Billy Ruffian

THREE His Majesty's Dockyard at Chatham 1787-90

For six months after her launch the Bellerophon remained out in midstream, moored bow and stern to buoys which were anchored deep in the river bed. On calm days she lay quiet, the wintry sunshine warming her newly laid decks, but when the wind got up she tugged impatiently at her mooring lines as the wind and rain lashed her hull. She was one of a long line of moored vessels which stretched for nearly 5 miles from Rochester Bridge, around the Frindsbury peninsula, past Chatham dockyard and Upnor Castle to Gillingham. It was a formidable sight and a French spy surveying the scene from the tower of Frindsbury church would have gained a great deal of information about the strength of Britain's navy at this time. He would have counted no fewer than sixty-three warships moored out in the river. These included two massive first-rate ships of 100 guns, four second-rate ships of 90 guns, and no fewer than thirty-one third-rates, mostly 74-gun ships like the Bellerophon. There were also twenty-one frigates, three fireships, and two armed sloops. All these ships were lying in ordinary; that is to say they were lying in reserve with their upper masts or all their masts and rigging removed until such time as the Navy Board decided to put them back into commission. If the spy had visited the other naval anchorages he would have discovered that out of the total fleet of 308 ships and vessels, Britain had 215 ships lying in ordinary at this time. The 93 ships in commission were either acting as guardships to protect key anchorages or were on patrol around Britain's coasts, or were stationed in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland or the West Indies. Soon all this would change and the ships in ordinary would be hastily fitted out, armed, provisioned and made ready for action.

Meanwhile the scene on the Medway was relatively peaceful. Hay barges, merchant brigs and local fishing boats with worn and patched sails made their way up and down. There was also a regular movement of small boats to and from the warships because every ship in ordinary had a few men on board to keep the bilges pumped out, make running repairs, and ensure that the ship was not vandalised or burgled by local thieves. From the moment of her launch the Bellerophon had become a floating home and workplace for half a dozen men, and by the beginning of November she had thirteen men on her books. Some of them camped on board, living in their cramped quarters under the foredeck; some of them lived in lodgings in Chatham or Rochester and came and went each day. These men were the warrant officers and their servants or assistants. Warrant officers were intended to be permanently assigned to the ship (unlike commissioned officers who moved from ship to ship in response to orders from the Admiralty or a senior officer). In normal circumstances they would remain with her whether she was out at sea or laid up in harbour. They included Thomas Watkins the ship's carpenter, Robert Roberts the boatswain, John Hindmarsh the gunner, Aaron Graham the purser, and Michael Hogan the ship's cook. Watkins the carpenter was the highest paid, earning £52 per annum. His servant was Benjamin Watkins, and the presence of another Thomas Watkins, rated as an able seaman, and John Watkins, deputy purser, suggests that the carpenter had managed to secure positions on board for other members of his family.

For five months the Bellerophon lay out on the river. Then on 7 March 1787 she was towed downstream and floated into one of the dry docks at Chatham dockyard to have her bottom sheathed with copper. After many experiments with primitive forms of antifouling, such as whale oil and resin or a mixture of tar, pitch and sulphur, none of which were very effective, the navy had recently discovered that thin copper plates nailed onto the bottom of a ship discouraged the growth of weed and were extremely effective against the teredo worm which ate into the underwater timbers of ships in tropical waters. This was a major discovery: it meant that ships could stay at sea for longer because they did not have to keep returning to port to have their bottoms cleaned and repaired; it also lessened the pressure on the navy's dry docks which were free to undertake urgent repairs on ships damaged in action or suffering from storm damage. Equally significant was the fact that ships with copper bottoms sailed much faster that those without. So impressive were the results that in 1778 the Admiralty ordered the entire fleet to be coppered and within three years eighty-two ships of the line, and 231 smaller warships, were copper-bottomed. This gave British ships a valuable edge over those of her enemies for several years and it contributed directly to the success of several actions in the West Indies, notably Rodney's victory at the Battle of the Saints in 1782.

