saw Philip Francis lying upon his belly and John Benson upon the top of him, making motions with his body as tho' he wished to have connections with him. I then went and laid hold of Philip Francis's jacket and said to him are you not ashamed to be laying here in this condition. He made me no answer at first, but muttered to himself. I then shook him again. He said, whats the matter, whats the matter, what are you about. I said get up. He made answer and said am I not in my hammock. No I said. Get up and button your trousers about you. He then got up and leaned his head against a hammock that was over him. I then said to Nicholas Tobin, go aft and report them to the officer of the watch.
Tobin went to see Mr Cuthbert and told him 'there was a very horrid thing committed in the ship that night'. They returned with the Master at Arms and the two men were put into confinement.
Other witnesses were called and repeated the same story. The court had to determine whether there was willing agreement and whether penetration had taken place. All the witnesses were asked the same question, 'Did you see they were connected one with another?' Tobin could not be certain, but Tipper said that to the best of his knowledge they were, and other witnesses confirmed this. The witnesses were also asked whether either of the accused men were drunk at the time. It transpired that Philip Francis was 'very much in liquor when he lay down there'. Indeed Francis's defence was that he was so drunk that he knew nothing of what had taken place.
The court was cleared, the assembled officers deliberated, and the prisoners were brought back into the great cabin. It was a solemn moment. Admiral Thompson told the two seamen that the court was of the opinion that the charge had been fully proved. Consequently it was agreed that they should be hanged by the neck until they were dead 'at the yard arm of such ship or ships of His Majesty and at such time or times as the Commander-in-chief shall direct.'
Lord St Vincent directed that they should be executed two days later from the yard-arm of their own ship. The Bellerophon's log-book entry for Sunday 2 July simply notes, At 7.30 AM sent two boats and armed with an officer in each to attend an execution of two seamen on board HM.Ship St George.' Later that day Lord St Vincent sat down in the great cabin of his flagship and dictated the following letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty in London:
Sir,
I enclose the sentence and minutes of a court-martial on two seamen, late belonging to His Majesty's ship St George. The crime of which they were convicted was of so horrible and detestable a nature, and the times requiring summary punishments, I caused the sentence to be carried into execution at nine o'clock this morning in presence of the whole squadron.
Within a week there were more hangings. The crew of the St George were discovered in a plot to mutiny and take over the ship. The mutineers' pretext was that they objected to the men convicted of sodomy being hanged on their ship but the truth seems to have been that they had been plotting mutiny for some months. At a court martial on 7 July, John Anderson, Michael McCann, John Hayes and James Fitzgerald were found guilty of 'seditiously, mutinously and traitorously conspiring to deprive Captain Peard and the rest of the officers of the St George of the command of the ship.' In fact the mutineers' plans had been foiled by a loyal member of the crew who had warned Captain Peard that the ship's company had been planning to seize the ship during the night. The four ringleaders had previous records which caused them to be seen as villains with notoriously bad characters. Michael McCann had served on a French privateer before being captured by a British warship. The other three had been guilty of desertion for which John Hayes had received 300 lashes.
Lord St Vincent was a hard man at the best of times, but with the mutinies at Spithead and the Nore uppermost in his mind, he decided to make an example of the entire crew of the St George by insisting that they hang their own shipmates. And to make sure that everyone understood the significance of this unusual procedure he issued a General Order to the entire fleet:
The sentence is to be carried into execution by the crew of the St George alone, and no part of the boats' crews of other ships, as is usual on similar occasions, is to assist in this most painful service, in order to mark the high sense the Commander-in-chief entertains of the loyalty, fidelity and subordination of the rest of the fleet, which he will not fail to make known to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and request them to lay it before the King. This memorandum is to be read to the ships companies of the fleet before the execution.
As a further break with tradition the commander-in-chief refused to allow the men a few days to prepare themselves for death and ordered them to be hanged on the day after the court martial, even though this meant the execution would take place on a Sunday. So at 7.30 am on Sunday 9 July the Bellerophon again sent two boats across the bay. In addition to the sailors pulling at the oars, each boat had an officer and two red-coated marines armed with muskets sitting in the stern. As they rowed out from under the shadow of their ship, the men could see boats from the other anchored ships setting out towards the St George. By the time all the boats were gathered around the disgraced ship, the men were sweating in the morning sun. On the forecastle of the St George the four condemned men were listening to the prayers of the ship's chaplain while their shipmates stood by the ropes which had been rigged from the lower yard-arm of the foremast. The crews of every one of the ships of the line, the frigates, cutters and naval supply ships gathered in the bay, were assembled to witness the execution. More than 15,000 officers and men stood in silence on the decks of their ships awaiting the signal. At exactly 9 o'clock a single gun was fired. As the explosion echoed across the bay four bodies were hauled rapidly into the air, their legs kicking briefly before they hung lifeless, swaying to and fro as the St George rocked slowly back and forth in the low swell.
In reporting the executions to the Admiralty later that day Lord St Vincent said that he hoped he would not be censured by the bench of bishops for profaning the Sabbath. Although he was the last man to care what a few bishops thought of his actions he was no doubt heartened to receive an approving letter from Nelson who had not been able to attend the court martial because he and the men of his squadron had to remain at their posts and keep a continuous watch on the Spanish ships. Nelson wrote to congratulate St Vincent on finishing the St George's business so speedily, 'even although it is Sunday. The particular situation of the service requires extraordinary measures. I hope this will end all the disorders in the fleet.' The severity of St Vincent's response to any sign of disaffection prevented a general mutiny on the scale of those at Spithead and the Nore but did not end the unrest. Further plots were discovered, the most serious being on the 74-gun ship Defence where the boatswain was planning to seize the ship at night and deliver her up to the Spanish in Cadiz harbour. In the six weeks following the hanging of the St Georges men there were four more executions before the sailors settled down and resumed their usual shipboard routine.
The routine and the confinement of shipboard life at anchor in the bay ended on 7 October when Lord St Vincent took the fleet to sea. They sailed north, rounded Cape St Vincent and dropped anchor in the River Tagus. From November through to the following May the log-book of the Bellerophon makes dreary reading. Those seven months were like a repeat of the endless cruises off Ushant. In company with a squadron of six or seven warships the Bellerophon patrolled the coast between Cape Trafalgar and Cape St Vincent. After two or three weeks at sea the squadron returned to the Bay of Cadiz or the River Tagus to take in provisions and carry out any repairs necessary and then headed off into the rolling swell of the Atlantic — until Friday 25 May 1798 when there was a new development which was to lead to momentous times ahead. On that day the Bellerophon left Cadiz for the last time and joined a squadron under the command of Captain Thomas Troubridge. Their orders were to sail into the Mediterranean and meet up with Nelson and the Vanguard. Their mission was to find Napoleon who was reported to have left Toulon in command of a vast fleet of transport ships, a huge army and an accompanying fleet of French warships.