Billy Ruffian

TEN Death at the Mouth of the Nile 1798

The Alexander and Swiftsure had been sent ahead of the squadron to see if the French fleet was anchored in the harbour at Alexandria. At 10 am on the morning of Wednesday 1 August 1798 the Alexander hoisted a signal to say that she had sighted land. As they drew closer the men high in her tops could clearly make out the towers and minarets of Alexandria and the low hills beyond the old town. By midday they could see the French flags flying over the forts and on many of the ships which were crowded in the harbour. This confirmed the rumours and the recent reports that Napoleon's great army had landed in Egypt and captured the city. But where was the army now, and was the French fleet still in the harbour? The Alexander sailed on and soon her lookouts were able to distinguish the ships anchored beyond the sandy spit of land and the lighthouse tower. The port was teeming with vessels. There were the distinctive local craft with their rakishly angled lateen rigs, there were several hundred transport vessels, and clearly visible were two ships of the line and six frigates flying the French tricolour. But there was no sign of the French battle fleet.

The news was a bitter disappointment for Nelson and his captains. Saumarez expressed the feelings of many of them when he wrote that 'despondency nearly took possession of my mind, and I do not recollect ever to have felt so utterly hopeless or out of spirits as when we sat down to dinner.' We do not know how Captain Darby took the news. Life on board the Bellerophon had followed a familiar pattern in the week following their departure from Sicily. With a steady following wind they had sailed at 6 or 7 knots each day, making and shortening sail at intervals to maintain their position in the squadron. The Mediterranean sun burned faces and arms to a reddish mahogany and made walking on the deck painful in bare feet. The marines continued to cause trouble and on the morning that they sighted Alexandria two of them, together with a seaman, were flogged with twelve lashes each for drunkenness. The thirteen ships of the line maintained a loose formation, spread over several miles, with the Alexander and Swiftsure scouting ahead, and the Culloden, commanded by the energetic Thomas Troubridge, trailing some miles astern because she was towing a French merchant brig captured off the coast of Greece.

After finding that the French fleet was not at Alexandria the squadron headed east along the low sandy shore. This time the Zealous and the Goliath went on ahead and at 2.30 pm the Zealous made the signal for having sighted a strange fleet at anchor. At 2.45 she sent another signal with the details they had all been waiting for: '16 sail of the line at anchor bearing East by South.' Bursts of cheering broke out as the news spread through the squadron. Men below came rushing up on deck and the lookouts in the tops scanned the coast ahead with their telescopes. What they saw was a daunting sight. The French fleet was anchored in a long line in the middle of a great bay. There were thirteen ships of the line including a massive three-decker, and four frigates, and numerous gunboats. Viewed from the sea, the French fleet seemed to be in an impregnable position. As Captain Berry noted, 'The enemy appeared to be moored in a strong and compact line of battle close in with the shore,' a position which he thought presented the most formidable obstacles.

The obstacles were indeed formidable. Aboukir Bay lay at the mouth of the Nile and was protected from the north by a long peninsula a line of shoals, a small island and more shoals. There was a fort at the end of the peninsula and a gun battery on the island. The water beyond and behind the line of French ships was shallow; one British ship had a captured French chart but the rest of the squadron would have to take soundings as they approached to avoid running aground. In addition, it was usually difficult for ships under sail to dislodge and defeat an anchored fleet in a strong defensive position, as the Comte De Grasse had discovered in the West Indies when he had been decisively beaten off by Hood's ships anchored in Frigate Bay, St Kitts.

There was also the matter of timing. When the French fleet were first sighted Nelson's squadron were some 9 miles away. With the moderate northerly breeze the British seventy-fours could only travel around 5 knots and it would therefore take the leading ships nearly two hours to reach the enemy. By the time the trailing ships arrived in the bay the sun would be setting, and much of the battle would have to be fought in the dark. Apart from the obvious dangers of navigating in unknown waters in bad light, there was the hazard of mistaking one's own ships for the enemy in a night action. When the French admiral De Brueys was told that a British fleet had been sighted he certainly assumed that they would wait till the next morning before attacking.

