowed a few week's liberty on shore to spend their money among their friends and relations; when that was gone, they would soon be tired of the shore, return more contented to their ships, and by such means there would not be half so much desertion.'

The outward appearance of the seamen was as varied as might be expected in a crew drawn from all over Britain and beyond. Standing on the quarterdeck and looking down on the assembled crew for a Sunday service, Captain Rotheram would have seen a sea of faces of all shapes and colours. According to his survey their complexions ranged from pale, fair and fresh to sallow, swarthy, dark and negro. There were thin faces, long faces, round and full faces, and a large number of faces pitted from smallpox. There were men who were thickset, strong-made, very stout and muscular, and 'well looking' and there were men who were ill-looking, thin, emaciated and 'very infirm, good for nothing'. A lot of men had tattoos. John Nichols, a 22-year-old Londoner, had a centaur, a heart and the initials 'MS' on his left arm and a crucifix, a sun, moon and stars on his right arm. Robert Stewart, a 50-year-old Irishman, had a fish and anchor on one arm and a mermaid and a woman with an umbrella on the other arm. Most had a few initials and the traditional anchor or mermaid. Thirty men had scars or various injuries: six had lost the sight of one eye; six had lost fingers, two had wounds from musket balls and several had injuries or disfigurements caused by falls.

One of the most interesting aspects of Captain Rotheram's survey is the information which it provides about the occupations of the men before going to sea. Twenty men had worked in dockyard trades (as shipwrights, sailmakers, coopers, caulkers, ropemakers and anchorsmiths) and most of these were employed in the same capacities on board the Bellerophon. No fewer than 174 men (or 45 per cent of the men in the survey) had previously been merchant seamen, mostly in the West India trade or the coal trade. There were also 8 fishermen, a Thames waterman, a Swansea boatman and a Dover pilot. Most of these men were probably victims of the press gang. The navy urgently needed professional seamen and the press gangs therefore concentrated their efforts on seaports and harbours. They frequently intercepted homecoming merchant ships and stripped them of large numbers of sailors.

The survey also reveals that there were 119 landsmen in the crew with no previous experience of the sea. Twenty-seven of them listed their previous occupation as labourers, 16 had been weavers, 14 were farmers and 11 were shoemakers. The rest included almost every trade and working-class occupation current at the time, from bricklayers and blacksmiths to masons and miners. There were representatives from every shop to be found in a typical high street (a hatter, a tailor, a butcher, an ironmonger, a mercer and a haberdasher) but, apart from one lawyer, there were no men from the middle-class professions such as teachers, bankers, merchants or the clergy.

This miscellaneous bunch of men had to be moulded into a disciplined team able to respond immediately to a variety of situations ranging from preparing for action to working to windward in a gale. This was achieved by constant practice in shiphandling and gunnery and by the establishment of a regular routine when the ship was at sea. We get a glimpse of the daily routine on board the Bellerophon from a surviving order book kept by Captain Edward Hawker, who commanded the ship from 1813 until the spring of 1815. Hawker was the son of a naval captain. He had seen action in the West Indies and had considerable experience as a commander of ships of the line. On 17 June 1813, when the Bellerophon was at sea off the coast of Newfoundland, he issued an order to his officers which specified the tasks to be carried out each day of the week 'when the weather and service will permit'.

On Sunday morning the men were to draw clean hammocks and sling them. After the lower deck and cockpit had been cleaned the crew were to dress smartly and muster for the church service. The afternoon was free, apart from 'seeing to the indispensible duties of the ship'. Monday was busier. In the morning the men were to wash their clothes, and hang them on the lines which had been rigged the evening before; they were then to exercise the great guns and small arms; in the afternoon they were to replace any deficiencies in the gun equipment and in the evening there were more gunnery exercises 'to make the men perfect in this duty'. On Tuesday morning the hammocks were to be scrubbed until 9.30. The marines were to exercise small arms. In the afternoon the bedding was to be aired. On Wednesday morning the men's bags, and also boat sails and covers, screens and blankets were to be scrubbed. The rest of the morning was to be devoted to exercises in reefing and furling the sails. In the afternoon one division of the great guns was to be exercised.

On Thursday the crew were mustered so that their clothes and bags could be inspected by the officers. During the muster the master-at-arms and corporals were to 'visit every part of the ship to pick up spare clothes, which are to be brought on the quarterdeck'. The afternoon was to be spent mending clothes. More washing of clothes took place on Friday morning, and another division of guns was to be exercised. Every other Saturday morning the ship's fire engine was to be used to wash the poop, and in dry weather the lower deck and cockpits were to be washed. The ship was to be pumped afterwards with the chain pumps.

The memoirs of various seamen of the period add colour and detail to this somewhat stark account of daily life at sea. Depending on the captain and the time of year, the day began at 4 or 5 am when the cook and his mate got up and lit the galley fire, the men on overnight watch were relieved, and the men on the next watch were roused by the boatswain's mates in order to wash the decks — a job which involved scrubbing the decks with brushes, or blocks made of Portland stone (called holystones because they were the same shape and size as bibles). A seaman called Samuel Leech tells us: After the decks are well rubbed with these stones, they are wiped dry with swabs made of rope-yarns. By this means the utmost cleanliness is preserved in the ship.'

