Bouvet and Suffren were to attack the fortresses on the Asian side of the straits, while Gaulois and Charlemagne were to silence the batteries on the European side. Mistakenly believing the Ottoman guns to have been largely neutralized by the British bombardment, Guépratte led his ships to within of the inner fortresses and engaged in an artillery duel. Suffren and Bouvet operated as a pair, taking alternating passes at high speed to make it more difficult for the Ottoman gunners to score hits. Nevertheless, by 14:00, Bouvet had taken several hits and two of her casemate guns had been knocked out. A serious fire had also been started on her bridge, though she had succeeded in neutralizing the Hamidieh battery. In the course of the attack on the fortresses, Bouvet sustained eight hits from Turkish artillery fire. Her forward turret was disabled after the propellant gas extractor broke down. At around 13:45, de Robeck had ordered Guépratte to withdraw his ships so their British counterparts could take their turn against the Ottoman fortifications. Bouvet was at that time battling the fort at Namazieh, and her commander, (Ship of the line captain) Rageot de la Touche, initially did not respond to Guépratte's instruction to follow Suffren out of the narrows. After Guépratte again ordered him to break off contact, de la Touche turned Bouvet south to withdraw. Shortly thereafter, Bouvet was rocked by a major explosion, followed by a large cloud of red-black smoke; observers aboard the other ships could not immediately tell whether she had been hit by an Ottoman shell, torpedoed by a shore-mounted torpedo battery, or if she had struck a mine. The escorting destroyers and picket boats raced to the scene to pick up her crew, but in the span of just two minutes, Bouvet capsized and sank. A total of 75 of her crew were pulled from the water; 24 officers and 619 enlisted men died in the sinking. Most of the survivors were rescued by the British destroyer . The ship was in poor condition at the time due to her age, which likely contributed to her rapid sinking, though there was some speculation that her ammunition magazine exploded. Guépratte himself remarked that "that ship must have had poor stability." It was later determined that Bouvet had struck a mine, which was part of a field that had been freshly laid a week before the