However, in spite of the obvious dangers, Nelson was determined to attack immediately. This was not a rash or gung-ho decision but was based on a number of factors which he had in his favour. Critical was the fact that the wind was currently blowing steadily from north-north-west which meant that his ships would have the wind behind them as they headed into the bay. If he waited till the next day he not only gave the French many more hours to prepare for battle but he might find that the wind had dropped or had changed direction, forcing his ships to tack up to the enemy. Equally important was the fact that Nelson had total faith in his captains and the experience and morale of the men under their command. 1 knew what stuff I had under me, so I went into the attack with only a few ships, perfectly sure that the others would follow me, although it was nearly dark.'

So at 3 pm he hoisted the signal: 'Prepare for battle and for anchoring by the stern.' On the Bellerophon the crew went into the much-practised routine of clearing for action, a routine which transformed the ship from a floating barracks into a fighting machine. A total of 550 men and boys went about their appointed tasks in a disciplined and orderly manner. Hardly any orders were necessary. (Years later Napoleon would tell the Bellerophon's captain that he was astonished by the lack of shouted commands on the ship when she was getting under way.) Nets were rapidly rigged above the quarterdeck and upper deck to protect the crew from falling splinters, wooden blocks and rigging. Hammocks were brought up from below and stowed in rails around the decks as a shield against musket shot and flying splinters. The decks were scattered with sand to prevent bare feet slipping on blood, and were wetted to reduce the risk of fire. Under the forecastle the cook extinguished the galley fire as a safety precaution.

Below deck a visitor would scarcely have thought they were on the same ship so great was the transformation. In normal circumstances much of the after part of the ship was occupied by individual cabins in which the officers slept and worked or read when not on deck. Each cabin contained a hanging cot, a chair or folding stool, a small table or desk and perhaps a washstand. A hat and heavy weather coat were hung on a hook, and other clothes would be folded in a sea chest. Smaller items scattered around or held in racks might include a number of leather-bound books (many officers were avid readers), a sextant, quill pens, ink and notebooks, and perhaps a portrait miniature of the officer's wife or sweetheart. All this was swept away in a matter of minutes. The walls of most of the cabins were no more than canvas screens supported on wood battens. These were removed and, together with all the furniture, and personal possessions, were carried down below into the hold. Similarly the fine furniture in the great cabin occupied by the captain was removed and the cabin suddenly became a bare white room dominated by four guns.

In the forward part of the ship the hanging tables used by the seamen were lashed up to the ceiling, and benches were thrown down into the hold. The effect of this clearance was to open up the gun deck from end to end. A low, cavernous space previously densely hung with hammocks and cluttered with sea chests, pewter plates, chicken hutches, pet parrots, and pens containing a goat and a few cattle, was now dominated by the serried ranks of guns. The guns each weighed around 3 tons and were mounted on sturdy wooden carriages with wooden wheels. They were now released from the lashings which secured them, and the gun crews heaved on the gun tackles and ran out the guns through the gunports, ready for firing.

In the cockpit where the midshipmen normally slept, George Bellamy, the 25-year-old surgeon, and his two assistants prepared a makeshift surgery. Bellamy had seen action before (as an acting surgeon at the Battle of the First of June) and had experienced the horrors of a French jail, but he was going to be tested to the limit before the night was over. The midshipmen's table was covered with a sheet and the surgical instruments were laid ready to hand. These included forceps, scalpels, probes and amputating knives and saws. There were buckets to hold blood and amputated limbs, and there were gags and bottles of laudanum and rum to take the place of anaesthetics.

Nelson's order to prepare to anchor by the stern was no surprise to Captain Darby in view of the position of the anchored French fleet but it involved a fairly arduous operation. One of the massive anchor cables had to be hauled out of the cable tier in the hold, manhandled the length of the ship, fed out of one of the stern ports, passed along the outside of the ship and then made fast to one of the great anchors suspended from the catheads at the bows. Springs were attached to the cable. These were smaller ropes which could be hauled on to alter the angle at which the ship was anchored and enable her to bring her broadside guns to bear on the enemy.

