Hon.d Sirs
I return you thanks for the offer you are pleas'd to make of a 74 Gun Ship to Build near Rochester & am willing to undertake to Build Her on the same Terms as the River Thames for Ships of a similar contract as that you mean to favour me with. Also a 32 Gun Frigate to Launch in two Years if it meets your approbation. I remains Sirs
Your much obliged & Obedient honble Servant
Edwd Greaves
Jan. 18. 1782
PS. Please to favour me with the Payments on the 36 Gun Frigate I have taken the same manner as 44 Gun Ships.
A month later, on 19 February 1782, Greaves put his signature to the formal contract for the building of the ship. The original contract still exists and is an impressive document. It consists of twenty-four pages of closely printed text with measurements and particular details added in pen and ink. It covers every single aspect of the construction of the ship's hull and internal fittings from the stem to the sternpost. In addition to specifying the exact size of the keel, main frames, decks, gunports and so on, it also instructs the shipbuilder to provide removable cabins for the officers with bed places and lockers; cabins and stores for the boatswain and carpenter; fish and bread rooms, and a store for spirituous liquor. Ladders, gratings, pump cisterns, a fire hearth and hammock racks are specified, as are the decorative details at the stern of the ship. Outside the captain's great cabin at the stern, for instance, there is to be 'a handsome walk or balcony, with ballisters as shall be directed by the Officer or Overseer inspecting the said works; and the whole stern finished agreeable to ships of her class built in His Majesty's Yards.'
In April 1782 we learn from the minutes of the Surveyor's Office that the ship is to be called 'Bellerophone'. Who chose the name, and why were so many ships named after Greek and Roman gods and heroes? It is said that Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, had a copy of Lemprière's classical dictionary on his desk and simply picked a name from this. The dictionary gives a lengthy account of the story of Bellerophon, who was the handsome son of the King of Ephyre. He was wrongly accused of making love to the wife of King Argos and was sent to kill the three-headed monster Chimaera in the expectation that he would die in the attempt. However, with the help of the goddess Minerva and the winged horse Pegasus, he killed the monster, conquered the Amazons, and returned to marry the daughter of the King of Lycia. The problem with naming a ship after this particular hero was that, while naval officers educated in the Classics might have no difficulty in pronouncing Bellerophon correctly, the ordinary sailors were totally baffled by it and came up with various alternative names. 'Billy Ruffian' or 'Billy Ruff'n' seem to have been the most commonly used names, but a Rowlandson cartoon of 1810 refers to the ship as 'Belly Rough One', and Captain Marryat, who was serving in the navy while the Bellerophon was in commission, has a passage in his novel Poor Jack in which an old seaman calls the ship 'the Bellyruffron'.
On 26 April Mr Greaves wrote to the Navy Board to tell them that he had got in a large quantity of timber at Frindsbury for building the Bellerophon and the 32-gun frigate and he wanted it inspected so that he could obtain his first payments for building the two ships. The Navy Board ordered the officers at Chatham to inspect the timber and two months later Greaves was given a certificate for his first bill.
Apart from the keel, the hull of the Bellerophon was almost entirely built of oak, as were all British ships of the line at this period. Indeed oak was the preferred building material for the warships of all the maritime countries of the western world. This was because oak was hard and tough and far more resistant to rot than other woods. The presence of tannic acid contributed to its durability, although in the long term this did not prevent the ravages of the teredo worm, particularly in ships which spent time in tropical waters. Of the many varieties of oak, the tree most favoured by British shipbuilders was the English oak, or quercus robur, a species which had been established in Britain for thousands of years. It was the dominant tree in the woodlands and hedgerows of southern England and acquired a special significance through its long association with the ships of the Royal Navy. The patriotic song 'Heart of oak are our ships, Jolly tars are our men' was only one of many which linked the tree with the fortunes of the country.
Warships required vast numbers of oak trees for their contruction. It was usual to measure the quantities of wood used for shipbuilding in terms of loads'. A load consisted of 50 cubic feet of wood, roughly the equivalent of a single large tree, which was as much as could be loaded onto a cart. A 74-gun ship used between 3,000 and 3,700 loads for the building of her hull, which means that more than 3,000 oak trees were felled for the creation of the Bellerophon. Apart from the sheer quantity involved there were further considerations. Oaks for shipbuilding must be between 80 and 120 years old. Trees younger than this would not be large enough for the great pieces of timber required for the construction of a ship of the line. Older trees were subject to decay. It was also essential that the trees be within easy reach of a waterway because it was difficult, if not impossible, to transport a heavy and unwieldy tree trunk for any distance on an eighteenth-century road in the days before tarmac was introduced. In England it was reckoned that any tree more than 40 miles from water transport was of no use for the navy. In France this was such an important consideration that no one was allowed to fell an oak tree within 15 leagues of the sea or 6 leagues of any navigable river without first giving six months notice to the Council of State or the Grand Master of Forests and Waterways.
So how did Mr Greaves get the trees he needed to build the Bellerophon? Long before he secured the contract from the Navy Board, the trees would have been selected by government officials. We can imagine these men riding on horseback across the fields and along the lanes of Kent, Sussex and Hampshire, scouring the countryside for suitable oaks. They would have had the weatherbeaten faces of farmers and gardeners, and they were expert at assessing the age and condition of the trees which they inspected. They visited the great estates of noble landlords, they rode across farmland, and they searched the woods and the few remaining forests of southern England. Forest and woodland oaks tended to grow tall and straight as they reached upwards to the light and these provided the straight timbers required for sternposts and planking. But what the government men were particularly looking for were the isolated trees growing in fields and hedgerows. These were a very different shape from forest trees. They had room to spread their branches sideways and, buffeted by wind and weather, they developed the curves which yielded the valuable 'compass timber' needed for the frames or ribs of a ship, and for the knees which supported and reinforced deck beams.