The Bellerophon was thirteen days in dry dock and during that time some 2,700 rectangular copper sheets were nailed over her underwater planking with copper nails. This was the first of a series of operations carried out at Chatham to prepare the ship for sea and, since the dockyard played a key role in Bellerophon's early life, it is time we had a closer look at this impressive organisation. Chatham dockyard was one of the six royal dockyards in Britain which built, repaired and serviced the ships of the Royal Navy. The others were at Deptford, Woolwich, Sheerness, Portsmouth and Plymouth. Between them these yards built all the navy's first- and second-rate ships, and until the 1750s they also built most of the third- and fourth-rate ships. But then the demands of the Seven Years War and the American War put the royal dockyards under such strain that it became increasingly necessary to contract out the building of new ships to private or merchant yards.

Until the industrial revolution got into its stride, and the factories of the cotton, wool and steel industries were established in the Midlands, the royal dockyards were the biggest and most complex industrial centres in the country. Chatham dockyard covered an area of nearly 70 acres and employed around 1,700 people. It was surrounded by a high brick wall and entered by a formidable gate-house surmounted by a finely carved and gilded royal coat of arms. The wall was a precaution against sabotage and theft but could not prevent the flagrant thieving by dockyard employees. The local newspaper regularly reported such thefts, and in the week that the Bellerophon was launched two men from the yard were publicly whipped in Chatham marketplace for having 'attempted to embezzle his Majesty's stores, and carry them off in a boat'.

Viewed from the wooded hills which rose up behind the dockyard, the whole place had a remarkably orderly appearance. The predominantly redbrick buildings were set out in long lines separated by open spaces like parade grounds on which lay stacks of timber arranged in neat piles. The storehouses, the smithery, the rigging house, the mould loft, the mast house, the ropery, and even the timber seasoning sheds and carpenters' workshops combined Georgian proportions with a strictly functional and workmanlike appearance. The long terrace of officers' houses was as elegantly designed as any terrace in Bloomsbury or Bath. Along the waterfront were four dry docks, and three slips with ships in various stages of construction.

The small army of men and boys who worked within the dockyard walls from 6 in the morning till 6 in the evening included an astonishing variety of trades. There were shipwrights, caulkers, sawyers, sailmakers, riggers, ropemakers, blacksmiths, blockmakers, quarter boys, oakum boys, wheelwrights, house carpenters, masons, joiners, locksmiths, bricklayers and plumbers, as well as clerks, gatekeepers and several hundred unskilled labourers. The man in overall charge of this workforce was Charles Proby, the dockyard Commissioner. If anyone is to be regarded as the godfather of the Bellerophon it must surely be Commissioner Proby. Although the autumn gales had caused him to miss her launch, he should have officiated on that occasion, and he was nominally responsible for her when she came into the world. It was Proby and his officers who had recommended to the Navy Board that Edward Greaves should build her at Frindsbury. Throughout the building of the ship, an overseer from Chatham dockyard made regular inspections to ensure that materials and workmanship were up to standard. And it was Proby who was ultimately responsible for the men who fitted out the ship after her launch.

Like most dockyard commissioners, Charles Proby was a former naval captain. When the Bellerophon was launched in 1786 he had been the Commissioner at Chatham for fifteen years. Now aged sixty-one, and recently widowed, he divided his time between running the dock-yard and worrying about his six children, particularly his four teenage daughters. His duties as Commissioner were not unduly demanding. The day-to-day running of the dockyard was in the hands of his senior officers. The most important of these was Nicholas Phillips, the capable and experienced Master Shipwright who was in charge of shipbuilding and ship repairs. The finance and much of the administration of the dockyard was handled by the Clerk of the Cheque, the Clerk of the Survey and the Storekeeper. In addition there was the Master Attendant who was responsible for all the ships laid up in ordinary as well as for navigation, moorings and pilotage on the river. Proby headed up this team and reported to the Navy Board in London, sometimes attending the board's meetings but mostly keeping in touch by correspondence. For this he was paid an annual salary of £500 (plus £12 for paper and firewood). This was modest compared with the £1,866 earned by a full admiral but was considerably more than the £364 earned by the captain of a first-rate or the £200 per annum earned by the master shipwright and other senior officers in the dockyard. It was a fortune compared with the £80 earned by the yard's boatswain or the £12.7s. which was the annual pay of an ordinary seaman.