Shortly before 4 pm the leading ships in the British squadron rounded the shoals off the end of Aboukir Island and headed south into Aboukir Bay. As they passed the island the French guns and mortars fired some long-range shots but failed to score any hits. The British ignored them. They now had an unobstructed view of the line of French ships anchored some 3 miles away. From this angle they found themselves looking directly at the starboard broadside guns of thirteen ships of the line, a total of more than 500 guns aimed directly at them. However Nelson's plan was for his ships to head for the northern end of the French line, and then to turn, sail along the line and anchor. By concentrating his force at one end of the line so that two British ships attacked each one of the enemy, he intended to overwhelm those ships before moving on to deal with the rest. With the wind against them, the French ships at the far end of the bay could not come to their assistance. At 5 pm he issued the signal: 'I mean to attack the enemy's van and centre'; and half an hour later: 'Form line of battle as convenient.'

The plan of the battle reproduced in Clarke and M'Arthur's official biography of Nelson provides an admirably clear picture of the contours of the bay, the off-lying shoals, the position of the anchored French fleet and the routes taken by each of the British ships. As an explanatory diagram it is excellent and was compiled with input from those who had taken part, but the approach of the British fleet was not quite as tidy as is suggested by this plan. Nelson and his captains were in a hurry to get into action before nightfall, and there was no time to wait for the slower ships trailing behind to form an orderly line of battle. They therefore bore down on the French in an irregular line, the leading ships vying with each other to get into action first. The Bellerophon was the eighth ship in the British line, with the Minotaur ahead of her and the Defence astern of her. In common with five other ships in the British line of battle that day they had all been built to Sir Thomas Slade's designs, and had been launched within two or three years of each other. As they swept down on the waiting enemy ships, the Goliath, commanded by Thomas Foley edged into the lead. She had the advantage of a captured and reasonably accurate French chart but, like all the leading ships, she had a sailor taking soundings with a lead line and shouting out the depths as they went. The sun was now low in the sky, dipping behind the castle on Aboukir Point and glittering on the waves breaking on the line of shoals which stretched out towards Aboukir Island. A steady breeze tempered the heat of the Egyptian evening and caused the tricolour flags on the motionless French ships to billow out and catch the last of the sunlight.

The Goliath was within musket shot of the Guerrier at the head of the French line when Thomas Foley made a discovery which played a key part in the outcome of the battle. He realised that, because the French ships were only anchored by the bow (and not anchored at bow and stern), there must be sufficient depth beyond for them to swing without grounding on the shoals. There must also therefore be enough depth for a ship to sail past them on the inside. The French would not be expecting an attack from this side and, as it proved, many of their ships were totally unprepared for this. On the Guerrier the lower deck guns were not run out and there were a lot of boxes and lumber blocking the upper deck ports. So the Goliath, followed by four other British ships, steered to pass round the head of the French line and sail down the far side.

The peace of the evening, already disturbed briefly by desultory gunfire from the battery on Aboukir Island, was now shattered by the booming explosion of ships' broadsides. The French ships at the head of their line began firing as the leading British ships came into range, but the battle proper commenced as the Goliath completed her turn round the bows of the Guerrier and fired a broadside at close range. The gathering dusk was illuminated by the brilliant flashes of guns. It was now around 6.45 pm. The Bellerophon had turned and was heading for the centre of the French line. She had hauled up her lower sails, the courses, and was sailing under topsails alone, as was usual when going into battle. This gave her officers an unobstructed view of the action and meant that her sailors could take in the remaining sails rapidly when the time came to anchor. She was already under fire from the enemy as she headed down their line. The sun had now dipped below the horizon and she made her final approach in a dim twilight made murky by clouds of drifting gunsmoke.

Whether Captain Darby intended to lie alongside Le Franklin, which was the ship anchored ahead of the French flagship, or hoped to position the Bellerophon so that she could fire her broadsides at the vulnerable bows of L'Orient is not clear and was never explained. What subsequently happened was disastrous. At 7 o'clock she let go her best bower anchor which splashed into the water, hauling the anchor cable down and along the ship's sides until it was stretching out in a long line from one of the stern ports. The sailors out on the yards heaved up the topsails as the anchor cable streamed out astern. The ship began to swing stern into the wind but continued her forward progress. Either the anchor was dragging on the seabed or the sailors failed to check the cable and let out too much. When the anchor finally brought the ship to a halt she found herself, not at the bows of the enormous French flagship, but exactly alongside her, facing the entire weight of her broadside guns. L'Orient had three gun decks so she towered over the two-decked Bellerophon, but more critically she had almost twice the firepower. Not only did she have 120 guns to the Bellerophons 74 but her guns fired a heavier weight of shot.

