The British force was under the command of Robert Pilch, the first lieutenant of the Bellerophon, and he acted with a reckless bravery not unlike that shown by Nelson at Tenerife. He ordered the luggers to be set on fire, got his men back in the boats and led a spirited attack on the nearest Russian battery which was manned by more than a hundred soldiers. The ship's marines were armed with muskets and bayonets, the sailors with cutlasses and boarding axes and so furious was their attack that they drove the Russian sailors from the battery, spiked the 24-pounder guns and blew up the magazine. Now under fire from the more distant Russian batteries they scrambled back into the boats and rowed back to the two anchored warships. The Bellerophon's log records that 'at 5 the boats returned on board, with 5 wounded men, Griffith Griffith, Peter Just, John Butterfield, Thomas McCarthy & Simon McLean.' The log also noted that in the raid they had lost three bayonets, four scabbards, three muskets, ten swords, four pole axes and one powder horn.
Two weeks later they were involved in a second cutting-out expedition, this time with similar heroism but with more productive results. The Bellerophon had joined a squadron under the command of Captain T Byam Martin of the Implacable. On 17 July they were sailing off Percola Point in the Gulf of Narva when they sighted a Russian convoy of twelve vessels under the protection of eight gunboats anchored in a strong, defensive position in a small bay. The Russians had evidently been expecting them because they had mounted guns on the rocky cliffs on either side of the bay. In his report on the action Captain Martin wrote, 'The position taken by the Russian flotilla under Percola Point seemed so much like defiance, that I considered something was necessary to be done, in order to impress these people with that sense of respect and fear which His Majesty's other enemies are accustomed to show to the British flag.'
Martin decided to launch a night attack in boats. A force of 270 men under the command of Lieutenant Hawkey of the Implacable set off in the dusk at 9.30 pm. They were spotted by the waiting Russians and the quiet of the Baltic evening was shattered by a barrage of grapeshot. According to Captain Martin, the British boats 'advanced with perfect coolness and never fired a gun till actually touching the enemy, when they boarded sword in hand and carried all before them. I believe a more brilliant achievement does not grace the records of naval history; each officer was impatient to be the leader in the attack, and each man was zealous to emulate their noble example.'
Lieutenant Hawkey was killed as they stormed the gunboats and Lieutenant Charles Allen of the Bellerophon took over command. The crews of the gunboats put up a fierce resistance and in the hand-to-hand fighting the British sustained heavy losses with 17 men killed and 37 wounded. One gunboat was sunk, one escaped but the rest were taken, together with the merchant vessels which proved to be carrying ammunition for the Russian army. At daylight the next day the men waiting on the anchored Bellerophon watched the British boats rowing back from the bay, 'having carried six of the enemy's gunboats and taken possession of all the shipping in the Road, viz. one ship, one brig, four galliots with cargoes, and four coasting luggers.' They also had more than a hundred Russian prisoners who were later repatriated at Port Baltic under a flag of truce. Lieutenant Allen was rewarded for his conduct by being promoted to the rank of commander.
The Bellerophon continued to cruise the Baltic for the next three months. She was off the Aland Islands at the beginning of October, spent a week at anchor in the Swedish harbour of Karlscrona and then on 7 November she set sail with a convoy of 135 merchantmen, accompanied by the warships Saturn, Erebus and Piercer. Off Anholt Island they dropped anchor, put ashore a party of marines to join the British contingent on the island and then moored in Hawke Roads where they found the Victory and several other ships of the line. By 16 November, when they set sail for England, the convoy had grown to fifty vessels. They sighted the spire of Lowestoft Church five days later and on 21 November 1809, with the sun shining and a fresh breeze behind them, they stood in for Yarmouth Roads. That winter the Bellerophon lay anchored with the fleet at the Nore and did not return to the coast of Holland until the spring of 1810.
Meanwhile events were gathering pace on the continent. Napoleon continued to enlarge his empire and to bring more and more of Europe under his direct or indirect control. In June 1808 he installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain; in May 1809 he annexed the Papal States; and the following year he annexed Holland, then Westphalia and then North-West Germany. But now there was another general in the field who was to prove a more tenacious and formidable enemy than any of those he had brushed aside in the past. Wellington had not enjoyed the meteoric success of Napoleon. The two men were exactly the same age and had experienced a not dissimilar upbringing but, while Napoleon was winning his astonishing battles as a general commanding the Army of Italy, Wellington was an obscure colonel on his way to command an infantry regiment in India. When Napoleon was proclaimed First Consul in 1802 and became supreme ruler of France, Wellington was still fighting in India and had just been promoted to major-general. However Wellington had learnt his trade thoroughly and in the following year he completed a remarkably successful nine years in India with impressive victories at Assaye and Argaum. He received a knighthood and returned to England in 1805. As commanders, Wellington and Napoleon had much in common. They understood the importance of maps and topography and how to make best use of the terrain, they paid close attention to detail, and they made all the major decisions themselves. Above all, they both had a ruthless streak and a single-minded determination to win on the battlefield.
In April 1809 Wellington landed at Lisbon with a new British army to replace the troops who had been forced out of the country during the retreat under Sir John Moore at Corunna. Wellington defeated a French army under Marshal Soult at Oporto in May and within weeks he had entered Spain. In July he gained a spectacular victory over an army commanded by Marshal Jourdan and Joseph Bonaparte at Talavera. During the next four years he besieged and captured strongly fortified cities, defeated French armies in the field and steadily drove them out of Spain. His progress was an ominous warning which Napoleon ignored because he had more pressing concerns.
Tsar Alexander of Russia had proved a great disappointment to Napoleon, and when the Tsar failed to enforce the Continental System against Britain Bonaparte decided to take drastic action. In June 1812 he marched his Grand Army of 700,000 men across the River Niémen and invaded Russia. He defeated a Russian army at Borodino and on 14 September he entered Moscow. He found an empty, burning city. He remained there a week before withdrawing his army. But his disastrous retreat through the snow and ice of the Russian winter, under harrying attacks from Cossack horsemen, left 400,000 of his men dead or wounded and 100,000 Frenchmen taken prisoner. He was no longer invincible, and one by one the countries of Europe turned against him. The Bellerophon returned to blockade duty off the coast of Holland in 1810 and spent all that year and the next two years cruising back and forth along the low, windswept coast from the Hook of Holland to Texel Island. Entry after entry in the ship's log-book is a variation on the same theme: