The Billy Ruffian: The Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon | David Cordingly

The Billy Ruffian: The Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon | David Cordingly | Superb Biography of one of Britain's greatest warships

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The Billy Ruffian:...

	The Billy Ruffian: The Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon David Cordingly Bloomsbury USA, 2003 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

From the author of Under the Black Flag, the biography of a British warship and a portrait of a world at war during the Napoleonic era.The story of the seventy-four gun warship Bellerophon will be familiar to anyone who's read Patrick O'Brian or C.S. Forester. The Billy Ruffian runs from its subject's birth (in a small shipyard in 1782) to her death (in a breaker's yard more than fifty years later, after serving as a prison ship). In the intervening years the Billy Ruffian played a conspicuous part in three of the most famous of all sea battles: the battle of the Glorious First of June (1794), the opening action against revolutionary France; the battle of the Nile (1798), which halted Napoleon's eastern expansion from Cairo; and the battle of Trafalgar (1805), which established British naval supremacy for 100 years. But her crowning glory came six weeks after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, when Napoleon, trapped in La Rochelle, surrendered to the captain of the ship that had dogged his steps for more than twenty years. Using diaries, ship's logs, personal letters, and other contemporary documents, David Cordingly has created a fascinating and eminently readable account of life both on ship and off during this most romantic of eras.

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Unusual biography

Instead of the usual biography of a famous captain or battle, Mr. Cordingly treats us to the life of a famous ship of the line - Bellerophon.
From a protracted birth in the slips of the Medway, through the highs and lows of the American and European wars, to an ignominious return to her birthplace, we read the history of the Georgian Navy as written by her commanders, officers and crew,
The author's painstaking research of the Admiralty records and Naval chronicles breathes life into what could have been a simple catalog of events and postings ... first-hand accounts, log-books and extracts from letters flesh out the bare bones of ports and locations, while the background of contemporary historical events puts Bellerophon's role into full perspective - this is the real stuff that Forester and O'Brian drew on to create their adventures.
Why Bellerophon? There are plenty of other famous ships, but none had the fortune to engineer the collection and safe conduct of the most famous and wanted man in the world from his enemies in France. This was to be the high point of a long and distinguished career, as immediately afterwards she was decommissioned and spent her last 21 years as a prison hulk.
An informative and absorbing read.

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Superb Biography of one of Britain's greatest warships

Veteran scribe of the seas David Cordingly has wrought a spellbinding biography of HMS Bellerophon, "The Billy Ruffian: The Bellerophon and the downfall of Napoleon: The Biography of a Ship of the Line, 1782-1836", one of the most important warships in Great Britain's Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. "Billy Ruffian", as she was know affectionately by her sailors and much of the fleet, played a pivotal role at three of the most important battles during these wars with Revolutionary France and Napoleon's French Empire; The Glorious First of June, the Battle of the Nile, and Trafalgar. At the Glorious First of June HMS Bellerophon fought decisively against a French fleet nearly twice the size of the British fleet commanded by the elderly Admiral Lord Howe, the Royal Navy's most distinguished fleet commander at the onset of the French Revolutionary wars. At the Battle of the Nile, HMS Bellerophon fought a fierce duel with the larger, more powerful French ship-of-the-line L'Orient, the flagship of the French fleet, only to be rendered a drifting hulk with the loss of much of its crew killed or wounded, a short time before L'Orient blew up and sank; an explosion which was heard twenty miles away. And then, of course, was Bellerophon's heroic struggle against French and Spanish warships at Trafalgar, made most memorable by the death of her captain during the battle's climax. Yet the most important episode in her celebrated career occurred at the close of the Napoleonic wars, as the warship which carried Napoleon Bonaparte back to England at the end of his "Hundred Days", mere weeks after his defeat at Waterloo by an Allied army commanded by the British general Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. Tragically, Bellerophon's distinguished career as a Royal Navy ship-of-the-line would end shortly thereafter, with the last two decades of her life spent as a prison hulk. Coordingly is a captivating, mesmerizing writer who has created a splendid biography of this important, yet forgotten, warship. Fans of naval warfare and of course, C. S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian, will find this memorable book well worth reading.

