Meanwhile a woeful mishap had befallen Nelson's chosen brother-in-arms, Troubridge. His ship, the "Culloden," had been some distance from the main body of the fleet when the latter rounded the shoal, and, doing her own piloting, ran upon its outer extremity at a quarter before seven. There she stuck, despite all the efforts of her most able commander, until two o'clock the next morning, when the battle was over. There also, however, she served as a beacon to the two remaining ships, "Alexander" and "Swiftsure," who had to make the perilous passage in the dark. These vessels, with the "Leander," fifty, arriving after eight o'clock, at a critical moment of the battle, played the part of a reserve in a quarter where the British were meeting with disaster.
Neither the "Bellerophon" nor the "Majestic" was equally matched with the French ship opposed to it; but the "Bellerophon" especially, having to do with a vessel double her own force and having brought up fairly abreast, where she got her full fire, was soon nearly a wreck. In three quarters of an hour her main and mizzen masts were shot away, and in thirty minutes more, unable longer to endure her punishment, the cable was cut and she wore out of action. As she did so, the foremast also fell, and, with forty-nine killed and one hundred and forty-eight wounded, out of a ship's company of six hundred and fifty men, the "Bellerophon" drifted down the line, receiving the successive broadsides of the French rear. As she thus passed, without flag or light, the "Swiftsure" came up. Withholding his fire, Captain Hallowell hailed, and finding her to be a British ship, let go at once his anchor, bringing up on the starboard bow of the "Orient." Immediately afterwards the "Alexander" arrived and anchored on the port quarter of the three-decker, while the "Leander," with the discretion becoming her size, placed herself on the port bow of the "Franklin," the next ahead to the "Orient," in a position of comparative impunity, and thus raked both the French ships. The French centre was thus in its turn the victim of a concentration, similar to that with which the action began in the van, and destined to result in a frightful catastrophe.