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.