16 March 1811, Camperdown SE 3 or 4 leagues. Moderate and cloudy weather. 7 Wore ship. Men employed scrubbing hammocks. 9 Tacked. Observed in the Texel 2 sail of the line 1 sloop 3 brigs and 7 schooners. Shifted the courses. At 11 tacked ship. PM. Light airs and fine weather, Theseus, Defiance and Pilchard in company. Sounded in 15 fathoms . . .
The only breaks in the monotonous watch on the Dutch coast were the occasional forays back to the Downs or Yarmouth Roads to load up with water and provisions and to carry out running repairs. And then in the spring of 1813 the Bellerophon received orders to sail to Newfoundland. She was to accompany a convoy of British merchant ships across the Atlantic and she was to convey Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Keats to St John's Harbour so that he could take up his appointment as Governor of Newfoundland. On 11 February 1813 Captain Edward Hawker took over command of the ship and was responsible for the preparations for the forthcoming voyage. On the afternoon of 22 April Sir Richard Keats was rowed out to the ship and came on board. They weighed anchor at 4 pm and headed down the Channel under easy sail accompanied by three other warships. Their convoy initially consisted of seventy-two merchantmen but by the time they reached the Lizard and were heading towards the Fastnet Rock the numbers of ships in the convoy had grown to 166. The chief danger now was not French privateers, most of whom had been captured or were blockaded in port. The new threat was from American warships and privateers. On 18 June 1812 America had declared war on Britain and her commerce raiders were proving extremely successful.
The War of 1812 between Britain and America was a relatively short, but bitterly fought struggle which did little credit to either side. For Britain it was always a sideshow compared to her life and death struggle with Napoleonic France, but it involved more than 10,000 British troops at a time when she could ill afford to have them on the other side of the Atlantic, and it resulted in some humiliating encounters between British frigates and a new generation of remarkably powerful American frigates. The popular view in America was that the war was fought for 'Free Trade and Sailors' Rights'. Congress had declared war on the basis of four grievances: the frequent raids made by British press gangs on American ports to press American seamen into the Royal Navy; the repeated violations of American territorial waters by British warships; the blockading of enemy coasts by Britain; and the British Orders in Council against neutral trade. These were the declared reasons for the war but many Americans also hoped that the war would provide them with an opportunity to conquer Canada, put an end to the Indian attacks on their western frontier, and open up more forest land for settlement by their land-hungry pioneers.
When the Bellerophon set sail across the Atlantic in the spring of 1813 she was once again sailing into hostile waters but this time she played no more than a peripheral role in the conflict. The outward voyage with a convoy of merchant men was slow but uneventful until they were nearing Newfoundland when they ran into thick fog. For nearly a week they groped their way through the damp, blinding mist, firing guns at half-hourly intervals to keep in touch. On 22 May strong gales swept the fog away as they approached Cape Ray but a few days later they faced another danger. No fewer than nineteen icebergs were sighted ahead of them. They had to alter course to avoid them and then they ran into fog again. It was an extremely hazardous situation but fortunately the fog cleared and they sighted land. Cautiously they worked their way northwards and on the morning of 31 May they sighted the entrance of St John's Harbour. The wind dropped and they had to warp the ship up the harbour. The next day Sir Richard Keats went ashore, accompanied by the captains of all the ships in the escorting squadron. As he left the ship, the crew manned the yards and fired a 17-gun salute in recognition of his status as Governor of the island.
On the same day that the guns of the Bellerophon were reverberating across St John's Harbour, the guns of another British warship were in action some 800 miles to the south. In the seas off Boston the 38-gun frigate Shannon, commanded by Captain Philip Broke, was locked in a fierce and bloody battle with the American frigate Chesapeake. The Shannon had been built at Frindsbury in the very same shipyard as the Bellerophon. She had been launched in 1806 (twenty years after the Bellerophon] and was one of a series of large frigates built around this time which were based on the lines of a captured French ship.7 The Chesapeake, also of 38 guns, had an unlucky history and had been involved in an action which had nearly caused war between Britain and America back in 1807. She was now under the command of Captain James Lawrence. The murderous duel which followed that afternoon resulted in the death of 34 British seamen, 69 American seamen and more than a hundred wounded in both ships. Lawrence was fatally shot by a British marine and his last words as he was carried below were 'Don't give up the ship.' Broke himself was badly injured in the battle but in the end won the day.
Having spent little more than a week in St John's Harbour, the Bellerophon set sail again, this time to escort a convoy of merchant ships which was heading south towards Bermuda. On the return journey she intercepted and boarded several American ships and captured an American privateer. She arrived back at St John's with her prize on 8 July. The rest of the year was spent patrolling the seas off Cape Race. She frequently encountered the sea fog which has always plagued this region and her crew must have been relieved to receive orders to return to Britain. They set sail with a convoy of thirty-three ships on 22 November and dropped anchor in Torbay just under a month later on 18 December. That winter and the following spring were spent at anchor in Spithead.
The next year, 1814, was an almost exact repeat of the previous year. The Bellerophon left Spithead with a convoy on 26 April, arrived in St John's on 4 June, patrolled the seas off Cape Race for six months and returned to Spithead at the end of December. She was still under the command of Captain Hawker but in March 1815 she sailed for the Nore and there, on 9 April, Captain Hawker left the ship and was superseded by Captain Frederick Maitland. The most famous chapter in the life of the veteran ship was about to begin.
SIXTEEN
Napoleon and the Bellerophon
1815
On 2 July 1815, two weeks after his defeat on the battlefield of Waterloo, Napoleon arrived at the port of Rochefort on the west coast of France. He had travelled in a carriage from Paris and for most of the journey he had avoided being recognised but when he arrived at Niort, the last stop before Rochefort, the news of his arrival rapidly spread around the town. The prefect insisted that he transfer from his lodgings in a local inn to the prefecture building, and the soldiers of the second regiment of hussars, who were billeted in the town, acclaimed him with cries of 'Vive l'Empereur.' A day of festivities followed, with a reception hosted by the prefect, bands playing martial music, and excited crowds gathering in the streets. Napoleon had wished to keep a low profile because he did not want to stir up civil war or to antagonise the provisional government in Paris. He had agreed to abdicate as emperor and had asked the provisional government to supply him with passports to the United States of America and the use of two frigates which were currently lying at anchor off Rochefort.