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.