HMS Bellerophon (1786) - Construction and Commissioning

Construction and Commissioning

Bellerophon was ordered from the commercial shipbuilder Edward Greaves and Company, of Frindsbury, on 11 January 1782, to a modified design originally developed by Surveyor of the Navy Sir Thomas Slade. She was one of ten ships built to the modified Arrogant-class design, originally developed by Slade in 1758 and used to build two ships, HMS Arrogant and HMS Cornwall. The design was resurrected and slightly altered in 1774, and approved by the Admiralty on 25 August that year. The keel was laid down at Frindsbury in May 1782. Measuring 168 ft (51 m) on the gundeck and 138 ft (42 m) on the keel, she had a beam of 46 ft 10.5 in (14.288 m), measured 1,612 tons burthen and mounted 74 guns. This armament consisted of twenty-eight 32-pounder guns on her lower gundeck, twenty-eight 18-pounder guns on the upper gundeck, fourteen 9-pounder guns on the quarterdeck and four 9-pounder guns on the forecastle.

The ship was named Bellerophon, a decision that had been arrived at by at least April 1782, when it was entered into the minutes of the Surveyor's Office. The First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, had apparently selected the name from Lemprière's Classical Dictionary, which he kept on his desk. The recently ordered 74-gun ship was thereafter to be named after the Greek warrior Bellerophon who rode the winged horse Pegasus and slew the monster Chimera. The pronunciation proved difficult for the ordinary sailors of the period, and she was widely known by variants, most commonly "Billy Ruffian" or "Billy Ruff'n", although "Belly Ruff One" appears in a satirical 1810 print by Thomas Rowlandson, and "Bellyruffron" in the novel Poor Jack by Frederick Marryat. She was decorated with a figurehead of Bellerophon.

By the time Bellerophon was launched, there was no pressing need for new warships. The signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 brought the American War of Independence to an end while Bellerophon was still under construction. Though Greaves had been contracted to have her ready for launching by April 1784, she spent another two years on the slipway, probably because the Navy Board ordered construction work to be delayed to allow her timber to be seasoned, a luxury available now that there were no pressing military needs. When the launch came, it was delayed several times, finally taking place during a period of heavy autumn storms in October 1786. She was launched with little ceremony on 7 October 1786, by Commissioner Charles Proby, of Chatham Dockyard. She was then towed across the River Medway and anchored off Chatham Dockyard. She was taken into the dry dock there on 7 March 1787, where her hull was fitted with copper sheathing, and she was fitted for the Ordinary. Her final costs came to £30,232.14.4d paid to Greaves for building her, and a further £8,376.15.2d spent on fitting her for service.

Laid up at Chatham during the years of peace, Bellerophon was not commissioned until July 1790, when the crisis known as the Spanish Armament broke out. As war with Spain threatened, warships lying in ordinary began to be commissioned and fitted for sea. Bellerophon's first commander, Captain Thomas Pasley, arrived on 19 July and began the process of preparing her for service. After a month spent fitting out the ship with guns, masts, stores and rigging, and recruiting a crew, Pasley gave the orders for his crew to slip the moorings on 16 August, and Bellerophon made her way down the Medway to the fleet anchorage at the Nore.

From the Nore, Bellerophon proceeded to the Downs and joined the fleet stationed there. She spent three weeks in the roadstead, exercising her guns, before moving to Spithead. The diplomatic crisis with Spain had largely abated by October 1790, and Bellerophon was sent to Sheerness in late November. She remained in commission, still under Pasley, during the Russian Armament in 1791, but when this period of tension also passed without breaking into open war, Bellerophon was sent back to Chatham and paid off there on 9 September 1791.