Apart from having the use of the Chatham yacht and a longboat with a crew of oarsmen to take him up and down the river, the biggest perk of the job was undoubtedly the house. This was a handsome Queen Anne building with an impressive staircase and entrance hall dominated by a spectacular painted ceiling. From the front of the house the grey waters of the Medway could be glimpsed between the towering hulls of ships under construction. The back of the house looked out onto a charming walled garden with terraces, a kitchen garden and an orchard. It was an ideal house in which to bring up a large family. Proby had married Sarah Pownoll in 1758 when she was a pretty seventeen-year-old and he was a 33-year-old captain. During the space of ten years Sarah and Charles Proby had seven children. When Sarah died after a short illness in 1785 Commissioner Proby was devastated. He asked the Admiralty to grant him six weeks leave of absence because 'The recent loss I have sustained by the death of Mrs Proby has had such an effect upon my mind, as to make it impractical for me to give the necessary attention to the public business at this port.'

Proby's four daughters were aged between nine and sixteen when their mother died. Unlike the boys, who were sent away to boarding school, the girls were educated by private tutors but Proby does not seem to have stinted on this and was determined they should have the best teachers available. He was, however, extremely strict about their attending dances. Their visits to the assembly rooms in Rochester were limited to three visits before Christmas and two after. 'The going more frequently and all times during the season would have been, in my opinion, not only totally unnecessary but also calculated to have introduced them into the mania of Dissipation, so destructive of all Domestic Cares and Duties, Virtue in all its species.'

While Commissioner Proby worried about his daughters' upbringing, events were taking place across the English Channel which would shake the foundations of social order in Europe. The French Revolution began with a few local riots but gathered pace with alarming speed. The winter of 1788-9 had been unusually hard: the Seine and many other French rivers had frozen, trade had been disrupted, and cattle and sheep had died in large numbers. The price of bread and meat rose sharply and led to violent protests in a number of towns and villages. The sharp difference between the wealth of the aristocracy and the abject poverty of the working classes fuelled the mood of unrest. But it was the imposition of new taxes which started the chain reaction leading to the summer of revolution. The French intervention in the American Revolutionary war had been successful in political terms but extremely costly in financial terms and it became necessary to impose additional taxes to replenish the depleted French Treasury. In May 1789 the Estates General was summoned for the first time for 150 years in order to obtain nationwide support for the taxes. The bourgeois Third Estate used the opportunity to establish a National Assembly that was more representative of the people. This move towards a more democratic government seemed admirable to many observers in Britain until violence on an unprecedented scale broke out in Paris.

On the morning of Monday 14 July 1789 the soldiers encamped on the Champ de Mars were persuaded to join a large group of Parisians who were intent on protest. Together they marched on the Hôtel des Invalides, seized the guns and ammunition and then stormed the Bastille and released all the political prisoners. The governor of the Bastille and the commandant of the garrison were led through the streets to the place of public executions where they were beheaded. Their heads were stuck on tent-poles and paraded in triumph to the Palais Royal. The mob then attacked the Hôtel de Ville, stabbed and beheaded the mayor of Paris, and hanged the lieutenant of police from a lamp post. During the next few days the revolution spread across the city and into the countryside. Several prominent noblemen were imprisoned and their houses looted. Government grain stores were plundered, and the roads became unsafe because travellers were attacked by thieves and deserters who had been freed from the public prisons.

