ships made an attempt to cut off , trailing in the British rear. Cornwallis dropped back to support Mars, while Captain Robert Stopford of HMS Phaeton began making signals implying a British fleet was in sight. When French lookouts spotted distant topsails, Villaret de Joyeuse decided that Cornwallis's actions meant that a British fleet was approaching to support him, and called off the pursuit. There was no British fleet in the vicinity; the topsails were those of a convoy of British merchantmen. Irish waters Bellerophon returned to England in June, before departing to patrol the Western Approaches until September. She entered Portsmouth Dockyard again in October and underwent a refit costing £8,103. She resumed patrol and blockade duty in the Western Approaches in January 1796, at first under Cranstoun, but from April effectively under the acting-captaincy of Lieutenant John Loring. Cranstoun's replacement, Captain Henry D'Esterre Darby, arrived to take command in September. Blockade duty continued until early January 1797, when news reached the fleet that a French expedition had appeared off Ireland. Caught off guard, the Admiralty ordered Bellerophon and a number of other ships to patrol off Bantry Bay. By then the French expedition had been dispersed by bad weather, and after three weeks on patrol, Bellerophon put into Cork where she rendezvoused with the Irish squadron under Admiral Robert Kingsmill. Shortly after her return to Spithead in early March, Bellerophon was given new orders by the Admiralty. She sailed on 17 March, bound for Cadiz to join Sir John Jervis's Mediterranean Fleet blockading the port. Mediterranean duties Bellerophon rendezvoused with Jervis's fleet in the Bay of Cadiz on 30 May 1797. Three days later she was visited for the only time by Horatio Nelson, then a rear-admiral and in command of the inshore squadron of the blockading fleet. Bellerophon was with the fleet in the Bay of Cadiz until October, when Jervis took it to sea to patrol between Cape Trafalgar and Cape St. Vincent. These duties lasted until late May 1798, when Bellerophon was assigned to a detached squadron under Captain Thomas Troubridge and ordered to rendezvous with and reinforce Nelson's squadron. Nelson was in the Mediterranean hunting for a large French fleet which had sailed from Toulon carrying troops. The French had embarked on a complex land and naval campaign in the Mediterranean, with the ultimate aim of launching an invasion and occupation of Egypt. The