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The Billy Ruffian

This is an absolutley fabulous book and read, for both the knowledgeable reader of the 19th century Royal Navy or the novice regarding that era. There is naval history, social commentary and history, as well as of adventure and seamanship.

A great book to read, keep and read again.

Behind the Wooden Walls of England

The Bellerophon -- or Billy Ruffian to Jack Tar, who wasn't familiar with Greek mythology -- is, or at least used to be, a familiar ship to English schoolchildren, because it was the ship that collected Napoleon on his final failure and used to be regularly illustrated in textbooks.

In David Cordingly's deft and straightforward biography, the Billy Ruffian turns out to have had an unusually interesting career, with even some echoes still reverberating in the 21st century.

Cordingly does not attempt to retell the history of the Napoleonic wars, or even just the naval wars, through the experiences of the ship, but he does nevertheless give a concise review of the naval strategy and most of the important battles. Billy Ruffian took a brave part in three of the most important -- the Glorious First of June, the Nile and Trafalgar.

Billy Ruffian was badly knocked about in all three, actually being driven from the field at the Nile, although only after giving a stout fight to a much bigger French ship.

Although slugfests in the Age of Sail could be very bloody, not many men died in the Bellerophon's fights: four at the First of June, 49 at the Nile, 27 at Trafalgar. Compared with the butcher's bills presented at places like Waterloo and Borodino, seapower was a cheap way of dealing with tyrants.

The heroes of the Billy Ruffian also were true Britons. Although a myth has grown up that European ships' crews were cosmopolitan, one captain of Bellerophon wrote down a unique list of the origins of all his sailors. (Why he did this odd thing is unknown.) Fully half were English and most of the rest Irish, Scots and Welsh. Many foreign places were represented in the crew, but only a small proportion were foreigners.

After the war, Bellerophon was converted into a floating prison, and Cordingly's description of this episode is as interesting as all the war stories.

The part of Billy Ruffian's history that still resonates concerns what to do about Napoleon. The situation was very similar to that faced by the American administration today, and the outcome was similar, too.

Napoleon's status was uncertain. At times he wanted to be considered a prisoner-of-war, at other times not. The British Cabinet was convinced that, whatever his legal status, he had to be put away. In this, they were undoubtedly correct.

The interference of lawyers in matters that were beyond the scope of law was then, as now, a danger to innocent lives, and while Bellerophon never ran from an armed enemy, she did flee in the night from a lawyer, who was thought to be carrying a writ of habeas corpus. (In fact, it was only a subpoena in a civil suit.)

In the end, Napoleon went to St. Helena, the Guantanamo Bay of 1815.

"The Billy Ruffian" is a satisfying ship biography, with one exception. It is lavishly illustrated, as might be expected from Cordingly, formerly Keeper of Pictures at the National Maritime Museum. Unfortunately, in the paperback edition the reproductions are too small to be examined. The hardcover edition (which I have not seen) is probably, therefore, the better bargain.

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Poor Napoleon

I enjoyed this biography of a 74-gun ship of the line that was everywhere during the Napoleonic wars. He gives interesting information on shipbuilding, life at sea, the Cadiz and Brest blockades, the battles (Glorious First of June, Nile and Trafalgar), the Admiralty and Navy Board, press gangs, prison hulks, Lord Nelson, etc.

The problem is his very sympathetic treatment of Napoleon. It's one thing to say he was a brilliant battlefield commander. But it's inexcusable to fail to add that he was a ruthless tyrant who drenched Europe in blood and kept it at war for over 20 years. After Waterloo, Napoleon surrendered to the Bellerophon and Cordingly seems to agree that the British were somehow hardhearted in exiling him to St. Helena, rather than giving him what he wanted--a nice cottage in the English countryside. What he deserved was a rope at the nearest yardarm.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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