Page "Battle of the Nile" Paragraph 37

It has never been firmly established how the fire on Orient broke out, but one common account is that jars of oil and paint had been left on the poop deck, rather than properly stowed away after paintwork on the ship's hull had been completed shortly before the battle.

Burning wadding from one of the British ships is believed to have floated onto the poop deck and ignited the paint.

The fire rapidly spread through the admiral's cabin and into a ready magazine that stored carcass ammunition that was designed to burn more fiercely in water than in air.

Conversely, Fleet Captain Honoré Ganteaume later reported the cause as an explosion on the quarterdeck, preceded by a series of minor fires on the main deck among the ship's boats.

Whatever its origin, the fire spread rapidly though the ship's rigging, unchecked by the fire pumps aboard which had been smashed by British shot.

A second blaze then began at the bow, trapping hundreds of sailors in the ship's waist.

Subsequent archaeological investigation found debris scattered over of seabed and evidence that the ship was wracked by two huge explosions one after the other.

Although hundreds of men dived into the sea to escape the flames, fewer than 100 survived the blast: approximately 70 survivors were picked up by British boats, including the wounded staff officer Léonard-Bernard Motard.

Very few others, including Ganteaume, managed to reach the shore on rafts.

The remainder of the crew, numbering over a thousand men, were killed, including Captain Luc-Julien-Joseph Casabianca and his twelve year old son Giocante.