Billy Ruffian

FIFTEEN Cruises in Northern Waters 1807-14

The destruction of the Combined Fleet of France and Spain at Trafalgar confirmed Britain's position as the world's dominant sea power, and for the next hundred years Britain ruled the waves. But for the people of Britain who were mourning the death of Nelson in the autumn of 1805 the future seemed far from secure. Napoleon still had at his disposal a considerable number of French warships and, as he extended his hold over the continent, these were augmented by the navies of Holland and Denmark. Collingwood, and those ships of the Mediterranean fleet which were not too severely damaged by the Battle of Trafalgar, continued to keep watch on Cadiz, Cartagena and Toulon, but the close blockade on Brest was relaxed on the orders of Lord Barham, the First Sea Lord. 'It is to little purpose now,' he wrote, 'to wear out our ships in a fruitless blockade during the winter.'

The dangers of this relaxation soon became apparent. In December 1805 the French fleet at Brest put to sea and headed for the West Indies. The force of eleven ships of the line, four frigates and a corvette posed a serious threat to British merchant convoys until they were tracked down by Admiral Duckworth and defeated off St Domingo on 6 February 1806. This was the last fleet action by French warships in the war against Napoleonic France but there were other dangers to be countered. Privateers continued to operate with considerable success throughout the war. Privateering was a form of warfare at which the French excelled and they constantly harried merchantmen around the coasts of Europe as well as in the West Indies and the Indian Ocean. In February 1809 Lloyds List complained about 'the depredations of the numerous privateers, with which the Channel ... is now infested,' and during the course of that year no fewer than 571 British merchant ships were lost to privateers.

Although the Battle of Trafalgar ended any realistic chance of a French invasion of England it was many years before Napoleon entirely abandoned his invasion plans. As late as November 1811 he was instructing Decrès, his Minister of the Marine, to keep 500 of the landing craft in good repair because he thought that the invasion threat would always be a powerful means of influencing Britain. He frequently spoke of the invasion of England during his voyage to Elba in 1814, and continued to dwell on the subject when he was exiled to St Helena. In one of his conversations on that remote island he said that he would have lured the British fleet away to the West Indies as originally planned but would have held command of the Channel with seventy ships of the line for two months rather than the two or three days he thought necessary when he was at Boulogne in 1805. He said he would have landed as near Chatham as possible, with twice as many men as the number he actually assembled at Boulogne, and would have reached London in four days. 'I should have proclaimed a republic, the abolition of the nobility and house of peers, the distribution of the property of such of the latter as opposed me amongst my partisans, liberty, equality and the sovereignty of the people. I should have allowed the House of Commons to remain; but should have introduced great reforms.' When the British fleet came back, 'they would have found their capital in the hands of an enemy, and their country overwhelmed by my armies.'

More ominous than the invasion threat in the autumn of 1805 was the manner in which Napoleon swept aside all opposition on the continent. Two days before Trafalgar he had defeated an Austrian army under General Mack at Ulm. On 14 November he entered Vienna. At Austerlitz on 2 December a French army of 70,000 men routed an army of 86,000 Austrians and Russians. More than 18,000 Russian bodies were counted on the field after the battle. William Pitt, who had patiently assembled one coalition of allies after another to fight Napoleon's armies, saw his work in ruins. His famous remark, 'Roll up the map of Europe: it will not be wanted these ten years' proved to be all too true.

In July 1806 Napoleon became Protector of the newly created Confederation of the Rhine. In October he defeated the Prussians and Saxons at Jena and entered Berlin. He was now in a strong position to attack Britain by another means. On 21 November he issued the Berlin Decrees which inaugurated the Continental System. All the countries in the French Empire, including the subdued German states, were forbidden to trade with Britain. In January 1807 Britain retaliated with Orders in Council, which forbade neutral ships from trading between French ports. In view of Britain's command of the seas this was likely to do more harm to France than the Berlin Decrees were to do to Britain, but in June 1807 Napoleon's Grand Army crushed the Russians and Prussians at Friedland. The humiliated rulers, Alexander I of Russia and Frederick William II of Prussia, met Napoleon on a raft on the River Niemann to discuss terms. On 9 July France, Russia and Prussia signed the Treaty of Tilsit which extended the Continental System and meant that most of the ports of northern Europe, including those in the Baltic, were now closed to British ships. This was the most serious blow of all because it struck not only at Britain's rich trade with the continent, but also had the potential to cripple her navy.