The rest of the crew was woken at 7 am. Above and below deck the shrill, sharp whistles of the boatswain's calls were followed by the bellowed cry of 'All hands, ahoy!' Any seaman not responding rapidly enough was likely to receive a blow from a rattan cane or find his hammock cut down. As the men emerged from their slumbers, more shouts followed - 'Up all hammocks, ahoy!' - and with surprising speed the seamen dressed, lashed up their hammocks and carried them on deck where they were stowed in the hammock nettings along the sides of the upper deck. According to Samuel Leech, 'There is a system even in this arrangement; everything has its appropriate place. Below the beams are all marked; each hammock is marked with a corresponding number, and in the darkest night a sailor will go unhesitatingly to his own hammock. They are also kept exceedingly clean. Every man is provided with two, that while he is scrubbing and cleaning one, he may have another to use.' Breakfast was at 8 and was usually gruel, a form of porridge made from oatmeal. The men were divided up into messes of between eight and twelve men and they ate together, each mess gathered around a table hung from the deck head and seated on benches, barrels or sea chests. One of their number fetched the food and drink from the galley. The rest of the morning followed along the lines described by Captain Hawker: washing clothes or hammocks, and exercising guns and small arms.

If any punishments were due, these took place at 11 am. Their frequency depended on the temperament of the captain, the discipline imposed by the officers, and the mood of the men under their command. The most common form of punishment was flogging and this was meted out for theft, fighting, drunkenness, disobedience, insolence to an officer, gambling, or neglect of duty. The crew were summoned by the ominous cry of All hands ahoy to witness punishment' and everyone assembled on deck. The officers stood by in full uniform, and the marines lined up with muskets and fixed bayonets. A heavy wooden grating from one of the hatches was set up vertically in the waist of the ship and the prisoner, who had been shackled in irons all night, was led out and lashed to the grating by his wrists and ankles. When the captain had read out the charge the prisoner's shirt was stripped off and the boatswain's mate removed the cat-of-nine-tails from the bag in which it had been hidden. At the order from the captain he laid on the first six or twelve lashes. If more lashes had been ordered another boatswain's mate laid on the second dozen. Young sailors watching a flogging for the first time were chilled by the sound of the lashes and horrified by the effect they produced. In the words of Samuel Leech, who had joined the navy at the age of thirteen and spent many years as an ordinary seaman, 'Now two dozen of these dreadful lashes have been inflicted; the lacerated back looks inhuman; it resembles roasted meat burnt nearly black before a scorching fire . . ,'

After witnessing the punishment the seamen returned to their duties, while the sea officers and the midshipmen fetched sextants and prepared to take the noon sight. By noting the angle of the sun at midday and consulting tables they were able to determine the latitude of the ship and by calculating the time difference with Greenwich the longitude, and these would be duly entered in the log-books they were each required to keep. Dinner followed, and an hour or an hour and a half was allowed for this, the main meal of the day. Depending on the cook and the day of the week, this might consist of boiled beef or boiled pork or dried peas and duff, or cheese and duff. It was accompanied by a pint of grog (rum diluted with water). The afternoon was spent on the tasks described by Captain Hawker. In addition to these there was a constant round of cleaning, polishing and repairing to be done: blacking the guns and rigging with a mixture of warm tar and seawater; polishing the brass with brick dust and rags; mending sails; and cleaning cutlasses, pikes, boarding axes, muskets and pistols with greasy rags. Any of these tasks, morning and afternoon, might be interrupted by sail changes, the firing of salutes, or general fleet exercises ordered by the commanding admiral.

Supper was at 4 or 5 pm and three-quarters of an hour was allowed for this meal which was usually whatever was saved from dinner, together with ship's biscuit and another pint of grog. Cocoa or tea were sometimes issued at meals, and, because the drinking water on board was so foul, the men were generally allowed to drink as much beer as they wanted. At 8 or 9 pm the order went out for the men to collect their hammocks, and they bundled them down below, slung them on their hooks and bedded down for the night. The cook extinguished the galley fire and the master-at-arms and his corporals went round the ship to make sure that no lights were left burning.

The daily regime when the ship was at sea did not allow much time for recreation but Sunday afternoons were usually free of duties and on many ships the men had an hour or so of free time in the evening. Some spent the time quietly: they would write letters home, or read; they would tie decorative knots, make ship models, or inscribe pictures on pieces of ivory or walrus tusks. Others would gather on the foredeck to tell each other stories, or sing traditional naval songs and ballads, or celebrate a recent victory with a new song set to an old tune. There was always someone on board who could play the flute or the violin and this provided an opportunity for some dancing which would be more or less energetic depending on the amount of beer which had been consumed. Gambling was forbidden by the Articles of War, but this did not stop many seamen playing with dice or cards for money, and many captains were prepared to turn a blind eye to this.

The music and dancing and singing lifted the men's spirits and for a while they could forget the physical hardships, the monotonous routine, the bad food, the constant cold and wet, and the fact that, until the war ended, they were virtual prisoners on one of His Majesty's ships. As Samuel Leech observed, 'A casual visitor to a man of war, beholding the song, the dance, the revelry of the crew, might judge them to be happy. But I know that these things are often resorted to because they feel miserable, just to drive away dull care.'