English observers were divided in their opinions on the gathering revolution. Charles James Fox, a former Foreign Secretary, and an outspoken champion of liberal causes, considered the storming of the Bastille to be the greatest and best event in the history of the world. Edmund Burke, a politician noted for his oratory and his uncompromising views, warned of the terrible consequences. Speaking in the House of Commons, he said that the French people 'had erected a bloody democracy in the room of order, tranquillity and peace', and in 1790 he published his Reflections on the French Revolution, an eloquent treatise in which he argued that the events in Paris would lead to war, tyranny and the destruction of human rights. For many months his was a minority opinion. The immediate reaction of many British people was actually one of relief because they believed that the turmoil in France must reduce the ever-present threat which France posed to Britain. In 1790 France had a population of more than 25 million and the largest army in Christendom, while Britain had a population of barely 8 million and a relatively small army. Only the English Channel separated the two old enemies and on a fine day the cliffs of Dover were clearly visible from Calais.

The navy was Britain's only effective defence against invasion and this largely determined British naval strategy in the eighteenth century. It was to guard against invasion that the bulk of Britain's fleet was kept in home waters, and the Channel Squadron was established to patrol the western approaches of the English Channel. Neither France nor Spain had a naval base in the Channel. The principal French naval ports were at Brest, Rochefort and Toulon, and the Spanish fleet was divided between the bases at Cadiz, Ferrol and Cartagena. So even if an invasion force was assembled in the Netherlands, or in one of the French ports in Normandy, the fleet of warships to protect the crossing must sail up the Channel from the west, just as the Spanish Armada had done in 1588. Since most of Britain's trade also came up the Channel, the patrolling warships of the Channel Squadron could also protect the incoming and outgoing convoys of merchant ships.

In peacetime most of the fleet was kept in reserve in anchorages at Plymouth, Portsmouth and the Medway, ready to be mobilised if the need should arise. In 1790 a minor incident on the other side of the world led to just such a mobilisation. This meant that when the French Revolution spawned the war which Edmund Burke had foretold, Britain was in an unusual state of readiness. The minor incident was the Nootka Sound crisis. It scarcely appears in the history books but it was directly responsible for the Bellerophon being fitted out and sent to sea. In 1788 the British East India Company had established a trading post in Nootka Sound, a sheltered anchorage on the western coast of Vancouver Island. Captain Cook had charted this stretch of the Canadian coast ten years years before during the third of his great voyages of exploration and had repaired his ships in Nootka Sound, making use of the pine trees along the shore for much-needed masts and spars. When Spain got news of the British trading settlement she invoked the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas under which the Spanish Crown laid claim to the entire Pacific coast of the American continent. She backed this up by sending two warships from Mexico. They seized the crews of the three British merchant ships anchored in the Sound and sent the men to Mexico as prisoners in irons.

News of this reached England on 4 May 1790 and caused outrage. Members of Parliament were united in their condemnation of an act which was considered an attack on Britain's commercial rights and an insult to the British flag. The Admiralty moved with astonishing speed to mobilise the navy. Press warrants were issued and within two days press gangs were at work around the coast. On 6 May every merchant ship on the Thames from London to Gravesend was stripped of her crew, an operation which secured some 2,000 experienced seamen in the space of four hours. There was also what was described as 'a very hot press' in Portsmouth, Gosport, Southampton and the other south coast ports which rounded up several hundred more seamen. The Navy Board ordered the dock-yards to put ships back in commission and to work overtime to achieve this. A powerful naval squadron under the command of Admiral Lord Howe was ordered to assemble at Spithead with the aim of enforcing the right of free trade in the Pacific Northwest.

On 11 May a messenger arrived at Chatham with orders for Commissioner Proby to fit for sea the 98-gun London, and the 74- gun ships Vengeance, Marlborough and Monarch. To this end he was instructed to employ the workers in the dockyard 'all the extra they can perform by daylight, morning and evening'. In the weeks that followed, further orders were received in Chatham. As the shipwrights and riggers went about their work, the ships moored in the Medway were transformed from empty hulks to fully rigged and armed warships. By the middle of June the harbours at Portsmouth and Plymouth, and the anchorages in the Downs and the Nore, were filling up with ships of the line and frigates under sailing orders.

