Yesterday about four minutes after twelve o'clock, the Bellerophon, of 74 guns, was launched from Messrs Graves and Nicholson's Yard at Frinsbury, near this city. The launch was very fine, but very few people were present on account of its being sooner than expected. Messrs Graves and Nicholson on that day gave an elegant dinner to many of the principal gentlemen of the Three Towns, &c, at the Crown Inn, in this city. The band of musick, belonging to the Chatham Marines, were engaged on the occasion.
In London the gales had blown down a house in Castle Street, damaged the roofs and chimneys of waterfront houses in Westminster, and sunk several small craft on the Thames but otherwise life went on much as usual. King George III and Queen Adelaide went to see the celebrated actress Sarah Siddons performing in James Thomson's play The Tragedy of Tancred and Sigismunda at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. They were accompanied by the Princess Royal, Princess Augusta and by Fanny Burney the young writer whose first novel Evelina had been highly praised and who had recently been appointed a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Mrs Siddons performed to a brilliant and crowded house and, according to The Times, 'added laurels to her fame . . . every step she takes, every word she speaks, and every cast of countenance is chaste and interesting to the auditor.'
From The Times we also learn that Sir Joshua Reynolds was putting the finishing touches to a portrait of Lady Cadogan. John Singleton Copley was working on a vast painting of the siege of Gibraltar: to help him visualise the scene he had a model made of the fortress at Gibraltar and all the gunboats and ships' gear that were used in the action. Another fashionable artist, George Romney, had just completed a fine portrait of Mrs Warren which it was believed would greatly enhance his reputation. The previous year he had devoted much of his time to painting the ravishingly beautiful Emma Hart, soon to be better known as Lady Hamilton. Emma was now twenty-one and had recently arrived in Naples where she was staying in the elegant home of Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador. Her previous lover, Charles Greville, had wished to marry an heiress and had sold her to his uncle, Sir William, for the price of the payment of his debts. Emma thought she had come to Naples with her mother for a holiday and was outraged when she learned of the arrangement. However she felt she had no option but to go along with the situation. She learnt Italian, took music lessons and singing lessons, and soon became a celebrated figure in Naples society, famous for her beauty and her theatrical performances. A few years later she married Sir William.
Meanwhile the man who would become Emma Hamilton's most famous lover was in the West Indies. Nelson was a 28-year-old captain in October 1786. He was living alone in the senior officer's house at English Harbour in Antigua while his ship HMS. Boreas was being refitted in the dockyard. He complained of the mosquitoes which ate him alive during the day and kept him awake at night. A few months earlier he had met Frances Nisbet on the West Indian island of Nevis and fallen in love with her. Frances, or Fanny as she was always called, was the daughter of the senior judge on the island and her uncle was the President of the Council. In 1779 she had married Josiah Nisbet, a doctor, and moved to England where they had a son. In 1781 Nisbet died and Fanny had returned to Nevis with her son and become her uncle's hostess. When Nelson met her she was an attractive and accomplished 27-year-old woman. Nelson's naval duties kept them apart for months at a time so he resorted to writing her passionate letters filled with lively descriptions of his life and his feelings. 'Separated from my dearest what pleasure can I feel? None! Be assured my happiness is centred with thee and where thou art not, there I am not happy.' And of English Harbour he wrote, 'My good Fanny, Most sincerely do I regret that I am not safe moored by thee instead of being in this vile place.'
On another island a young artillery officer had recently returned home on leave. Napoleon Bonaparte had spent a year attending the military academy in Paris. He had completed the course in a year (most of his fellow cadets took two or three years) and received his commission as a second lieutenant at the age of sixteen. In January 1786 he joined his regiment which was stationed in the south of France at Valence on the River Rhône. There his days were spent on army exercises, gun drill and lectures on ballistics, trajectories and fire power. His evenings were spent reading. He devoured a variety of books, ranging from Plato's Republic and Buffon's Natural History to historical novels and a book entitled The Art of Judging Character from Men's Faces. He recorded his observations on his reading at this time in a notebook. From this we learn that the book which interested him most was a French translation of A New and Impartial History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Signing of Preliminaries of Peace, 1762, by John Barrow. The British nation, which was later to prove his most steadfast enemy, already held a peculiar fascination for him.
In September 1786 Napoleon left his regiment and went home to the island of Corsica where he had been born and brought up. The family home was situated in a narrow street in Ajaccio, the capital of the island. It was a big house, as befitted his parents who were both from ancient and noble families. His father, Carlo Bonaparte, had been a lawyer and administrator but had died in 1785, leaving his wife Letizia with eight young children to look after. Napoleon, now aged seventeen, was the only one of them with a profession and a salary. A profile drawing made of him around this time shows a thoughtful youth with long, straight hair, a strong aquiline nose and firm mouth and chin. Although short in stature he was generally considered handsome and had a confidence and an unflinching gaze which made a lasting impression on those who met him. A lady who met him in Paris a few years later described him as 'Very poor and as proud as a Scot. . . You would never have guessed him to be a soldier; there was nothing dashing about him, no swagger, no bluster, nothing rough.' When Fanny Burney saw him in 1802 she was impressed by the plainness of his dress and thought he had Tar more the air of a student than a warrior'.
It would be ten years before Nelson and Napoleon played any part in the life of the Bellerophon. Meanwhile there were two government departments back in London which were instrumental in determining the movements of the ship from the moment the order was placed for her building until the day that she was decommissioned. These departments were the Board of Admiralty and the Navy Board which were responsible for the organisation and management of the navy. Every year Parliament voted sums of money for the maintenance of the ships and dockyards, for the building of new ships, and for the wages of seamen. The government of the day, and in particular the prime minister and the Cabinet, decided naval strategy and policy but it was up to the Admiralty to carry out the decisions and to allocate the money voted by Parliament.