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 Negresse (1799) HMS Negresse (1799) HMS "Negresse" was a tartane that the French Navy requisitioned at Marseilles in March 1798 and used as an aviso in the Egyptian campaign. The Royal Navy captured her in 1799 and took her into service. She participated in the defense at the siege of Acre later that year and in 1801 at the landing of British troops at Aboukir Bay. The Royal Navy sold her in 1802. On 17 August 1798 "Negresse" was one of seven avisos in port at Alexandria. "Negresse" was one of a flotilla of seven vessels that Commodore Sir Sidney Smith in