The Bellerophon had to wait her turn. The weeks went by and other ships had their masts stepped, their rigging set up and their guns lifted aboard, before departing to join the fleet assembling downstream at the Nore. Then on Monday 19 July the first of the fourteen men who would command the Bellerophon during the course of her life was rowed out to the ship. His name was Thomas Pasley and he was aged fifty-two (considerably older than any of the other captains who would succeed him). For the past three years he had been commander-in-chief of the ships in the Medway with the title of commodore. And, until his appointment to the Bellerophon, he had been in command of the 60-gun Scipio, the guardship on the Medway.

Thomas Pasley was a Scotsman and a veteran seaman who had served on ships in the West Indies, on the Guinea coast of Africa, and on the Newfoundland station. He had been present at several minor engagements during the Seven Years War but had yet to take part in a major fleet action. In 1774 he had married Mary Heywood, daughter of the Chief Justice of the Isle of Man. He later described her as 'my beloved Mary, my wife, friend, and companion'. They had two daughters to whom he was devoted. For several years he kept a personal journal recording his daily experiences as a captain in command of frigates, and his writings reveal a man of intelligence and sensibility. He was strict but fair with his crew, and seems to have inspired their loyalty and trust. Contemporary observations on his character stress his warmth and his 'unbounded benevolence' and this is borne out in the portrait by Sir William Beechey which shows a man with a strong but kindly face.

When he stepped onto the newly laid planks of the Bellerophon's deck he noted that the ship was far from ready for sea. Shipwrights and carpenters from Chatham dockyard were still working below deck. The masts were in place but a gang of riggers was at work, some of them high up the masts and others on deck, heaving the hemp rope into place and constructing the elaborate network of standing rigging which would take the strain of the wind in the sails when the ship left her anchorage.

After inspecting the ship from stem to stern, the captain made his way to the great cabin. Like everywhere else on the ship it had a low ceiling but the generously proportioned stern windows filled the room with sunlight, and additional light was reflected off the shimmering surface of the river onto the fresh white paint of the ceiling. The captain seated himself at the mahogany table which had been brought over from the Scipio and opened the neatly ruled pages of the ship's log-book. As was customary he made a note of the weather, which was moderate and clear with a wind from the west, and he also noted that Mr Malcolm, the third lieutenant, had come on board. He then settled down to write a series of letters to Philip Stephens, Secretary to the Admiralty, asking him to persuade their lordships to transfer various key members of his former ship to the Bellerophon. The letters were short and to the point:

Sir,

Understanding that the proper carpenter of His Majesty's ship Bellerophon under my command is appointed carpenter of the Canada; I beg you will be pleased to move their Lordships to appoint Mr Brooks the present carpenter of the Scipio to the Bellerophon in his place.

I have the honour to be your obedient servant, Thomas Pasley.

Two weeks later the riggers and shipwrights had finished their work, seven massive anchor cables had been hoisted aboard, the boatswain's and carpenter's stores had been stowed in their proper places, and the lower deck guns and gun carriages had been lifted from a barge alongside, brought on board through the gun ports and made fast. Meanwhile provisions were coming on board in ever-increasing quantities. On one day William Lloyd, the ship's master, recorded the delivery of ten bags of bread, ten hogsheads of beer, one barrel of salted beef and one of pork, 134 pounds of fresh beef, one hogshead of peas and another of oatmeal, one firkin of butter, one barrel of cheese and twenty-seven barrels of water.

