She had already been set alight by French shellfire, and was eventually abandoned by the French prize crew and sank in the middle of the Min River. Their spar torpedoes expended, the two French torpedo boats drifted downriver after making their attack, towards the anchorage of the neutral vessels off Losing Island. Lieutenant Latour had been seriously wounded in the eye during the attack, but he refused an offer of medical assistance from American officers on , explaining that he could not leave his post while the battle was still in progress. Meanwhile, the French cruisers and the ironclad "Triomphante", which joined the French squadron only minutes before the battle began, were making short work of the rest of the Chinese fleet. "Chenhang", "Yongbao", "Feiyun", "Ji'an", "Fusheng" and "Jiansheng" were either sunk or set alight by shellfire from the cruisers "Duguay-Trouin", "Villars" and "d'Estaing". Only "Fupo" and "Yixin" survived the battle without serious damage, by escaping upriver before the gunboats "Lynx", "Aspic" and "Vipère" had a chance to engage them. "Zhenwei" was blown up by a single shell from "Triomphante". Before they were put out of action the outgunned Chinese vessels concentrated their fire on the French flagship "Volta", hoping to kill Courbet and the officers of his entourage. Several sailors aboard the French cruiser were killed or wounded, and shortly after the start of the battle a roundshot ploughed through Courbet's command group on the flagship's bridge, killing the British pilot Thomas and only narrowly missing "capitaine de frégate" Gigon, "Volta"'s captain. A few minutes later splinters from an exploding Chinese shell wounded "lieutenant de vaisseau" Ravel, Courbet's aide-de-camp. The fighting ended at 5p.m., but during the night of 23August the Chinese made a number of unsuccessful attacks with fireships on the French warships, obliging some of them to shift their anchorages to evade them. On the morning of 24 August Courbet issued orders for his ships' landing companies to go ashore with the naval engineers to destroy the Foochow Navy Yard. Preparations were made for a landing, but Courbet then changed his mind, after observing that the Navy Yard was defended by organised groups of Chinese infantry.