To add to Captain Darby's problems, L'Orient had three high-ranking officers on board who were to prove steadfast under fire. The most experienced was the man commanding the anchored French fleet, Vice-Admiral François, Comte de Brueys. He had fought the British in the West Indies and had proved a capable commander of the naval forces during the French landings in Egypt. His flag captain was Commodore Casablanca who had his ten-year-old son on board serving as a cadet. De Brueys's chief of staff was Rear-Admiral Honoré Ganteâume, the only one of the three who would survive the night.

As the Bellerophon came alongside L'Orient, and before she brought her guns to bear, Captain Casablanca fired two broadsides at her with devastating effect. The Bellerophon held her ground and, according to Ganteaume, came so close as almost to touch ('presque toucher') the French flagship, but it was at a terrible cost. On the English ship gun barrels were hurled off their carriages, rigging was torn apart, and men were dismembered by cannon shot. The Bellerophon responded with a rapid and disciplined series of broadsides from close range. This was what her crew had trained for. During the weeks of searching for the French fleet they had regularly 'exercised the great guns' and they now exercised them in earnest. The scene below deck was like something from Dante's Inferno: a low, confined space, sweltering hot and filled with acrid smoke, deafening explosions, and toiling, sweating bodies. The darkness was faintly illuminated by a few lanterns and the regular flash of gunfire, and by this light the gun crews, stripped to the waist, heaved the guns into place, and then stood clear as the guns fired and violently recoiled on their wooden carriages. Small boys ran back and forth with boxes containing cartridges of gunpowder brought up from the powder store in the hold. The dead were dragged out of the way of the guns and wounded men were helped to the cockpit by their shipmates.

There Bellamy and his two assistants were already up to their elbows in blood as they attempted to deal with men who had horrific wounds from cannon shot, musket shot and the lethal effects of flying wood splinters. Bellamy's scrawled notes of the killed and injured have survived and they make gruesome reading. Sergeant Maxey had both legs broken in pieces and died from loss of blood before he could be attended to. Five other seamen lost both legs and died. Seaman Nieley lost both legs and one arm. Lawrence Curren had his abdomen ripped open and his bowels exposed. One man had half his head off. Robert Reeden was shot through the chest. Some had suffered head wounds and fractured skulls, others had fractured ribs, broken knees and wounds to hands and feet. Many were killed outright or died in the cockpit while waiting for the hard-pressed surgeons to attend to them.

Up on deck it was cooler but in many ways more alarming because the massive hull and masts and rigging of L'Orient towered alongside. Every time she fired her upper deck broadside she wrecked more of the Bellerophon. The boats stored on the booms in the waist of the ship were smashed to pieces, most of the guns on the quarterdeck were dismounted and the standing rigging was so shot through that the masts were increasingly precarious. The marines on the French flag-ship were able to pick out their targets from their higher vantage point. The first of the officers to be hit was Captain Darby who received a head wound which knocked him to the deck unconscious. He was carried below to the surgeons. Lieutenant Daniel, the first lieutenant, and Lieutenant Lander, the second, were both wounded but were able to remain at their posts for a while. Then Daniel was hit by a cannon ball which took off his right leg. As he was being carried towards the cockpit he was hit again, this time by a lethal round of grapeshot which killed him and also killed the seaman who was carrying him. John Hadaway, the fourth lieutenant, was hit and had to be taken below. George Jolliffe, the fifth lieutenant, was killed outright.

