The gales which swept the anchorage during the winter of 1794-5 did not help matters. In February five men were flogged for various offences including gambling, drunkenness, and insolence to an officer, but this was nothing unusual. It was when the ship returned to Spithead after a cruise to Cape Finisterre that the rot set in. For three long months the Bellerophon lay at anchor in the Solent, off Portsmouth, and during that time there were floggings every three or four days. On 6 April four men were flogged with twelve lashes each for assisting a man to desert the ship; on 11 April two men were each given one dozen lashes for neglect of duty; on 14 April three men were punished with twenty-four lashes each for drunkenness and fighting and one man with twenty-one lashes for neglect of duty; on 17 April Tim O'Brian was given thirty-six lashes for theft; and on 22 April one man was given twelve lashes for leaving his post and another man twelve lashes for theft.
It is hard to tell from the brief entries in the ship's log exactly what caused the unrest. Many of the crew were pressed men who had good cause to resent being confined in a warship for months on end. Even the volunteers must have felt they deserved some shore leave after their heroic efforts in the previous summer's battles. According to the surviving letters of Lord Cranstoun the focus of the unrest was a group of marines. On 16 April they wrote a letter to General Wemyss who was in overall command of the marines at Portsmouth:
Since the departure of the late Admiral Pasley and Capt Hope from this ship our situation has been and now is very different. In their time we were looked upon and received such usage as we flatter ourselves we deserved, but since whose departure their case is quite altered but for what reason we cannot conceive as we always endeavoured to perform the duty imposed upon us to the best of our power.
The men requested to be removed from the ship and said, 'we are very willing to go on board any other of His Majestys ships'.
This was a serious challenge to the authority of Lord Cranstoun who immediately wrote to the Admiralty requesting that the marines should face a court martial to determine the truth or otherwise of their complaints. He maintained that the discipline on board the Bellerophon was milder than almost any other ship in the service, and went on to say, 'Had I known the situation of the Bellerophon latterly, I never would have accepted the command of her.' He blamed Sir Thomas Pasley for commanding a ship which was more like a privateer than a man of war and for allowing the ship's company to be drunk, quarrelsome 'and to do just as they pleased'.
Before a court martial could be arranged the Bellerophon was ordered to sea. On 26 May 1795 she weighed anchor and the men put aside their grievances for the time being and got on with the business of running the ship. They joined a squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral William Cornwallis, a battle-hardened officer who had acquired the nickname 'Billy Blue'. He was the younger brother of General Cornwallis who had surrendered to Washington at Yorktown. He had fought the French on numerous occasions, most notably at the Battle of the Saints, but his nerves were shortly to be tested to the limit in an action which became known as Cornwallis's Retreat. This was a retreat in the face of a vastly superior force which, like the retreat of Sir John Moore's troops at Corunna in 1809, or the retreat of the British army at Dunkirk in 1940, acquired a lustre similar to that of a victory. And, just as the retreat and death of Sir John Moore were immortalised in a poem ('Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, as his corpse to the ramparts we hurried . . .'), so the action of Cornwallis and his squadron inspired a lengthy and patriotic ballad which joined the repertoire of songs and shanties sung by sailors over the years. The first two verses set the scene:
It was just at break of day,
We were cruising in the Bay,
With Blue Billy in the Sov'ren in the van,
When the French fleet bound for Brest
From Belle isle came heading west—
'Twas so, my lads, the saucy game began.
Billy Blue—
Here's to you, Billy Blue, here's to you.
We'd the Triumph and the Mars,
And the Sov'ren - pride of tars,
Billy Ruff'n, and the Brunswick, known to fame;
With the Pallas, and the Phaeton,
Frigates that the flag did wait on—
Seven ships to uphold Old England's name.
Billy Blue, etc.
The bay mentioned in the ballad was the Bay of Biscay and the squadron consisted of the Royal Sovereign of 100 guns which was the flagship of Cornwallis; the 74-gun ships Triumph, Mars, Bellerophon and Brunswick, and the two frigates, Phaeton, 38 guns, and Pallas, 32 guns. They arrived off Ushant on 7 June and the following day they intercepted a French convoy some 5 miles east of Belle Isle. They chased off the escorting French warships and captured eight of the merchant ships. So far, so good. But a week later they were cruising in the same area when they encountered a more formidable force. This was the entire Brest fleet under the command of Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, the man who had put up such a fierce resistance to Howe's fleet at the Glorious First of June.
The first person to sight the French sails was the masthead lookout on the Bellerophon. At 9 o'clock on the morning of 16 June he reported a strange fleet east-south-east of their position. The Phaeton, under the command of Captain Stopford, was sent to investigate and at 9.25 she made the signal that the fleet was 'an enemy and superior force'. Cornwallis could not yet see the hulls of the enemy, so he did not know just how superior the enemy was in terms of ships and guns. He subsequently noted, 'I stood upon the starboard tack, with all our sail, keeping the ships collected. Upon enquiring by signal of the enemy's force, Captain Stopford answered, 13 line of battle ships, 14 frigates, 2 brigs, and a cutter; in all 30 sail.' This represented a force roughly four times the size of the British squadron and there was clearly only one course of action possible, which was an orderly retreat. The wind dropped during the afternoon but not enough to hamper the French fleet which slowly gained on Cornwallis's ships, and divided into two divisions in order to attack them from both sides. Despite their reputation for being fast ships, the Bellerophon and the Brunswick began to lag behind the others, putting the entire squadron at risk. Cornwallis had no intention of abandoning them; he therefore slowed down the leading ships in order to maintain a tight formation.