Although the hull of the Bellerophon and those of most British warships built in the 1780s were entirely constructed of British oak and elm, their masts and spars came from the Baltic. Indeed for more than a century Britain had been dependent on foreign imports of masts and spars as well as other essential naval supplies such as hemp, sailcloth, tallow, turpentine, tar and pitch. Most of the timber came from the vast forests of Russia. The logs were hauled on sledges drawn by horses or oxen to the nearest river and were floated downstream to the ports in the form of huge rafts. The port of Riga had the reputation for shipping the best timber for masts but fine timber was also shipped from Memel, Danzig and elsewhere. The trade in mast timber and other naval stores was immense and Baltic convoys frequently consisted of anything between 600 and 1,000 merchant ships.

All the Baltic convoys had to pass through the Sound, the narrow entrance to the Baltic which was commanded by the guns of Copenhagen. So concerned was Britain by the threat to her navy that within weeks of the Treaty of Tilsit the British Admiralty despatched a massive fleet under Admiral Gambier to Denmark and laid siege to the Danish capital. Confronted by a force of 25 ships of the line, more than 40 frigates, sloops and bomb vessels, and 377 transport ships with 27,000 troops on board, the Danes had no chance. Once subjected to a bombardment which threatened to set the city on fire, the Danes surrendered their entire fleet and the dockyard at Copenhagen on 7 September 1807. The following spring Admiral Saumarez was sent to the Baltic with a powerful fleet to ensure the continued protection of the Baltic convoys. He remained there for much of the next four years, only returning home in the winter months when most of the Baltic ports were closed by ice. The Bellerophon joined the Baltic fleet during the summer of 1809 and her crew took part in two cutting-out expeditions. These were attacks made with boats on enemy shipping which, for sheer heroism in the face of enemy fire, might be straight from the pages of the Hornblower books or the novels of Patrick O'Brian.

On 8 June 1808 Captain Samuel Warren had taken over command of the Bellerophon from Captain Rotheram and the ship was ordered to join the North Sea fleet. The North Sea station extended from Selsey Bill to the Shetlands and the various squadrons of the fleet operated from the Downs, the Nore and Great Yarmouth. With most of northern Europe now dominated by France, and with Napoleon's brother Louis Bonaparte installed as King of Holland, a key role for the North Sea fleet was to blockade the ports of Holland and Belgium and prevent the Dutch Navy from putting to sea. Throughout the summer and autumn of 1808 the Bellerophon was stationed off the sand dunes of Holland between Camperdown and Texel Island. This was an area which had seen some famous naval actions in the past but it proved an uneventful time for the Bellerophon's crew. They could see the masts of the Dutch fleet moored in the Texel anchorage and watch the distinctive Dutch fishing boats being launched off the beaches, and then it was back to the Yarmouth or the Downs to take on water and provisions.

The following year the Bellerophon sailed to the Baltic and joined the fleet commanded by Admiral Saumarez. In these waters Russia was now the enemy and, because Russia had invaded and annexed Finland in February 1808, this meant that any vessels encountered along the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic were likely to be hostile. During the evening of 19 June 1809 the Bellerophon was cruising off Hango on the coast of Finland, in company with the Minotaur, when three suspicious-looking luggers were spotted in an anchorage sheltered by offshore islands. The waters were too shallow for the two British warships and so they dropped anchor in 21 fathoms and a party of armed men was despatched in the ships' boats to attack the luggers. It was a calm night and they encountered no opposition until they had boarded and taken possession of the three vessels. They then discovered they were in a trap. Overlooking and protecting the anchorage was a Russian gun battery which began to bombard them with round and grape shot. There were other batteries on the more distant islands and a number of Russian gunboats anchored in the vicinity.

