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.