Billy Ruffian

INTRODUCTION

This is the story of one ship, from her birth in a small shipyard near Rochester to her death fifty years later in a breaker's yard at Rotherhithe. The ship was called Bellerophon, after the Greek hero who tamed the winged horse Pegasus, but the sailors had some difficulty in pronouncing her name and so she became known throughout the fleet as the 'Billy Ruffian' or 'Billy Ruff'n'. She achieved lasting fame in 1815 when Napoleon surrendered to her captain a few weeks after the battle of Waterloo but she already had a long and distinguished record and had earned the title 'the bravest of the brave'.

More than any other ship of her day the Bellerophon reflected the history of her times and in particular the long conflict between Britain and France which began in 1793 and ended at Waterloo. She was in at the beginning, she was in at the end, and she played a crucial role in the years in between. She was the first ship to engage the enemy in the opening moves of the Battle of the Glorious First of June, the first fleet action of the naval war against Revolutionary France. She was with the squadron commanded by Nelson which hunted down the French fleet in the Mediterranean and destroyed it at the Battle of the Nile: in that action she was totally dismasted and suffered the highest casualties of any British ship when she engaged the huge French flagship L'Orient. At Trafalgar her captain was shot dead by a musket ball shortly before Nelson was fatally wounded. Her first lieutenant took over command, fought off four enemy ships, and went on to capture a prize and tow her into Gibraltar. In the intervening years she spent months baking in the tropical sun as part of the squadron on the Jamaica station charged with defending the West Indian colonies. She spent many more months being battered by winter storms off Ushant and in the Bay of Biscay as part of the fleet blockading the French coast. She escorted convoys across the Atlantic and kept watch on the Spanish fleet at Cadiz. She was a crucial link in the Wooden Walls of England, that extended line of British ships which finally put an end to Napoleon's ambitious plans to invade England and march on London.

The later life of the ship reflected a less glorious side of British history. For twenty years the Bellerophon was a convict hulk, first on the River Medway at Sheerness and then near the dockyard at Plymouth. Her masts were cut down, her gunports replaced with iron bars and four hundred prisoners were crammed into cages built on her lower decks. There is an alarming scene in the first chapter of Great Expectations when Pip meets an escaped convict in a church-yard beside a great marsh. The convict has an iron on his leg and has escaped from a prison ship anchored out in the estuary. Charles Dickens described it as a 'black hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah's ark, cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains . . .' Such a ship was the Bellerophon at this period in her life. The convicts ranged from murderers to minor thieves and pickpockets. Some were as young as ten. Indeed for several years the ship was exclusively reserved for young offenders below the age of fourteen. They were expected to be productive during daylight hours and according to one report they managed to produce in the course of one year no fewer than 6,000 pairs of shoes, 15,500 garments and various articles of bedding. At night the boys were locked into cells. A chaplain who was allotted to the ship to teach them scripture and improve their morals complained that 'some are destitute of the abilities to learn, and others are so depraved that they will not apply themselves.'

But the most famous episode in the life of this extraordinary ship took place in the summer of 1815. When Napoleon escaped from Elba and resumed command of the French army, the British Admiralty despatched a squadron under the command of Admiral Hotham to keep watch on the French coast. The Bellerophon was ordered to guard the approaches to the port of Rochefort. On 28 June her Scottish commander, Captain Maitland, captured a local vessel and learnt that Napoleon had been defeated by Wellington at Waterloo. Two days later he received a mysterious message from a spy. Written on thin paper and concealed in a quill, it warned that Napoleon was heading for Bordeaux with the intention of fleeing the country. This was followed by orders from Admiral Hotham which directed Maitland to use his best endeavours to prevent Napoleon from escaping to America on one of the French frigates anchored off Rochefort. Maitland spent an anxious week patrolling the approaches to the port, searching every outgoing vessel, and making plans to intercept the French frigates if they should attempt to fight their way out to sea. After listening to the conflicting advice of his followers Napoleon decided to surrender to Captain Maitland and throw himself on the mercy of the British nation, 'the greatest, the most constant and the most generous of my enemies'.

Early on the morning of 15 July Maitland wrote in his log-book, 'At 7 received on board Napoleon Bonaparte late Emperor of France and his suite.' The suite included three generals, two French counts and countesses and their four children, ten army officers, a doctor, two cooks, twenty-six servants, the imperial dinner service and silver plate, and several boatloads of luggage. They sailed back to England and anchored first at Torbay and then, a few days later, in Plymouth Sound. For two weeks the ship was the centre of intense interest while negotiations took place regarding Napoleon's future. When news spread that the most famous man in the western world was on board a warship at Plymouth the Bellerophon was besieged by small boats laden with sightseers. Admiral Keith, who commanded the Channel Fleet, told his daughter, 'I am miserable with all the idle people in England coming to see this man,' and Lieutenant Bowerbank calculated that on one day they were surrounded by ten thousand people in yachts, fishing boats and rowing boats. The crew kept the onlookers informed by holding up boards with chalked messages, 'At breakfast', 'Going to dinner', 'In the cabin with Captain Maitland', and every evening around 6 pm Napoleon appeared on deck to show himself to the spectators.

