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FAMOUS SHIPS |
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FAMOUS SHIPS |
The BELLEROPHON
The
H.M.S. BELLEROPHON was launched on October 26th, 1786 at the
establishment of Messrs. Graves and Nicolson on the River Medway near Chatham. She was the latest word in vessels of her class being
designed by Sir Thomas Slade, Knight, surveyor of the Royal British Navy.
The dimensions of this 74-gun Ship-of-the-Line were:
Length of gun deck, 168 feet 6 inches; Keel length, 138 feet; breadth, 47
feet 4 inches; depth, 19 feet 9 inches; tonnage, 1644.
She cost 30,232 English pounds; her hull used up 2000 large oak trees,
averaging 100 years old, at a time when such timber was becoming scarce.
Her figurehead consisted of a warrior wearing a crested helmet and her
tafferel above the single stern galley bore a panel ornamented with the Medusan
Steed in keeping with her namesake of Greek mythology.
She
was commissioned on July 19th, 1790.
In 1793, carrying the broad pennant of Commodore Thomas Pasley, she
sailed from St. Helens with the Channel fleet under Lord Howe.
She experienced a violent collision with one of her sister ships, the
MONARCH. As a result, she had to
return to port for repairs, not leaving until the following October.
On May 28th, 1794, she fought in the “Glorious First of
June” battle by ranging alongside the French REVOLUTIONNAIRE of 110 guns and
slugging it out for three hours. In
the process she lost her foremast and had four killed and 27 wounded, including
the loss of the admiral’s leg.
Following
this, the BELLEROPHON was part of the fleet of Lord Cornwallis in the
Mediterranean in June 1795 when she assisted in the capture of eight out of
thirteen French merchantmen and took part in the successful retreat of the
British vessels before the superior forces of Villaret-Joyeuse.
Her
next major action was with Lord Nelson at the battle of the Nile on August 1,
1798. She was the 10th
in line and as a result, she ranged alongside the French flagship L’ORIENT of
120 guns. She anchored opposite
this great ship about 7 P.M. The
French flagship loosed two smashing broadsides in greeting, killing 70 men and
causing much damage. The
BELLEROPHON, however, poured her broadsides into the L’ORIENT with telling
effect. After an hours fighting the great three decker had reduced
the BELLEROPHON to a wreck. She was
totally dismasted, the only spar intact being the bowsprit, with 15 guns of her
starboard battery out of action and gaping holes in her side, her cable was cut,
and, under her sprit sail alone, she drifted along the French line, receiving
from the TONNANT, an 80-gun ship, a terrific broadside as she passed.
She had inflicted great damage on her huge adversary, to the effect that
shortly after she left the action L’OREINT blew up.
Out of a crew of about 600 on the BELLEROPHON, the captain and master
were wounded, three lieutenants were killed and 183 crew were either dead or
injured.
In
various services in the Mediterranean, the Channel and the West Indies under
different commanders from 1799 to 1805, the Billy
Ruffian, as the British sailors liked to call the BELLEROPHON, served her
country’s cause and made a number of important captures of enemy ships
single-handed.
She
was then one of the ships involved in the battle of Trafalgar on October 21,
1805. She was the fifth ship in the
leeward division under Collingwood. In
the course of the encounter, while she roughed it up with several of the enemy
ships, she was roughly handled herself, losing her main and mizzen topmasts, had
all her lower yards badly injured and her hull much damaged.
One enemy ship, the French 74 gun L’AIGLE, was closely engaged and, due
to the high number of crack marksmen on board, swept the quarter deck of the
BELLEROPHON of most of her officers, eventually killing her captain at about the
same time Admiral Lord Nelson was killed aboard the VICTORY.
In addition to the Captain killed, she had 11 other officers and 132 men
killed and wounded. Under another
commander, she escorted the VICTORY bearing Nelson’s body back to England.
Once
repaired, she saw extremely active services in the Baltic as the flagship of
three successive admirals. Then she
was involved in an incident, which if nothing else had happened in her career,
would have made her famous. On July
15, 1815, she received on board Napolean Bonaparte and his suite about a month
after the battle of Waterloo. He
had surrendered himself to the British government after realizing that he could
not escape the British blockade.
Captain
Frederick L. Maitland conducted the ex-emperor first to Torquay and then to
Plymouth, and on August 7 turned the distinguished guest over to the
NORTHUMBERLAND for conveyance to St. Helena.
The captain of the BELLEROPHON later published an account of this notable
event.
After
having carried her country’s flag with honor in these great battles and
events, for which she received the naval war medal with five clasps, the
BELLEROPHON had to submit to the grim task of serving as a prison hulk first at
Sheerness and then at Plymouth. She
did received another name, CAPTIVITY, in 1826.
After 48 years existence, the ship was broken up at Plymouth in 1834.
The
ships name BELLEROPHON was not dead, however, as the British navy launched a
new, entirely different, ship. The
new ship was a dreadnought, laid down on December 3rd, 1906, and
launched in July, 1907. She was
built at HM Dockyard in Portsmouth and commissioned in March, 1909.
She had a compliment of 733. Her
vital statistics were: displacement, 21,100 tons max.; 527 feet long, 82 feet 5
inches wide, 27 feet 2 inches deep, with ten 12” guns as main armament and
sixteen 4” guns as secondary armament with three 18” torpedo tubes.
She had no aircraft facilities or radar.
She was driven by four Parsons steam turbines generating 23,000shp with a
top speed of 20.5kts. She had a
range of 5600NM @ 10kts using 2600 tons of coal for fuel.
She went through the WWI and was decommissioned in 1919, and scrapped in
1922.
Perhaps
there will be other British ships named BELLEROPHON?