Billy Ruffian

EPILOGUE

For sailors who had spent months at sea, the island of St Helena was a pleasant oasis in the vastness of the South Atlantic. The trade winds tempered the equatorial heat, and a variety of plants and trees thrived in the mild, damp climate. For Napoleon, who bitterly resented the fact that he had not been allowed to retire to a country house in England, St Helena was a prison - an open prison without walls but a prison from which all escape was impossible. Two British warships constantly circled the seas around the sheer cliffs of the island and intercepted any approaching vessels; sentries from the garrison of 2,000 British soldiers kept a constant watch on his movements; and the climate only seemed to add to the monotony of everyday life. Major Gorrequer remarked that 'it blows continually in the same direction and is always raining; the shores of the island are frightful precipices without any beach. Bonaparte calls it the Island of Desolation.'

The Northumberland, carrying Napoleon and his retinue, had dropped anchor off Jamestown on 17 October 1815 after a voyage of seventy days. For the first three months Napoleon stayed as a guest of the Balcombe family while a residence was being prepared for him. Mr Balcombe was a representative of the East India Company and had gathered his family at the entrance of his house to receive the former emperor. His fourteen-year-old daughter Betsy vividly recalled Napoleon's arrival: 'He was deathly pale, and I thought his features, though cold and immovable, and somewhat stern, were exceedingly beautiful . . . When once he began to speak, his fascinating smile and kind manner removed every vestige of the fear with which I had hitherto regarded him.' The smile, which had made such an impression on so many people in the past, was to be seen rarely when Napoleon was moved to Longwood, his permanent quarters on a windswept plateau on the upper reaches of the island. Longwood had been built sixty years earlier by the Lieutenant Governor of St Helena as a barn to store grain. It was later used as a stable until the Governor converted it into a summer residence. Additional rooms were hurriedly built to house Napoleon's followers and servants. These created more space but did not improve the overall atmosphere of the residence which was damp and gloomy. Mildew flourished on the walls and furniture and there were so many rats that the servants sometimes caught as many as twenty in one day.

Napoleon survived for five and a half years on St Helena. During the first year he established a regime which helped to pass the time. He was woken at 6 am by his valet, drank a cup of tea or coffee, and then shaved and washed in a silver basin. If the weather was favourable he would go for a ride on horseback until 10 when it was time for an early lunch. Hot soup was followed by a main course of grilled or roast meat and vegetables, followed by cheese and coffee. After lunch he spent three hours dictating his memoirs. In the afternoon he took a bath and would frequently remain in the bath for an hour and a half while reading or talking to Count Las Cases or one of his generals. At 4 o'clock he received visitors and then he might go for a drive in a carriage. Dinner in the evening was a formal affair. Madame Bertrand and Madame de Montholon joined their husbands, Las Cases, General Gourgaud and Napoleon himself for a five-course meal served by servants dressed in the imperial livery. After coffee Napoleon would read aloud to the company. He had brought a library of 1,500 books with him and the choice in the evening was usually from the works of Molière or Racine. At 11 pm he went to bed and Las Cases or Montholon would read to him until he dozed off.

As the months and years passed, Napoleon became increasingly depressed by the the sheer boredom of life at Longwood. According to Las Cases, 'He spent most of his day alone in his room, leafing through a few books or, more often than not, doing nothing ... It was easy to see that he no longer had any preoccupation with the future, did not reflect on the past nor care for the present.' It is now known that he suffered for many years from a chronic ulcer and this became malignant and developed into cancer of the stomach. His father and sister had suffered from the same condition and he himself expected to die from the same disease. By January 1821 it was evident that he was seriously ill: he was frequently vomiting, had a pain in his right side 'like jabs from a penknife' and was losing weight. His mind remained active and inquisitive but he knew the end was not far away. Tm not afraid of dying,' he told Bertrand, 'the only thing I'm afraid of is that the English will keep my body and put it in Westminster Abbey.' In fact Hudson Lowe, the Governor of St Helena, had orders that his body was not to be removed from the island.

Napoleon died as the sun was setting on 5 May 1821. He was buried with full military honours in a shady valley near Longwood at a spot which he had once admired. Twenty years later his body was taken back to France and buried beneath a magnificent tomb in Les Invalides. The state funeral in Paris was a lavish and patriotic event on a scale similar to those, in London, of his two greatest enemies, Nelson and the Duke of Wellington.

