David Cordingly
BILLY RUFFIAN
THE BELLEROPHON AND THE DOWNFALL OF NAPOLEON
The Biography of a Ship of the Line, 1782-1836
BLOOMSBURY
This book is dedicated
to my literary agents
Suzanne Gluck and
Gill Coleridge
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No I don't care a rap
For any Frenchy chap,
When they come they'll get the dressing they deserve;
I've the best four in the fleet,
That the French well could meet,
With the Fightin' Billy Ruff'n in reserve.
Billy Blue -
Here's to you, Billy Blue, here's to you!
As she broke the line with Howe,
So she's game to do it now,
And repeat her 'First o' June' here in these seas;
With their name for dauntless pluck,
And the Billy Ruff'n's luck,
I will fight as many Frenchmen as you please!
Billy Blue -
Here's to you, Billy Blue, here's to you!
Verses 6 and 7 of 'The Ballad of Billy Blue' which commemorated the action known as Cornwallis's Retreat. This took place off Brest on 17 June 1795. 'Billy Blue' was the sailors' nickname for Admiral William Cornwallis.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Maps
Introduction
1 Born of Oak: 1782-6
2 A Stormy Launch: 1786
3 His Majesty's Dockyard at Chatham: 1787-90
4 Preparations for War: 1790-4
5 The Glorious First of June: 1794
6 The Aftermath: 1794
7 Lord Cranstoun and Billy Blue: 1794-7
8 The Bay of Cadiz: 1797
9 In Search of Napoleon: 1797-8
10 Death at the Mouth of the Nile: 1798
11 The West Indies: 1798-1804
12 Prelude to Trafalgar: 1804-5
13 Victory or Death: 1805
14 Voices from the Lower Deck: 1805-7
15 Cruises in Northern Waters: 1807-14
16 Napoleon and the Bellerophon: 1815
17 Into Exile: 1815
18 A Hulk on the Medway: 1815-36
Epilogue
Appendix class="underline" Progress Books for H.M. Ships
Appendix 2: 'Boney was a Warrior'
Appendix 3: The sails of a square-rigged ship
Glossary
Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is based on the marvellous collection of Admiralty documents held by the Public Record Office at Kew, in particular the ships' logs, captains' letters, minutes of Navy Board meetings, progress books, court martial reports and documents relating to the dockyards. It is also heavily dependent on the books of other writers and maritime historians past and present and I would particularly like to acknowledge my debt to the works of Brian Lavery, Tom Pocock, N.A.M. Rodger, Oliver Warner and the many fine books produced and edited by Robert Gardiner.
I am most grateful to Colin White and Brian Lavery for answering numerous questions and for generously drawing my attention to material I would otherwise have overlooked. Pieter van der Merwe has, as always, proved a mine of information and was particularly helpful in the matter of the last days of the Bellerophon. I would like to thank Pascal Cariss for his ideas and input, and Nicholas Blake for checking the dates, ships, figures and nautical terminology for errors and maritime howlers but would stress that I am responsible for any errors that remain. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Derek Barnard, the author of Merrily to Frindsbury, who has shared his local knowledge and with whom I spent an enjoyable day trying to find the exact spot where the Bellerophon was built. I would also like to thank Sir Malcolm and Lady Pasley, and Alan Maitland for their hospitality and for the information which they provided about their illustrious ancestors. My thanks also to all those people who have kindly supplied me with information and answered my queries, especially Bob Todd, Stephen Humphrey, Rev. Hilary W. Jackson, Alston Kennerley, Peter Langford, John Munday, Michael Nash, Richard Noyce, Graham and Jill Robin, Norman Swales, Brian Thynne, Barbara Tomlinson, Lisa Verity, and Jenny Wraight, as well as the staff of the British Library, the British Museum Print Room, the Hydrographie Office, the London Library, the Medway Archives and Local Study Centre, the National Maritime Museum, the Newspaper Library at Colindale, the Public Record Office, the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth, and the Southwark Local History Library.
Finally I would like to thank my publishers for the support which they have given me throughout this project: in particular Bill Swainson for taking it on board and for his advice and his guiding hand from the outset, but also the valuable input of Edward Faulkner, Kelly Davis, and Lisa Birdwood. As always my family have been supportive, and my thanks especially to my son Matthew for his enthusiasm and suggestions, and my wife Shirley for her constant help and encouragement.
D.C.
Brighton, Sussex. May 2003
MAPS
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.