By 16: 00, Alexander and Swiftsure were also in sight, although some distance from the main British fleet, and Brueys gave orders to abandon the plan to remain at anchor and instead for his line to set sails, although Blanquet protested the order on the grounds that there were not enough men aboard the French ships to both sail the ships and man the guns.

With the French army ashore, the fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay, a station northeast of Alexandria, in a formation that its commander, Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys D ' Aigalliers, believed established a formidable defensive position.

With Brueys dead and his van and centre defeated, the rear division of the French fleet attempted to break out of the bay, but ultimately only two ships of the line and two frigates escaped, from a total of 17 ships engaged.

He instructed his naval commander, Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys D ' Aigalliers, to anchor in Alexandria harbour, but naval surveyors reported that the channel into the harbour was too shallow and narrow for the larger ships of the French fleet.

When Alexandria harbour proved inadequate for his fleet, Brueys had gathered his captains and discussed their options.

Bonaparte had ordered the fleet to anchor in Aboukir Bay, a shallow and exposed anchorage, but had supplemented the orders with the suggestion that if Aboukir Bay was too dangerous Brueys could sail north to Corfu, leaving only the transports and a handful of lighter warships at Alexandria.

Brueys refused, in the belief that his squadron could provide essential support to the French army on shore, and called his captains aboard his 120-gun flagship Orient to discuss their response should Nelson discover the fleet in its anchorage.

It is possible that Bonaparte envisaged Aboukir Bay as a temporary anchorage: on 27 July he expressed the expectation that Brueys had already transferred his ships to Alexandria and three days later issued orders for the fleet to make for Corfu in preparation for naval operations against the Ottoman territories in the Balkans, although the courier carrying the instructions was intercepted and killed by Bedouin partisans.

Brueys had augmented the fort with his bomb vessels and gunboats, which were anchored among the rocks to the west of the island in a position to give support to the head of the French line.

These shoals were too shallow to permit passage of larger warships, and so Brueys ordered his thirteen ships of the line to form up in a line of battle following the northeastern edge of the shoals to the south of the island, a position that allowed the ships to disembark supplies from their port side while covering the landings with their starboard batteries.

In deploying his ships in this way, Brueys hoped that the British would be forced by the shoals to attack his strong centre and rear, allowing his van to use the prevailing northeasterly wind to counterattack the British once they were engaged.

Brueys ' dispositions had a second significant flaw: the 160 yard gaps between ships were large enough for a British ship to push through and break the French line.

A more pressing problem for Brueys was a lack of food and water for the fleet: Bonaparte had unloaded almost all of the provisions carried aboard and no supplies were reaching the ships from the shore.

To remedy this, Brueys sent foraging parties of 25 men from each ship along the coast to requisition food, dig wells and collect water.

Due to the need for so many sailors to work onshore, Brueys had not deployed any of his lighter warships as scouts, which left him unable to swiftly react to the sudden appearance of the British.

As his ships readied for action, Brueys ordered his captains to gather for a conference on Orient and hastily recalled his shore parties, although most had still not returned by the start of the battle.

Brueys also hoped to lure the British fleet onto the shoals at Aboukir Island, sending the brigs Alerte and Railleur to act as decoys in the shallow waters.

Convinced by this that rather than risk an evening battle in confined waters, the British were planning to wait for the following day, Brueys rescinded his earlier order to sail.

Brueys may have been hoping that the delay would allow him to slip past the British during the night and thus follow Bonaparte's orders not to engage the British fleet directly if it could be avoided.

Shortly after the French order to set sails was abandoned, the British fleet began rapidly approaching once more and Brueys, now expecting to come under attack on that night, ordered each of his ships to also place springs on their anchor cables and prepare for action.

The French suffered too: Admiral Brueys on Orient was severely wounded in the face and hand by flying debris during the opening exchange of fire with Bellerophon.

Orient had also suffered significant damage and Admiral Brueys had been struck in the midriff by a cannonball that almost cut him in half.

Admiral Brueys died fifteen minutes later, remaining on deck and refusing to be carried below by his men.

In addition to Admiral Brueys killed and Admiral Blanquet wounded, four captains died and seven others were seriously wounded.

The War Department wrote Mr. Manuel a letter and said he was a hero.

At this time Harriet wrote in a letter which after their finally landing in India was sent to her mother:

On April 11th he wrote an open letter in The Advocate, making it known `` to the world that Jas. W. Robinson is by his own admission a base liar and a slanderer ''.

But things were worked out in the family and late in August he wrote Miss McCrady an explanatory letter in which he told her that matters at home had been in an unsettled condition after Papa's death and he had not known whether he would stay at home with Mama, accept the Northwestern job, or return to Harvard.

The latter was so upset on learning of the death of Morris, that he wrote Morgan a letter, showing his own warmhearted generosity.

When Quiney and William Parsons wrote to Greville in 1593 asking his consent in the election for bailiff, they sent the letter to Mr. William Sawnders, attendant on the worshipful Mr. Thomas Bushell at Marston.

Sturley on November 4 answered a letter from Quiney written on October 25 which imported, wrote Sturley, `` that our countriman Mr. Wm. Shak. would procure us monei: which I will like of as I shall heare when, wheare & howe: and I prai let not go that occasion if it mai sort to ani indifferent condicions.

Adrian Quiney wrote to his son Richard on October 29 and again perhaps the next day, since the bearer of the letter, the bailiff, was expected to reach London on November 1.

Richard Quiney the younger, a schoolboy of eleven, wrote a letter in Latin asking his father to buy copybooks ( `` chartaceos libellos ) '' ) for him and his brother.

Imagine the searching and the prayer that lay behind the letter the rector wrote after almost a decade of service to this majestic church.

In May, 1803, Ritter, in another flight of fancy, wrote to Oersted a letter that contained a remarkable prophecy.

`` I wrote Bill in my last letter to forget that I had told him that I didn't mean to reconsider my decision not to change my mind -- and he seems to have misunderstood me ''.

After Gagarin became the Greatest Man in the World, for a nation that does not believe in the cult of personality or in careerism, Moreland wrote me a letter in which he said: `` I am not interested in how long a bee can live in a vacuum, or how far it can fly.

So wrote a ten year old student in a letter to his parents from North Country School, Lake Placid, New York.

Still another, annoyed by the brevity of a recently received missive, wrote: `` yore letter was short and sweet, jist like a roasted maget ''.

In a letter to the American Friends Service, Dr. Schweitzer wrote:

Channing wrote this -- in a letter!!

On August 16, 1837, Lincoln wrote Mary a letter suggesting he would not blame her if she ended the relationship.

In a letter to Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee, encouraging him to lead the way in raising black troops, Lincoln wrote, " The bare sight of 50, 000 armed and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once ".

Jefferson wrote in 1785 in a letter to John Jay that

In a letter, Lane wrote, " I do not see anyone to act the money part but myself.

In 2004, the small Ainu community living in Kamchatka Krai wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin, urging him to reconsider any move to award the Southern Kuril Islands to Japan.

A few months before Augustus ’ death in 14, the emperor wrote and sent a letter to Agrippina mentioning how Caligula must be future emperor because at that time, no other child had this name.

" wrote Peter ( in a tone that can only be guessed ) in a letter dated 13 August 1710.

In 1824, Jackson wrote a letter saying that he was born at an uncle's plantation in Lancaster County, South Carolina.