At 11 o'clock the enemy fleet was still some 3 miles distant. Captain Cooke reckoned that they would not be in action for an hour or more and so gave the order for the men to be piped to dinner. The ship's cook and his assistants had been warned to have a meal ready around this time, on the basis that 'Englishmen would fight all the better for having a comfortable meal.' While the men ate their meals crouched beside the guns, Captain Cooke joined the officers in the wardroom. Situated below the great cabin this was normally lined with cabins and dominated by a long table in the centre of the room. With the bulkheads forming the cabins removed and the table and chairs stowed below, the space was eerily empty, apart from the six guns run out at the gunports and made fast, ready for action. The only flat surface was the rudderhead and they used this as a table for their makeshift meal of cold meats.
Most of the crew were still eating when there was the sound of cheering from those on deck and more distant cheering from other ships in the fleet. A signal had been hoisted on the Victory which had caused some excitement. The 19-year-old John Franklin (later to make his name as an Arctic explorer) was the signal midshipman in the Bellerophon and from his position on the poop he had noted the signal flags and worked out the message. It read 'England expects that every man will do his duty.' In some quarters the message was received with impatience, the seamen muttering that they had always done their duty and Collingwood complaining that he wished Nelson would stop signalling because they all knew what they had to do. However Lieutenant Cumby recorded that the message 'produced the most animating and inspiriting effect on the whole fleet'.
They were now only a mile or so from the enemy's line. A slight shift in the wind direction earlier had prompted Villeneuve to order the Combined Fleet to wear and form a line of battle on the port tack. This manoeuvre would have been carried out with military precision by the British fleet but it had led to considerable confusion among the Allied ships and their line was in still in some disorder. Nevertheless the spectacle of thirty-three line of battle ships, viewed broadside on and stretching across the calm water for nearly 2 miles, was both daunting and magnificent. The enemy ships were illuminated by the full glare of the midday sun, which glinted on the barrels of hundreds of guns emerging from rows and rows of gunports. The formidable power of the massive black hulls, enlivened with horizontal bands of yellow and white and red, provided a sharp contrast with the carnival spirit of the multi-coloured flags and pennants. 'I suppose no man ever before saw a sight of such beauty' wrote Captain Codrington of the Orion and he called all his lieutenants up on deck to witness a scene they were unlikely ever to see again.
At 2 minutes before noon the French ship Fougueux opened fire on the Royal Sovereign with a full broadside. Collingwood's flagship was fresh from the dockyard and her clean copper bottom enabled her to draw ahead of the slower ships following her. On the Bellerophon they watched her break through the enemy line and singlehandedly engage the Fougueux and the Santa Ana, the flagship of one of the Spanish admirals. The Belleisle, Mars and Tonnant followed her into action, and then it was the turn of the Bellerophon to face the enemy broadsides. Captain Cooke had originally decided that he would hold his fire until they were in the act of passing through the enemy's line but, while still some distance away, the Bellerophon came under such fierce and accurate fire that men were going down and masts and rigging were in serious danger. Cooke gave the order to open fire without further ado. This gave the beleaguered crew a chance to retaliate and also provided a protective screen of gunpowder smoke so that the ship was not such an easy target for the enemy gunners.
The Bellerophon cut through the enemy line at 12.30, receiving fire from both sides and passing close under the stern of the Spanish 74-gun ship Monarca. The Spaniard received the full force of the pent-up energy of the Bellerophon s crew. Two broadsides from the carriage guns and three devastating salvoes from the deadly carronades on the upper deck caused crippling damage and temporarily silenced her. The Bellerophon was moving in for the kill when the topgallant sails of another ship appeared above the billowing smoke to leeward. They were on a collision course. Captain Cooke ordered the sails to be backed in order to check their progress but it was too late. They just had time to read the name L'Aigle inscribed on her stern before they crashed into her, the Bellerophon s starboard bow hitting her port quarter, and the yards of both ships becoming entangled.
L'Aigle was one of the new batch of French 74-gun ships and, while nothing like as powerful as the flagship L'Orient which the Bellerophon had faced at the Nile, she was a formidable opponent. She was bigger than the Bellerophon, had higher calibre guns (40- and 24-pounders compared with the Bellerophon's 32s and 18s) and was commanded by Captain Gourrege who proved a determined and heroic commander. She also had 150 soldiers on board who lined the bulwarks and were posted in the tops, and subjected the Bellerophon to a hail of musket fire and grenades. On the poop deck, the quarterdeck and in the waist of the Bellerophon men were falling fast. The officers were always prime targets in such circumstances and when Cumby looked up and saw that the French soldiers had marked out Captain Cooke and were directing their fire at him, he urged him to remove his distinctive epaulettes. Cooke's reply was, 'It is now too late to take them off. I see my situation, but I will die like a man.' Cooke then sent Cumby below to give directions to the gun crews.
The Bellerophon was now under sustained fire from three enemy ships in addition to L'Aigle. They were the Spanish ships San Juan Nepomuceno and Bahama and the French ship Swiftsure.
To be attacked by the Swiftsure was a strange stroke of fate. She was a sister ship of the Bellerophon, having been built to a Slade design of the Elizabeth class and launched at Wells shipyard at Deptford in 1787, the year after the Bellerophon's launch. She had fought at the Battle of the Nile and had taken the place of the Bellerophon alongside the massive French flagship L'Orient when the dismasted Bellerophon had been forced to break off the action. In 1801 she had been captured in the Mediterranean by a squadron led by Admiral Ganteaume and the French had retained her British name.
It is unlikely that there was anyone on the Bellerophon who was aware of, or cared too much about, the past history of the Swiftsure at this moment. She was flying a French ensign and, together with L'Aigle and the Spanish ships, she was rapidly reducing the Bellerophon to a shambles.
The ship's log-book records that at 1 pm the main and mizen topmasts fell over the side. This would have caused a chaotic scene, with a tangle of rigging, yards and sails strewn across the deck and dragging alongside. Captain Cooke was hit at precisely 1.11 pm according to the log-book. An eye witness described the moment of his death: