What do Cheryl Ladd and Josiah Wedgwood, Oscar Hammerstein II and Bill Cosby, Gareth Edwards and Gareth Gates, Gaby Roslin and Anna Friel, Pablo Neruda and Lionel Jospin, R. Buckminster Fuller and The Ranting Nappa all have in common? Well we were all born on “Orangemen’s Day”, that doubtful and rather nasty commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
I bring this up because this morning I was stranded for a while in Petersfield while the wife’s car underwent a “While-u-Wait” service. My waiting had taken me to the main square where after filling myself with Café Latte and Danish pastry at the (heaving) Café Nero, I pondered on the statue of William III (William of Orange and perpetrator of the Battle of the Boyne) commissioned by a local landowner, William Joliffe, which stands at the centre of the square. Orangemen still come to Petersfield occasionally to lay wreaths at the statue and to sing hymns and taunt any Catholics who might be out shopping. But about Mr Joliffe I knew next to nothing.
Back at the office I did a little “Googling” and got completely sidetracked by mention of a plaque in St Peter’s Church, Petersfield, honouring 1st Lieutenant George Joliffe who was killed in action aged 19 at the Battle of the Nile on board HMS Bellerophon.
Now the Bellerophon features in the Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brien (much favoured by the Ranting Nappa). Known to the lower decks as ‘The Billy Ruffian’, she was a 2-decker, 74-gun, 3rd rate ship of the line. At the Battle of the Nile in July 1798 she went on station against the French flagship, L’Orient a 3-decker, 120-gun ship of the line. She suffered appalling damage, was dismasted and lost a total of 193 men (including Lt. Joliffe), but she had also inflicted enormous damage to L’Orient and it was relatively easy for the following English ships to finish her off.
At Trafalgar the Bellerophon formed part of the lee division, and following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon was compelled to surrender to Bellerophon's Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland at Rochefort, and she carried the defeated Emperor to England prior to his exile in St. Helena.
Readers of my previous blog will be aware that yesterday I spent some time looking at J M W Turner’s Fighting Temeraire in the National Gallery – recently voted Greatest Painting in Britain. The painting was completed in 1838 and shows the great veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar being “tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up”. The ship is painted in a haunting, silvery grey offset by the magnificent colours of the sunset. Co-incidentally the poor old Bellerophon was broken up at around the same time, and the two ships had both served as prison hulks for many years after the Napoleonic War. The same sad ending for two extraordinary ships that played such important roles in English history.
