Lloyd's building consists of three main towers and three service towers around a central, rectangular space. Its core is the large Underwriting Room on the ground floor, which houses the Lutine Bell within the Rostrum. Also on the first floor is loss book which for 300 years has had entries of significant losses entered by quill. The Underwriting Room (often simply called "the Room") is overlooked by galleries, forming a high atrium lit naturally through a huge barrel-vaulted glass roof. The first four galleries open onto the atrium space, and are connected by escalators through the middle of the structure. The higher
HMS Trompeuse (1799) HMS Trompeuse (1799) HMS "Trompeuse" was the French privateer "Mercure", captured in 1799. She foundered in the English Channel in 1800. British records on "Mercure" are ambiguous. French records are more informative. Two seminal British references declare that captured "Mercure" in May 1797. However, there is no letter in the "London Gazette" for "Melampus" capturing a "Mercure" in 1797, which by itself is not unusual, but two other sources, one of them a letter in the "London Gazette" by the captain of "Melampus", puts his capture of a "Mercure" in February 1799 (see below). Winfield has "Mercure" being named "Trompeuse"