The Bellerophon had been fighting L'Orient single-handed for nearly an hour when, around 8 pm, her mizenmast was shot away and came crashing across the stern. Shortly afterwards her mainmast toppled and fell across the starboard side of the upper deck, most of it coming to rest on the booms and the forecastle. The mainmast brought down with it the topmast, the yards and heavy canvas sails, the tarred rigging of the shrouds, and a tangle of ropes and heavy wooden blocks. It killed Lieutenant Lander and several seamen and produced a scene of chaos on deck. Robert Cathcart, the third lieutenant, now left his post on the main deck and came up to the quarterdeck to take over command of the ship. There was no question of surrendering and the gun crews continued to load and fire, but the wreckage of the two fallen masts had to be cleared, and a new danger had arisen which was potentially even more hazardous than the bombardment of cannon and musket shot from L'Orient. This was a fire which had broken out in the stern part of the French flagship.

The Alexander and Swiftsure had been delayed by their reconnaissance of the port of Alexandria and came late on the scene. When they did so they headed for L'Orient. The Alexander was the first to arrive. She cut through the line of French ships astern of the flag-ship and anchored off her in a good position to do maximum damage. She was able to fire into the vulnerable stern of L'Orient, her shot smashing through the stern galleries and stern windows and causing carnage the length of the ship. This onslaught started a fire in the stern cabin which rapidly spread to the poop and the rest of the ship. A wooden warship of this period was a floating fire hazard. Almost everything was highly inflammable at the best of times but the Mediterranean sun had dried out sails and rigging, and softened the tar used to caulk the planking of decks. The liberal use of paint and tar as preservatives increased the fire risk and the barrels of gunpowder stored in the magazine had the potential to act as a bomb which could destroy the entire ship. As the fire on L'Orient spread out of control the disabled Bellerophon alongside her was in an exceedingly dangerous position. The ship's log provides a glimpse of what happened next: At 9, observing our antagonist on fire on the middle gun deck, cut the stern cable and wore clear of her by loosing the spritsail - shortly, the fore mast went over the larboard bow. Employed clearing the wreck and putting out the fire which had caught in several places of the ship.'

This is a typically terse and shorthand account of an exceedingly difficult operation. With two of her masts gone, her deck a shambles, and many of her crew dead or wounded, it was not easy for her one remaining officer to get the ship clear of the burning flagship. After the anchor cable had been hacked through with axes the ship was free to drift but until she got some sail up she could not be manoeuvred clear of L'Orient. Lieutenant Cathcart dared not risk setting any sail on the foremast because most of the supporting rigging had been shot through. He therefore ordered the men to set the spritsail, a relatively small sail which was set on a yard from the ship's bowsprit. Even this put too much strain on the foremast because, as the Bellerophon gathered way, the mast toppled forward and came crashing down. The ship was now totally dismasted but, to the relief of her shattered crew, she continued to move slowly clear of L'Orient and out of the line of battle. The map in Clarke and M'Arthur's biography of Nelson shows her track. What it does not show is how the Bellerophon nearly became the victim of friendly fire.

The Swiftsure was bearing down on the enemy under a press of sail when her commander, Captain Hallowell, saw a dismasted ship moving out of the line of battle. In the darkness it was difficult to identify her but he noted that she was not displaying the four lanterns at her mizen which were the distinguishing lights of a British ship. The Reverend Cooper Willyams, who was the chaplain on board the Swiftsure, later described how Captain Hallowell, presuming the ship to be the enemy, felt inclined to fire into her,

but as that would have broken the plan he had laid down for his conduct, he desisted: and happy it was that he did so; for we afterwards found the ship in question was the Bellerophon, which had sustained such serious damage from the overwhelming fire of the French Admiral's enormous ship L'Orient, that Captain Darby found it necessary for him to fall out of action, himself being wounded, two lieutenants killed and near two hundred men killed and wounded. His remaining mast falling soon after, and in its fall killing several officers and men (among the former was another of his lieutenants) he was never able to regain his station. At three minutes past eight o'clock the Swiftsure anchored, taking the place that had been occupied by the Bellerophon.