It has been possible to build up an extremely detailed picture of life on board the Bellerophon during the three weeks that Napoleon was on the ship because everyone present was aware that they were watching history in the making, and many people kept notes and journals. 'I think myself very lucky to belong to the old Bellerophon at this important time,' wrote a junior officer in a letter to his mother, providing her with a vivid pen picture of Napoleon's appearance, his clothes, what he ate and how he spent his days. Several of Napoleon's followers, notably his valet Louis-Joseph Marchand and Count Las Cases, later published their memoirs and included their observations of their time on the British warship. By far the most detailed account was that produced by Captain Maitland himself. He had been asked by friends and family to put together all his notes and when Sir Walter Scott was shown the resulting text he strongly recommended that it be published. 'The whole narrative is as fine, manly, and explicit an account as ever was given of so interesting a transaction,' he wrote, and provided his own notes and additions to what he considered a document of national interest.

A great deal of material also exists for the three battles in which the Bellerophon took part. There are the log-books of all the ships, and the letters, memoirs and journals of many of the officers who were present. For the Battle of Trafalgar in particular there is the graphic account which William Pryce Cumby, the heroic first lieutenant of the ship, wrote for his son Anthony, describing his experience of the action. For the Nile there are the scribbled, hand-written notes which were sent to Captain Darby by George Bellamy, the ship's surgeon, in which he listed the dead and wounded with details of the horrific wounds suffered during the battle. And there are the numerous paintings, prints and drawings that were made to record these famous British victories. Those of the marine artist Nicholas Pocock are of particular value because he was an experienced seaman, was an eye witness at the Battle of the Glorious First of June, and always went to immense pains to gather first-hand information from officers who had taken part in the many actions which he illustrated.

The log-books of the Bellerophon, in common with those of other British warships, are held by the Public Record Office in Kew and they provide a continuous record of the ship's movements from the day she was commissioned at Chatham in 1790 until the day that Captain Maitland hauled down her commissioning pennant at Sheerness in 1815. They are written in a brisk, seamanlike style and a form of nautical shorthand which allows no room for human emotions. They are a wonderful source for the weather: they describe the wind force and direction, the visibility, and the sea state every day. They make it possible to follow the movements of the ship from port to port: they describe the course steered, the speed, sail changes, and other ships sighted; they also describe the loading of stores, and the punishments meted out to the crew.

Although the log-books are short on human detail the existence of a crew list compiled by one of the ship's captains allows us an unusual insight into the appearance and background of the Bellerophon's crew. Every naval ship had to complete a muster roll at regular intervals but this was mainly for pay purposes and was restricted to basic details such as the name, age and rank of every member of the crew. Captain Rotheram, who took over command of the Bellerophon after Trafalgar, conducted a remarkably detailed survey of all the seamen in the crew, listing their height, the colour of their hair and eyes, the shape of their faces, the type of complexion (sallow, pale, fresh, dark, swarthy, negro), their dialect, and any special distinguishing marks such as tattoos, scars and injuries.

He recorded where each man was born, where his wife or parents lived, and whether they were married or single. He also listed their occupations before going to sea and this provides a vivid picture of the skills present in a man-of-war at any one time: the crew of the Bellerophon included barbers, basketmakers, brushmakers, black-smiths, buttonmakers, cabinet makers, carters, farmers, glaziers, grooms, hatters, millers, plumbers, poulterers, shoemakers, snuff-makers, tallow chandlers, watchmakers, weavers and wheelwrights.

Although this is primarily the story of one particular ship of the line it is also, to a lesser extent, the story of Napoleon. For fifteen years (until Wellington eventually demonstrated in the Peninsular Campaign that the French armies could be defeated) the British Navy was the only effective defence against the territorial ambitions of France and in particular Napoleon's plans to invade and conquer Britain. The movements of the Bellerophon and Britain's other warships were very often the direct result of the Admiralty's response to the threat posed by Napoleon and his armies. Although there were many reasons for Napoleon's downfall, notably his disastrous attempt to invade and conquer Russia, it is not too far-fetched to suggest that the Bellerophon played a significant role in thwarting his ambitions. As one of the ships which spent years blockading the French ports and naval bases she played her part in crippling France's trade and preventing her fleets putting to sea and supporting an invasion of Britain. At the Battle of the Nile she attacked the flagship which had taken Napoleon to Egypt. The subsequent destruction of the French fleet left Napoleon's armies stranded and he was forced to abandon his ambitious plans to conquer the East. As he later told Captain Maitland, 'If it had not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East; but wherever there is water to float a ship, we are sure to find you in our way.' Although Napoleon had decided to postpone his plans to invade Britain several weeks before the Battle of Trafalgar, the wholesale destruction of the Combined Fleet of France and Spain in that famous action, in which the Bellerophon played such a distinguished role, effectively put an end to any future plans of invasion. And finally, by blocking his path to the open sea off Rochefort in 1815, the Bellerophon prevented him from escaping to America as he had planned and ensured that he never again disrupted the peace of Europe.