By mid-August four of the ship's five lieutenants had reported for duty. The carpenter, the boatswain and twenty seamen from the Scipio had joined the crew, as well as seven boys from the Marine Society. But the captain needed at least fifty more men before he could take the ship to sea, and many more than that before he could take her into action. The official complement of the Bellerophon was 550 which meant that Captain Pasley had to spend much of his time trying to persuade the Admiralty to give him sailors from other ships in the Medway. He managed to get hold of sixty-seven men from HMS. Sandwich and then he resorted to the press gang.

Press gangs have acquired a notorious reputation and have become as closely identified with the darker side of the eighteenth-century navy as flogging, sodomy and hangings from the yard-arm. Unlike hangings which were rare, and sodomy which was no more common in the navy than it was among the civilian population, the press gangs which forcibly recruited men to serve on warships were only too active around the coasts of Britain, particularly during the war against Revolutionary France. The system had been in operation since Tudor times and took several different forms. The first was a land-based operation which was run by the Impress Service. By 1795 the service had eighty-five gangs which were based in seaports around the coasts of Britain. There were thirty-two regulating captains, each in charge of a district; and under them they had lieutenants who led the gangs as they searched the ports and surrounding areas for suitable recruits. Popular ballads and prints highlighted the fate of young men from farms and country villages who were dragged away from their wives and sweethearts by the press gangs but, although such incidents did occur, the primary aim of the Impress Service was to find experienced seamen. In each district a rendezvous was established (usually a tavern frequented by sailors) where volunteers could be enlisted and where pressed men were confined until they could be despatched under armed guard to the fleet. In London there was a rendezvous on Tower Hill and another at St Katharine's by the Tower, both of them conveniently placed for recruiting seamen from the hundreds of ships in the Pool of London.

The second method of recruiting was to intercept incoming merchant ships. Sometimes this was carried out by a warship coming alongside a merchant ship as she approached a port. On other occasions a naval party would be sent out by a captain in one of the ship's boats. Sometimes the navy hired tenders for the purpose: these were usually brigs or sloops manned by a naval officer and a crew of armed seamen. The legal basis of a system which was universally hated and involved the kidnapping and forcible abduction of hundreds of merchant seamen and fishermen had occasionally been challenged in the courts. The conclusion of the judges was that 'the power of pressing is founded on immemorial usage, allowed for ages,' and that 'His Majesty . . . has a right to demand the service of these people whenever the public safety calls for it.' So in times of war every captain was issued with press warrants. These were printed forms, signed by the Lords of the Admiralty, which began: 'We do hereby Impower and Direct you to impress or cause to be impressed so many Seamen, Seafaring Men and Persons whose Occupations and Callings are to work in Vessels and Boats upon Rivers, as shall be necessary either to Man His Majesty's Ship under your Command or any other of His Majesty's Ships, giving unto each Man so impressed One Shilling for Prest Money.'

Few naval officers were in favour of impressment and it was generally reckoned that one volunteer was worth three men who had been pressed into the navy. Nevertheless most captains had to resort to the press gangs to make up the necessary numbers and the system undoubtedly produced results. Captain Pasley managed to get hold of fifty-two men from the rendezvous at Tower Hill. Two dozen merchant seamen were impressed from West Indiamen in the Thames Estuary, and a party of seamen sent ashore at Sheerness rounded up another dozen unwilling recruits. By the middle of August the Bellerophon was ready to sail.

High tide on 16 August was early in the morning. As the tide began to turn, Captain Pasley gave the order to get under way. A slip-rope which led from the ship to the ring of the mooring buoy was let go and the foretopmen, perched perilously high up on the yards of the foremast, let loose the topsail. The fresh easterly breeze filled the sail and the Bellerophon slowly began to gather way. The bellowed orders of the ship's officers carried across the water to the dockyard but her departure was scarcely noticed among the constant activity out on the river. The comings and goings of warships were as familiar a sight to the workers in the dockyard then as the comings and goings of buses would be nowadays to workers on a building site in central London. However, Commissioner Proby was informed of the ship's departure and later that day he sent a letter to the Admiralty informing their lordships that His Majesty's ship Bellerophon had this day sailed to join the fleet at the Nore.