Troubridge, 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 the navigation; and suddenly, after having found eleven fathoms water, before the lead could be hove again he was fast aground; nor could all his own exertions, joined with those of the LEANDER and the MUTINE 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 which 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 mizzen 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 200 of her crew were killed or wounded, all her masts and cables had been shot away; and she was drifting out of the line toward the leeside 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-side on his larboard quarter, raking; him, and keeping up 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. The two first ships of the French line had been dismasted within a quarter of an hour after the commencement of the action; and the others had in that time suffered so severely that victory was already certain. The third, fourth, and fifth were taken possession of at half-past eight.