In fact the Swiftsure did not anchor in the Bellerophon's place but selected a spot somewhat ahead of L'Orient. From there she could direct her fire at the bows of the burning flagship and at the stern of Le Franklin. She was in no immediate danger from the flaming debris falling from L'Orient because she was upwind of her and Captain Hallowell reckoned that if and when the flagship did explode 'the greater part of the fragments would naturally be projected over and beyond her.' Meanwhile the Bellerophon was moving further and further away from the battle and into the darkness beyond, her progress impeded by the shattered masts, torn sails and rigging trailing next to her battered hull. The most urgent task of her crew was to extinguish the fires which had broken out and when this had been done they turned their attention to cutting away the wreckage of the three masts. It was while they were hacking at the chaotic jumble of ropes and sails that the French flagship exploded.

Admiral de Brueys was dead before his ship blew up. His heroism became a legend in the French Navy. He had been hit in the face and left hand by musket shot fired from the Bellerophon but he had the wounds bound up and continued to direct operations. Both his legs were then shot away but still he refused to leave the deck. According to some French accounts he had tourniquets tied around the stumps, got himself strapped in a chair and was heard to say that a French admiral ought to die on his own quarterdeck. His bravery proved fatal because he was in an exposed position. He was hit again, this time by a cannon ball which nearly cut him in two. His flag captain, Commodore Casabianca, was also mortally wounded. His young son refused to leave his side, and this later inspired the poem by Felicia Hemans with the familiar opening lines, 'The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled.' Father and son took to the water and were last seen clinging to a floating mast. Admiral Ganteaume, several other officers, and many of the crew also abandoned ship, realising that it was only a matter of time before the fire reached the gunpowder in the magazine.

Many accounts have survived of the devastating noise of the explosion, and numerous pictures were later painted showing the night sky illuminated by the blinding light at the centre of the blast as the great ship disintegrated. One of the most graphic descriptions of the scene was provided by a French onlooker who was several miles away in the town of Rosetta at the mouth of the Nile. Monsieur Poussieulque was Comptroller-General of the Eastern Army in Egypt and two days after the battle he wrote to a friend in Paris about the battle which he had witnessed. The ship carrying his letter, together with the latest despatches from Napoleon, was intercepted in the Mediterranean and nine weeks later the letter was published by The Times in London. Poussieulque described how he and his companions heard the firing of cannon at 5.30 in the evening:

We immediately got upon the terraces, on the tops of the highest houses, and on the eminences, from whence we plainly perceived 10 English ships of the line; the others we could not see. The cannonade was very heavy until about a quarter after 9 o'clock, when, favoured by the night, we perceived an immense light, which announced to us that some ship was on fire. At this time the thunder of cannon was heard with redoubled fury and at 10 o'clock the ship on fire blew up with the most dreadful explosion, which was heard at Rosetta in the same manner as the explosion of the Grenelle at Paris. When this accident happened the most profound silence took place for the space of about 10 minutes; from the moment of the explosion until our hearing it might take up about two minutes. The firing commenced again, and continued without intermission until 3 o'clock in the morning . . .

It is difficult to be certain exactly where the Bellerophon was at the time of the explosion. Her log-book simply states, 'at 10 L'Orient blew up. Got up jury sails on the stumps of the masts, the winds favouring us enabled us to clear the French fleet.' In some of the pictures of the battle she is shown a few hundred yards away from L'Orient but with the favourable breeze driving her along under the spritsail she could have made a steady 1 or 2 knots which would have taken her a mile or more from the scene. Even at that distance she would have felt the shock waves which the other ships experienced and her crew must have paused in their clearing-up operations as the burning fragments of L'Orient, blown high in the air, rained down on the battlefield. Recent excavation of the seabed by French archaeologists has revealed the force of the explosion. Divers have discovered that a cannon weighing 2 tons was hurled more than 400 yards.

