Battle of the Nile 1798: Foley's Inshore Gambit and L'Orient Explodes

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In the summer of 1798 a French armada carried Napoleon Bonaparte's army, along with 167 scientists and scholars, from Toulon toward Egypt, a strategic flank meant to threaten British India. On the way Napoleon seized Malta and its treasure. Horatio Nelson, already missing his right arm and blind in his right eye, gave chase, but a gale dismasted his flagship and scattered his frigates. On the night of 22 June he overtook the French unseen, reached an empty Alexandria and left days before Napoleon landed.

Vice Admiral Brueys anchored his 13 warships in Aboukir Bay, trusting the shoals to guard his landward side. He misjudged the shallows, used only bow anchors so the ships swung apart, and left the landward guns cluttered. Nelson attacked at sunset on 1 August. Captain Thomas Foley in Goliath slipped around the head of the French line and anchored inshore, and other ships followed, catching the van between two fires. Nelson was struck in the head and carried below, but his captains fought on. Around 10 p.m. the 120-gun flagship L'Orient exploded, and both sides stopped firing for 10 to 15 minutes.

Nelson's dinners with his captains during the long hunt gave them a shared plan, the band of brothers.
British crews hauled spring cables to swing their anchored ships and aim broadsides.
Four lanterns hoisted on every British mast told friend from foe in the dark.
Of 17 French ships engaged, only two ships of the line and two frigates escaped, stranding Napoleon's army in Egypt.
Napoleon's letter permitting Brueys to move the fleet to Corfu never arrived; its courier was killed on the coast.

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