Trowbridge, in the _Culloden_, then foremost of the remaining ships, was two leagues astern. He came on sounding, as the others had done. As he advanced, the increasing darkness increased the difficulty of navigation, and suddenly, after having found eleven fathoms’ water, before the lead could be hove again, he was fast a-ground; nor could all his own exertions, joined to those of the _Leander_ and _Mutiné_ brig, which came to his assistance, get him off in time to bear a part in the action. His ship, however, served as a beacon to the _Alexander_ and _Swiftsure_, which would else, from the course they were holding, have gone considerably further on the reef, and must inevitably have been lost. 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 mizen 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 two hundred of her crew were killed or wounded, all her masts and cables had been shot away, and she was drifting out of the line towards the lee-side of the bay. Her station at this important time was occupied by the _Swiftsure_, which opened a steady fire on the quarter of the _Franklin_ and the bows of the French Admiral. At the same instant Captain Ball, with the _Alexander_, passed under his stern, and anchored within sight on his larboard quarter, raking him, and keeping a severe fire of musketry upon his decks. The last ship which arrived to complete the destruction of the enemy was the _Leander_. Captain Thompson, finding that nothing could be done that night to get off the _Culloden_, advanced with the intention of anchoring athwart-hawse of the _Orient_. The _Franklin_ was so near her ahead, that there was not room for him to pass clear of the two; he therefore took his station athwart-hawse of the latter, in such a position as to rake both.