Captain Maitland also died thousands of miles from home. For the first three years after leaving the Bellerophon he lived the life of a country gentleman with his wife Catherine on the family estate in Scotland. In 1818 he was recalled to active duty and appointed to command the Vengeur, a 74-gun ship named after the French ship which had sunk at the Battle of the Glorious First of June. He sailed to South America, but within a year was back in Europe and was ordered to Naples where he received King Ferdinand on board and conveyed him to Leghorn to attend the European Congress. In 1830 he was promoted to Rear-Admiral and made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. For five years he was Admiral Superintendent of the dockyard at Portsmouth and then in 1837 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the East Indies and China station. He sailed for Bombay in the Wellesley, a 74-gun ship, and early in 1839 he provided naval support for the landing of troops at Karachi. He died on 30 November 1839 on board his flagship off Bombay. He was sixty-two. He was buried in St Thomas's Cathedral, Bombay, and a handsome monument of white marble was erected to his memory by the officers of the Indian Navy 'to mark their sense of the kind and considerate conduct uniformly shown to their corps during his command . . .'

Of the Bellerophon's other commanders, five of them reached flag rank. Her first commander, Sir Thomas Pasley, was already a Rear-Admiral when he fought at the Glorious First of June and by the time of his death in 1808 he had attained the rank of Admiral of the White. His flag captain at the battle, William Johnstone Hope, became a Rear-Admiral in 1812, was knighted in 1815, and for a while served as a Lord of the Admiralty. Captain Darby, who had commanded the Bellerophon at the Battle of the Nile, ended his career with a knighthood and the rank of Admiral of the Blue. Lord Garlies, who commanded the ship for less than eight months in 1801, went on to become a Vice-Admiral, and Edward Hawker, who made the two voyages to Newfoundland, became an Admiral. On his retirement he became a correspondent for The Times, writing under the by-line 'A Flag Officer'.

Lieutenant Cumby who had taken command of the Bellerophon at Trafalgar when his captain was killed, never rose to the exalted rank of admiral but played an active role as a naval captain during the remainder of the war against France. He spent several years in the West Indies and was then given command of the Hyperion, a 32-gun frigate. When Napoleon surrendered to Captain Maitland off La Rochelle, Cumby was keeping watch on the French coast off Lorient, less than 150 miles away. On the declaration of peace in 1815 Cumby went on half pay on the grounds of ill-health and returned to the family home in the village of Heighington, County Durham. Like so many sailors he had seen very little of his wife and children while serving at sea, and tragically his wife died a few months before peace was declared. For a while the three children were looked after by their grandparents and their nurse, but in October 1815 Cumby joined them with his black servant John Peters and his dog. With his prize money he was able to buy a farm with 116 acres to add to the family estate. He married again, became a local magistrate and played a leading part in the life of the community.

On Trafalgar Day every year he organised a festival in the village with a bonfire and entertainment for the local children. It was an opportunity for a reunion with his former shipmates. On 21 October 1829, for instance, his guests included three of the midshipmen who had served on the Bellerophon at Trafalgar - the cousins Robert and Hugh Patton (both now naval captains) and the explorer John Franklin who had just returned from an expedition to north-west Canada. Also present was Alexander Scott, the former chaplain of the Victory who had been at Nelson's side during the last hours of his life. Scott, a nervous, scholarly man who had worshipped Nelson, had been deeply affected by his death and in recalling him later he admitted, 'I become stupid with grief for what I have lost.' In 1816 Scott became vicar of Catterick which was only a few miles from Heighington and so he was a regular guest at Cumby's reunions.

Portraits and personal relics of several of the Bellerophon's captains remain in the hands of their descendants or have found their way to various museums. They include the sword, dirk and pistol of Captain John Cooke, the huge silver-gilt trophy presented to Admiral Pasley by Lloyds of London, the couch from Captain Maitland's cabin and the skull of the goat which supplied the milk for Napoleon's breakfast. These are tangible reminders of events which took place some 200 years ago, but it is the log-books which provide the truest picture of the life of the Bellerophon. Every day for the twenty-five years that the ship was on active service, the entries record her position, the days and nights of fresh breezes and cloudy weather, the sudden squalls with lightning and rain, the exercising of the guns, the floggings, the occasional drownings, the weeks spent at anchor in foreign ports, the sightings of strange ships, the signals exchanged with other British warships, and then, after months away from England, the beating up the Channel towards a home port.

As for the Bellerophon herself, only a few fragments survive. Captain Maitland bought part of her figurehead and some of her stern ornaments from the ship-breakers and deposited them in the naval collections at Portsmouth. The helmeted head can be seen today in the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth. It is all that remains of the full figure of the heroic warrior which once confronted and survived the bombardment of enemy guns in the Atlantic on that distant first of June, in the darkness of the Egyptian night off the mouth of the Nile, and in the glare of the midday sun off the shoals of Cape Trafalgar.