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.