The British force was under the command of Robert Pilch, the first lieutenant of the Bellerophon, and he acted with a reckless bravery not unlike that shown by Nelson at Tenerife. He ordered the luggers to be set on fire, got his men back in the boats and led a spirited attack on the nearest Russian battery which was manned by more than a hundred soldiers. The ship's marines were armed with muskets and bayonets, the sailors with cutlasses and boarding axes and so furious was their attack that they drove the Russian sailors from the battery, spiked the 24-pounder guns and blew up the magazine. Now under fire from the more distant Russian batteries they scrambled back into the boats and rowed back to the two anchored warships. The Bellerophon's log records that 'at 5 the boats returned on board, with 5 wounded men, Griffith Griffith, Peter Just, John Butterfield, Thomas McCarthy & Simon McLean.' The log also noted that in the raid they had lost three bayonets, four scabbards, three muskets, ten swords, four pole axes and one powder horn.

Two weeks later they were involved in a second cutting-out expedition, this time with similar heroism but with more productive results. The Bellerophon had joined a squadron under the command of Captain T Byam Martin of the Implacable. On 17 July they were sailing off Percola Point in the Gulf of Narva when they sighted a Russian convoy of twelve vessels under the protection of eight gunboats anchored in a strong, defensive position in a small bay. The Russians had evidently been expecting them because they had mounted guns on the rocky cliffs on either side of the bay. In his report on the action Captain Martin wrote, 'The position taken by the Russian flotilla under Percola Point seemed so much like defiance, that I considered something was necessary to be done, in order to impress these people with that sense of respect and fear which His Majesty's other enemies are accustomed to show to the British flag.'

Martin decided to launch a night attack in boats. A force of 270 men under the command of Lieutenant Hawkey of the Implacable set off in the dusk at 9.30 pm. They were spotted by the waiting Russians and the quiet of the Baltic evening was shattered by a barrage of grapeshot. According to Captain Martin, the British boats 'advanced with perfect coolness and never fired a gun till actually touching the enemy, when they boarded sword in hand and carried all before them. I believe a more brilliant achievement does not grace the records of naval history; each officer was impatient to be the leader in the attack, and each man was zealous to emulate their noble example.'

Lieutenant Hawkey was killed as they stormed the gunboats and Lieutenant Charles Allen of the Bellerophon took over command. The crews of the gunboats put up a fierce resistance and in the hand-to-hand fighting the British sustained heavy losses with 17 men killed and 37 wounded. One gunboat was sunk, one escaped but the rest were taken, together with the merchant vessels which proved to be carrying ammunition for the Russian army. At daylight the next day the men waiting on the anchored Bellerophon watched the British boats rowing back from the bay, 'having carried six of the enemy's gunboats and taken possession of all the shipping in the Road, viz. one ship, one brig, four galliots with cargoes, and four coasting luggers.' They also had more than a hundred Russian prisoners who were later repatriated at Port Baltic under a flag of truce. Lieutenant Allen was rewarded for his conduct by being promoted to the rank of commander.

The Bellerophon continued to cruise the Baltic for the next three months. She was off the Aland Islands at the beginning of October, spent a week at anchor in the Swedish harbour of Karlscrona and then on 7 November she set sail with a convoy of 135 merchantmen, accompanied by the warships Saturn, Erebus and Piercer. Off Anholt Island they dropped anchor, put ashore a party of marines to join the British contingent on the island and then moored in Hawke Roads where they found the Victory and several other ships of the line. By 16 November, when they set sail for England, the convoy had grown to fifty vessels. They sighted the spire of Lowestoft Church five days later and on 21 November 1809, with the sun shining and a fresh breeze behind them, they stood in for Yarmouth Roads. That winter the Bellerophon lay anchored with the fleet at the Nore and did not return to the coast of Holland until the spring of 1810.

