Seven years passed between the Battle of the Nile and the next major event in the Bellerophon's life which was the Battle of Trafalgar. During those seven years she cruised the Mediterranean, escorted convoys of merchant ships, and resumed her old task of blockading the French coast. Her log-books for these years are a monotonous repetition of earlier log-books: daily notes of the wind and the weather; the passing of other ships, sail changes, taking on board water and stores, carrying out repairs to sails and rigging, and the punishment of crew members with floggings for drunkenness or neglect of duty. The only break in the routine was a spell of two years in which the ship was based on the Jamaica station in the West Indies.
The economic rivalry between Britain and France in the Caribbean had begun in the seventeenth century. During the eighteenth century it led to a series of military expeditions and sea battles as both nations attempted to capture and recapture islands whose sugar and tobacco plantations were a major source of wealth. Britain developed two naval bases to service the ships engaged in the long-running conflict. English Harbour in Antigua became the base for ships operating in the eastern Caribbean, and in particular for the ships of the Leeward Squadron which were stationed out there. Port Royal, on the south coast of Jamaica, was the base for the Jamaica Squadron and for ships patrolling the western Caribbean.
On 2 March 1802 the Bellerophon, in company with five other ships of the line, weighed anchor and proceeded slowly out of Torbay. The day was so calm that it was necessary for the boats of the squadron to tow the ships clear of the land until they picked up a light breeze off Berry Head. Two days later they were sailing past the Lizard and a week later they were off Madeira and heading for the West Indies. With the trade winds behind them all the way from the Azores they made good progress and sighted Barbados on the morning of 27 March 1802. They had covered the 4,700 miles from Plymouth in twenty-five days. This was an average of 188 miles a day, travelling at between 7 and 8 knots most of the time - a good average for a cruising yacht today and a surprising, though by no means unusual, speed for sailing warships each carrying more than 500 men and loaded with 74 guns, 300 tons of ballast and more than 700 tons of ammunition, stores and equipment.
On 28 March they saw the twin peaks of St Lucia on the horizon and the next day they sailed into Fort Royal Bay at Martinique to stock up on water and provisions before sailing the final leg of the journey to Jamaica. They arrived during the brief period when the island was under British rule. For nearly 200 years Martinique had been a French colony but in 1794 a British expedition had captured the island and for eight years the British flag flew over the fort which guarded the entrance to one of the most beautiful bays in the Caribbean. Napoleon's wife Josephine had been born in a house overlooking the bay in 1763 and had spent the first sixteen years of her life on the island. She had enjoyed a genteel upbringing as the daughter of a noble French family but after completing her convent education she had been sent to Paris to marry a rich aristocrat. Her husband had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror in 1794 but Josephine (then called Rose de Beauharnais) had survived and rejoined the fashionable life of the capital. She had met Napoleon during the summer of 1795 and had so enchanted him that he persuaded her to marry him the following spring. She was then thirty-two years old with two children. Napoleon was twenty-six and had just been put in command of the Army of Italy.
The chief concern of the Bellerophon's crew was to provision the ship for the next stage of the journey and carry out essential repairs. The launch was hoisted overboard and sent ashore to fill up the water casks. Barrels of fresh beef were brought across in boats and stored down below. Fruit and vegetables were purchased from the local men and women in the bumboats which swarmed around every ship which arrived in the port. The sails on the yards were loosed and allowed to flap in the light breezes to dry out. Damaged and torn sails were spread out on the decks so the sailmaker could carry out repairs, and the standing rigging was overhauled and set up. Within a few days the Bellerophon was ready to set out. On 7 April she weighed anchor and beat out of the bay in company with the 74-gun ship Audacious, heading for Jamaica.
The weather kept the sailors busy during the passage. Fresh breezes alternated with sudden fierce squalls, constantly forcing them to shorten sail and take in reefs, then shake out the reefs and set more sail. One squall carried away the head of the mizenmast and the main topsail yard of the Audacious and another squall tore the main topsail of the Bellerophon, but these were minor problems for ships used to coping with the winter storms in the Bay of Biscay. The damage was repaired and, with the wind on the beam, they made rapid progress. On the afternoon of 11 April they sighted the mountains of Jamaica on the horizon, and early the following morning they sailed past the rocky islets strung across the approaches to Port Royal, rounded the low promontory dominated by the stone walls of Fort Charles and headed into the vast, glittering expanse of Kingston Harbour. A fleet of eleven ships of the line, and several frigates and smaller vessels were riding at anchor in the middle of the bay, their decks shaded from the tropical sun by canvas awnings, their colourful flags streaming out in the breeze.
As the guns of the Bellerophon boomed out a salute to the port admiral, a flock of pelicans took off and headed across the water, flying low with steady, rhythmic wingbeats. Beyond the flight of birds and the anchored ships lay the distant town of Kingston. And, rising up behind the town, and providing a dramatic backdrop to the harbour, were the thickly wooded slopes of the Blue Mountains, their highest peaks hidden in the clouds. At 8.30 am the Bellerophon dropped anchor in 9 fathoms of clear water. For the next two years the great natural harbour and the dockyard at Port Royal would be her base. Here her crew would provision the ship and from here they would set off to patrol the Jamaica Passage and embark on an extended cruise up the American coast to Nova Scotia.
Port Royal today is a shadow of the town it once was. It is off the beaten track for most tourists and remains what it has been for a century or more, a sleepy fishing village set at the end of a long, snaking promontory. The ramparts of the old fort and the naval hospital are the most prominent of the few elderly structures which have survived the onslaught of earthquakes, fires and hurricanes. It is hard to believe that in the 1660s it was the richest of all the towns in the British colonies across the Atlantic. The daring raids of Sir Henry Morgan and the buccaneers on the Spanish treasure ports had brought fabulous wealth to a town already rich on the profits of the slave trade and the sugar plantations. The harbour swarmed with merchant ships, and the taverns and brothels along the waterfront did a roaring trade. All this ended dramatically in 1692 when a devastating earthquake shook the town to pieces. The old stone church, where the funeral of Sir Henry Morgan had been held, crumbled and collapsed. Two entire streets along the waterfront with shops, houses and wharves slid beneath the sea. A tidal wave following in the wake of the earthquake caused further devastation. It was estimated that 2,000 people died that day and a further 2,000 died later from their injuries or from disease.
The town never recovered its former prosperity as a trading port but developed instead into a British naval base. The damaged and derelict waterfront was transformed into a small but remarkably efficient naval dockyard. When Admiral Vernon visited Port Royal in 1740 to refit his squadron he was able to write approvingly, 'I believe I may say never more work was done in less time, and with fewer hands, than what has been done since my coming in.' By the time the Bellerophon dropped anchor in the harbour in April 1802 the dockyard had expanded further and was capable of repairing and victualling a fleet. Protected behind a retaining wall were blacksmiths' shops, sawpits, a mast house, a boat house, a pitch house, and a shed for the coopers to make and repair barrels. There was a fine house for the port admiral and a row of houses for visiting naval captains. And although there were no dry docks there were two careening wharves with capstan houses. Ships were hauled alongside these wharves, and then heaved on their sides with the aid of the capstans. The weed, worms and barnacles which grew so rapidly on ships' bottoms in the warm tropical waters were then burnt and scraped off, and the copper plates were repaired.