These ships entered the bay, and took their stations in the darkness, in a manner still spoken of with admiration by all who remember it.

Captain Hallowell, in the SWIFTSURE, as he was bearing down, fell in with what seemed to be a strange sail.

Nelson had directed his ships to hoist four lights horizontally at the mizzen peak as soon as it became dark; and this vessel had no such distinction.

Hallowell, however, with great judgment, ordered his men not to fire: if she was an enemy, he said, she was in too disabled a state to escape; but from her sails being loose, and the way in which her head was, it was probable she might be an English ship.

It was the BELLEROPHON, overpowered by the huge ORIENT: her lights had gone overboard, nearly 200 of her crew were killed or wounded, all her masts and cables had been shot away; and she was drifting out of the line toward the leeside of the bay.