Meanwhile events were gathering pace on the continent. Napoleon continued to enlarge his empire and to bring more and more of Europe under his direct or indirect control. In June 1808 he installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain; in May 1809 he annexed the Papal States; and the following year he annexed Holland, then Westphalia and then North-West Germany. But now there was another general in the field who was to prove a more tenacious and formidable enemy than any of those he had brushed aside in the past. Wellington had not enjoyed the meteoric success of Napoleon. The two men were exactly the same age and had experienced a not dissimilar upbringing but, while Napoleon was winning his astonishing battles as a general commanding the Army of Italy, Wellington was an obscure colonel on his way to command an infantry regiment in India. When Napoleon was proclaimed First Consul in 1802 and became supreme ruler of France, Wellington was still fighting in India and had just been promoted to major-general. However Wellington had learnt his trade thoroughly and in the following year he completed a remarkably successful nine years in India with impressive victories at Assaye and Argaum. He received a knighthood and returned to England in 1805. As commanders, Wellington and Napoleon had much in common. They understood the importance of maps and topography and how to make best use of the terrain, they paid close attention to detail, and they made all the major decisions themselves. Above all, they both had a ruthless streak and a single-minded determination to win on the battlefield.

In April 1809 Wellington landed at Lisbon with a new British army to replace the troops who had been forced out of the country during the retreat under Sir John Moore at Corunna. Wellington defeated a French army under Marshal Soult at Oporto in May and within weeks he had entered Spain. In July he gained a spectacular victory over an army commanded by Marshal Jourdan and Joseph Bonaparte at Talavera. During the next four years he besieged and captured strongly fortified cities, defeated French armies in the field and steadily drove them out of Spain. His progress was an ominous warning which Napoleon ignored because he had more pressing concerns.

Tsar Alexander of Russia had proved a great disappointment to Napoleon, and when the Tsar failed to enforce the Continental System against Britain Bonaparte decided to take drastic action. In June 1812 he marched his Grand Army of 700,000 men across the River Niémen and invaded Russia. He defeated a Russian army at Borodino and on 14 September he entered Moscow. He found an empty, burning city. He remained there a week before withdrawing his army. But his disastrous retreat through the snow and ice of the Russian winter, under harrying attacks from Cossack horsemen, left 400,000 of his men dead or wounded and 100,000 Frenchmen taken prisoner. He was no longer invincible, and one by one the countries of Europe turned against him. The Bellerophon returned to blockade duty off the coast of Holland in 1810 and spent all that year and the next two years cruising back and forth along the low, windswept coast from the Hook of Holland to Texel Island. Entry after entry in the ship's log-book is a variation on the same theme:

16 March 1811, Camperdown SE 3 or 4 leagues. Moderate and cloudy weather. 7 Wore ship. Men employed scrubbing hammocks. 9 Tacked. Observed in the Texel 2 sail of the line 1 sloop 3 brigs and 7 schooners. Shifted the courses. At 11 tacked ship. PM. Light airs and fine weather, Theseus, Defiance and Pilchard in company. Sounded in 15 fathoms . . .

The only breaks in the monotonous watch on the Dutch coast were the occasional forays back to the Downs or Yarmouth Roads to load up with water and provisions and to carry out running repairs. And then in the spring of 1813 the Bellerophon received orders to sail to Newfoundland. She was to accompany a convoy of British merchant ships across the Atlantic and she was to convey Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Keats to St John's Harbour so that he could take up his appointment as Governor of Newfoundland. On 11 February 1813 Captain Edward Hawker took over command of the ship and was responsible for the preparations for the forthcoming voyage. On the afternoon of 22 April Sir Richard Keats was rowed out to the ship and came on board. They weighed anchor at 4 pm and headed down the Channel under easy sail accompanied by three other warships. Their convoy initially consisted of seventy-two merchantmen but by the time they reached the Lizard and were heading towards the Fastnet Rock the numbers of ships in the convoy had grown to 166. The chief danger now was not French privateers, most of whom had been captured or were blockaded in port. The new threat was from American warships and privateers. On 18 June 1812 America had declared war on Britain and her commerce raiders were proving extremely successful.

