He had discharged his pistols very frequently at the enemy, who as often attempted to board, and he had killed a French officer on his own quarterdeck. He was in the act of reloading his pistols (and upon the very same plank where Captain Pasley lost his leg on the 1st of June) when he received two musket-balls in the breast. He immediately fell, and upon the quartermaster going up and asking him if he should take him down below, his answer was, 'No, let me lie quietly one minute. Tell Lieutenant Cumby never to strike.'
Having checked on the gun crews below deck, Cumby was returning along the main deck when he met his friend and messmate Edward Overton, the master. His leg was dreadfully shattered and he was being carried by two men. Cumby had to turn aside and give some directions and was about to climb the ladder to the quarterdeck when a quartermaster told him that the captain was very badly wounded and he believed he was dead.
Cumby now assumed command of the ship. There was no question of surrendering but things did not look promising. In fact the Bellerophon was in a more perilous situation than any other British ship in the battle with the possible exception of the Beileide. The Bellerophon was under fire from a ship astern of her, another ship ahead of her, and a ship on her port beam. She was hampered by the wreckage of two topmasts, and on her starboard side she was still entangled with L'Aigle whose crew continued to rake the decks with musket fire and to hurl grenades through gunports, before preparing to board. Because the upper deck and poop deck of L'Aigle were considerably higher than the Bellerophons decks the French soldiers were able to pick off the British sailors one by one and Cumby found that there were only a handful of his crew still standing on the exposed upper decks. He immediately ordered these survivors to take cover below and mustered a group of armed seamen and marines under the half deck in readiness to repel the boarders who were massing along the sides of the French ship.
Five of the French seamen climbed onto the Bellerophon's spritsail yard and were heading towards her bowsprit when a seaman named McFarlane had the presence of mind to release the spritsail brace which supported the spar. The yard-arm tipped down under the weight of the boarders and they were all thrown into the sea. John Franklin, who had miraculously survived the hail of musket balls on the poop, observed a number of French sailors grabbing hold of the Bellerophon's rail in an attempt to board her but their hands were so savagely beaten by the British sailors that they were forced to let go and fell between the ships and were crushed or drowned. Franklin also recorded an act of manic bravery typical of that day. Christopher Beaty, a veteran sailor who was yeoman of the signals, became so exasperated at seeing the Bellerophon's ensign shot away three times, that he grabbed hold of the largest Union Jack he could find, climbed up the mizen rigging, spread out the flag as wide as possible and made fast the four corners to the shrouds. According to an eye-witness account, 'The French riflemen in the tops and on the poop of L'Aigle, seeing what he was about, and seemingly in admiration of such daring conduct, suspended their fire for the few seconds that he remained aloft; this forebearance on the part of the enemy being the more noble, as they had previously picked off every man that appeared before the Bellerophon's mizen-mast.'
Meanwhile the gun crews below deck were working with the same disciplined and deadly effectiveness which they displayed when engaged in gunnery practice. Amidst the swirling clouds of gunsmoke, the flash and thunderous explosions of each gun and the savage recoil of the guns on their carriages, the men went through their well-rehearsed routine of loading, aiming and firing, with devastating effect on the enemy ships who came within range. So close were some of the gunports to those of L'Aigle on the lower deck that men were fighting hand to hand at the ports, seizing each other's ramrods and attacking each other with cutlasses. In addition to the gunfire of the ships on all sides the Bellerophon's crew was at the mercy of the grenades which were being lobbed through the ports, causing devastating injuries. One grenade which exploded in the lower deck killed or injured twenty-five men, some of whom were dreadfully scorched. One of the men was so horribly burnt that, instead of going to see the surgeon, he ran aft screaming and threw himself out of one of the stern ports into the sea.
Cumby intercepted a grenade which he found on the gangway with its fuse burning and threw it overboard, but another grenade nearly ended the life of the Bellerophon and her entire crew. It was thrown into a gunport on the lower deck and exploded in the gunner's store room. The blast blew off the door of the store, set fire to the contents, and also blew open the door of the passage leading to the ship's magazine. Cumby described what happened next: 'most providentially this door was so placed with respect to that opening from the passage into the magazine that the same blast which blew open the store-room door, shut to the door of the magazine otherwise we must all in both ships inevitably have been blown up together.' The gunner acted with remarkable coolness in the circumstances. He was aware that if word spread that there was a fire in the vicinity of the magazine there was likely to be widespread panic. He therefore sought out Lieutenant Saunders, quietly explained the problem and requested some men to bring buckets of water to extinguish the fire. Saunders promptly detailed a few men to accompany the gunner back to the store room. They managed to put out the fire without anyone else being aware of the acute danger the ship had been in.
In spite of the devastation caused by the muskets and grenades of L'Aigle, the disciplined gunnery of the Bellerophon's crew began to take its toll, the 32-pounders tearing into the hull and gunports of the French ship at point-blank range, dismounting their guns and causing carnage among their gun crews. After a while the gunports of the L'Aigle were lowered and she stopped firing altogether from her lower deck. At 1.40 pm her crew hoisted her jib and she slowly pulled clear, enduring a tremendous raking fire from the Bellerophon as she went. She drifted down onto the Revenge, fired two broadsides at her, and then found her way barred by the Defiance, whose captain, Sir Philip Durham, later recalled, 'L'Aigle appeared to have been severely handled by some other ship. She was, however, quite ready for action and defended herself most gallantly for some time.' Cumby noted that soon after 2 o'clock the French ship hauled down her colours and surrendered to the Defiance. Her commander Captain Gourrège was mortally wounded and 270 of her crew were killed or wounded.
The Bellerophon was by now totally unmanageable. Not only were the main and mizen topmasts hanging over the side, but the jib-boom, the spanker boom and gaff were also shot away and not a single brace or bowline was serviceable. However, as the smoke cleared away in the lull following the departure of L'Aigle, Lieutenant Cumby saw that the Monarca, the first ship which they had engaged as they cut through the enemy line, was drifting nearby and had hauled down her colours. He immediately ordered a prize crew to take a boat, row across and take possession of her. The surgeon took the opportunity of the break in the gunfire to send a message to Cumby. He said that the cockpit was so crowded with wounded men that it was impossible for him to undertake any major operations. He begged to be allowed to bring those wounded men requiring amputations up into the captain's cabin. Cumby gave him permission to do so on the understanding that he must take the wounded men back to the cockpit if they were approached by any enemy ships.