Captain Darby had by this time recovered sufficiently to resume command of his battered ship and, under his directions, the makeshift jury sails were erected. The next step was to drop anchor so that they could concentrate on clearing away the wreckage and repairing the honeycomb of holes in the ship's sides. Lord St Vincent later remarked that he had never seen a ship so mauled. The only problem was that the anchor cables had been cut through by the broadsides of L'Orient. It took them several hours to splice the remnants together and it was not till 4 o'clock the next morning that they were able to bend a length of cable to the small bower anchor and let it go in 7 fathoms. By this time they had partly sailed and partly drifted away from the scene of the battle. They were now a mile or so offshore, at the eastern end of Aboukir Bay, close to the mouth of the Nile. As the sky lightened in the east they could clearly see the houses and towers of Rosetta. In a letter to his wife after the action Captain Miller of the Theseus recalled that after the Bellerophon had broken off the action with L'Orient she had drifted along the French line and anchored 6 miles to the east 'where we discovered her next morning (without a mast standing) with her ensign on the stump of the mainmast.'

For the next few hours they took stock, carried out repairs, and buried the dead. They found that all the ship's boats stored on the booms in the waist of the ship were shot to pieces. Seven of the quarterdeck guns, six of the main deck guns and two of the lower deck guns were so damaged as to be useless, and one of the carronades on the poop deck was shattered. Virtually all the hammocks stored in the rails were cut and shredded by gunfire. At daybreak the exhausted crew paused in the clearing-up operations and gathered on deck to bury the men killed in the battle. The melancholy ceremony was conducted by the chaplain, the Reverend John Fresselicque, the same man who had preached a lengthy sermon to the assembled crew on the Sunday after the battle of the Glorious First of June. There were twenty-six bodies to be buried. Each body was sewn into the torn remnants of a hammock, weighted with two cannon balls, and slipped overboard.

At 8 am a French frigate was spotted heading their way. Captain Darby gave the order to beat to quarters. The weary crew made their way to their stations, and the remaining guns on the main deck and lower deck were cleared for action. The approaching vessel was the 40-gun frigate La Justice which had spotted the dismasted British 74 and evidently hoped to capture her and salvage something from a night of French disasters. However she was still 2 or 3 miles away when she was intercepted by the Zealous. She turned back to rejoin the ships at the rear of the French line which had taken no part in the action. These were under the command of Rear-Admiral Villeneuve, in the Guillaume Tell, who had been agonising as to whether to remain at anchor or to attempt to escape with any other French ships able to do so.

Villeneuve was an ambitious 34-year-old officer who had enjoyed rapid promotion during the years of the Revolution. He had no orders to move up the line and assist the beleaguered ships ahead of him and in any case the wind direction made this difficult. Around midday he made his move. He cut his anchor cable and headed north-east out of the bay, followed by the Généreux, and the frigates Diane and Justice. The men on the Bellerophon looked up from their work and watched their progress. They saw them exchanging broadsides with the Zealous who attempted to bar their escape but was unable to do so. The four ships, heeling under all the sail they could set, passed beyond the low sandy mound of Aboukir Island and escaped into the blue waters of the Mediterranean beyond. Of the seventeen French warships present at the battle, they were the only ones not burnt, sunk or captured by the British. Seven years later Villeneuve commanded the combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar.

During the next five days the Bellerophon remained at anchor off the mouth of the Nile. The carpenters' crew repaired the shot holes and other damage; the sailmakers mended torn sails and made new ones; and the seamen rigged up jury masts and yards. On 6 August they weighed anchor and as they tacked slowly back and forth towards the main body of the fleet, they found that the ship behaved well under her jury rig. Other ships now came to their aid and supplied them with much-needed gear and equipment. The Swiftsure supplied them with a topgallant sail, and the Culloden sent across three coils of rope, a five-inch hawser, a foretopmast, a spritsail and a topgallant mast.

And every day more bodies were committed to the deep. On Friday 3 August Captain Darby had mustered the ship's company and 'found we had 3 lieutenants, 1 masters mate, 32 seamen & 13 marines killed - the captain, master, captain of marines, one midshipman, 126 seamen and 17 marines wounded; in all 49 killed, 143 wounded.' Eight more men died of their wounds during the next week. Only one other British ship, the Majestic, had comparable casualties, with 50 killed and 143 wounded. The British casualties overall were reckoned to be 218 killed and 677 wounded, making a total of 895 or roughly 10 per cent of the men who took part in the action. The French casualties were far worse. Nelson reported that some 5,235 of the enemy were killed or missing, and it was estimated that 3,305 French prisoners were taken, 1,000 of them wounded.