The War of 1812 between Britain and America was a relatively short, but bitterly fought struggle which did little credit to either side. For Britain it was always a sideshow compared to her life and death struggle with Napoleonic France, but it involved more than 10,000 British troops at a time when she could ill afford to have them on the other side of the Atlantic, and it resulted in some humiliating encounters between British frigates and a new generation of remarkably powerful American frigates. The popular view in America was that the war was fought for 'Free Trade and Sailors' Rights'. Congress had declared war on the basis of four grievances: the frequent raids made by British press gangs on American ports to press American seamen into the Royal Navy; the repeated violations of American territorial waters by British warships; the blockading of enemy coasts by Britain; and the British Orders in Council against neutral trade. These were the declared reasons for the war but many Americans also hoped that the war would provide them with an opportunity to conquer Canada, put an end to the Indian attacks on their western frontier, and open up more forest land for settlement by their land-hungry pioneers.

When the Bellerophon set sail across the Atlantic in the spring of 1813 she was once again sailing into hostile waters but this time she played no more than a peripheral role in the conflict. The outward voyage with a convoy of merchant men was slow but uneventful until they were nearing Newfoundland when they ran into thick fog. For nearly a week they groped their way through the damp, blinding mist, firing guns at half-hourly intervals to keep in touch. On 22 May strong gales swept the fog away as they approached Cape Ray but a few days later they faced another danger. No fewer than nineteen icebergs were sighted ahead of them. They had to alter course to avoid them and then they ran into fog again. It was an extremely hazardous situation but fortunately the fog cleared and they sighted land. Cautiously they worked their way northwards and on the morning of 31 May they sighted the entrance of St John's Harbour. The wind dropped and they had to warp the ship up the harbour. The next day Sir Richard Keats went ashore, accompanied by the captains of all the ships in the escorting squadron. As he left the ship, the crew manned the yards and fired a 17-gun salute in recognition of his status as Governor of the island.

On the same day that the guns of the Bellerophon were reverberating across St John's Harbour, the guns of another British warship were in action some 800 miles to the south. In the seas off Boston the 38-gun frigate Shannon, commanded by Captain Philip Broke, was locked in a fierce and bloody battle with the American frigate Chesapeake. The Shannon had been built at Frindsbury in the very same shipyard as the Bellerophon. She had been launched in 1806 (twenty years after the Bellerophon] and was one of a series of large frigates built around this time which were based on the lines of a captured French ship.7 The Chesapeake, also of 38 guns, had an unlucky history and had been involved in an action which had nearly caused war between Britain and America back in 1807. She was now under the command of Captain James Lawrence. The murderous duel which followed that afternoon resulted in the death of 34 British seamen, 69 American seamen and more than a hundred wounded in both ships. Lawrence was fatally shot by a British marine and his last words as he was carried below were 'Don't give up the ship.' Broke himself was badly injured in the battle but in the end won the day.

Having spent little more than a week in St John's Harbour, the Bellerophon set sail again, this time to escort a convoy of merchant ships which was heading south towards Bermuda. On the return journey she intercepted and boarded several American ships and captured an American privateer. She arrived back at St John's with her prize on 8 July. The rest of the year was spent patrolling the seas off Cape Race. She frequently encountered the sea fog which has always plagued this region and her crew must have been relieved to receive orders to return to Britain. They set sail with a convoy of thirty-three ships on 22 November and dropped anchor in Torbay just under a month later on 18 December. That winter and the following spring were spent at anchor in Spithead.

The next year, 1814, was an almost exact repeat of the previous year. The Bellerophon left Spithead with a convoy on 26 April, arrived in St John's on 4 June, patrolled the seas off Cape Race for six months and returned to Spithead at the end of December. She was still under the command of Captain Hawker but in March 1815 she sailed for the Nore and there, on 9 April, Captain Hawker left the ship and was superseded by Captain Frederick Maitland. The most famous chapter in the life of the veteran ship was about to begin.