JOHN PAUL JONES AND THE _BONHOMME RICHARD_
A CONDEMNED INDIAMAN, ILL-SHAPED AND ROTTEN, FITTED AS A
MAN-O’-WAR--A DISHEARTENING CRUISE WITH INCAPABLE AND MUTINOUS
ASSOCIATES--ATTEMPT TO TAKE LEITH, AND THE SCOTCH PARSON’S
PRAYER--MEETING THE _SERAPIS_--WHEN JOHN PAUL JONES HAD “NOT YET
BEGUN TO FIGHT”; WHEN HE HAD “GOT HER NOW”; WHEN HE WOULD NOT
“SURRENDER TO A DROP OF WATER”--READY WIT OF RICHARD DALE--WORK OF
A BRIGHT MARINE--A BATTLE WON BY SHEER PLUCK AND PERSISTENCE.
The one sea-fight of the American struggle for liberty that is of
unfailing interest was that in which John Paul Jones, in the _Bonhomme
Richard_, whipped the British frigate _Serapis_. And the student need
not go far to seek the reason for this interest, because it is found
in the fact that it was the man that won, and neither the ship nor the
crew. It was won in spite of such obstacles as no other man has ever
been obliged to face at sea. It was a victory typical of the ultimate
success of the American cause, for it was a victory that was literally
dragged out of the breakers of destruction.
John Paul Jones reached Brest, France, after his brilliant cruise
in the _Ranger_, on May 8, 1778. It was not until February 4, 1779,
that he was again ordered in command of a ship. The delay was due,
of course, to the utter lack of funds to the account of the American
commissioners in France. France, however, was at war with England, and
to the French court Jones applied, time and again, but without success
until after he happened to read one of Franklin’s old “Almanacks”
containing “Poor Richard’s Maxims.” Therein he read that wise saying:
“If you wish to have any business done faithfully and expeditiously, go
and do it yourself.”
This is worth telling, first, because Jones acted on this advice, and
on going to Paris was so well received that he got a ship. It is also
worth telling because the maxim made such a deep impression on Jones
that, having been placed in command of a ship, he changed her name
to “Poor Richard,” which, when translated into French, is _Bonhomme
Richard_. That the _Bonhomme Richard_ will float in history so long as
a record of sails exists scarce need be said.
A most remarkable vessel was this that was transferred to the use of
the American commander. On reaching L’Orient, where she was lying, he
found her a huge, wall-sided merchantman that had ended her usefulness
as an India trader, and was now to be transferred to another use, just
as worn-out ships in these days become coal barges in the Atlantic
coasting trade. She had an enormously high poop and an enormously high
forecastle. Her masts were short, her sails were squat, and her bows
and stern were as blunt as those of an Erie Canal boat. But, worst of
all, she was so old that the life was out of all of her timbers, and
some of them were wholly rotten.
Nevertheless, this energetic sailorman set about fitting her for a
warship where a man of ordinary enthusiasm would have hesitated about
trusting himself afloat offshore in her. What labor fitting her for sea
implied may be inferred from the fact that, after a look at her, “he
hastened to Bordeaux to order the casting of the cannon.”
As an Indiaman the ship had carried guns on her main deck. The guns had
been removed, and Jones went to Bordeaux to get eighteen-pounders to
put there, but finding it would take too long to provide them, he was
forced to content himself with twelve-pounders. On the forecastle and
the quarterdeck he mounted nine-pounders--four forward and four aft.
Then, as the ship stood high out of water, he went down on the deck
below the main and had six ports cut through on each side, and for
these he procured six eighteen-pounders, which were installed, three on
each side, leaving three empty ports on each side--ports which, though
empty, served the purpose of making the enemy think his ship more
powerful than it really was. As the event showed, it was not even as
powerful as Jones supposed it was. But, worst of all among the perils
of such a voyage as was proposed (had Jones been a man to calculate
perils), was that found in the heterogeneous character of his crew
when shipped. American naval ships have since had as curious mixtures
as this one did, but it is worth noting that, besides Americans, it
contained men from England, Ireland, and Scotland; from Norway, France,
Spain, Portugal, Malta, and the Portuguese Islands; from Africa, India,
and the Malayan Peninsula. With such a crew as this, and short-handed
at that, Captain Jones had to go to sea; but, as will be told further
on, he got some recruits of a stamp worth having. Meantime, while
fitting out the _Bonhomme Richard_, he was joined by Master’s Mate
Richard Dale, who had escaped from the terrors of the British prison.
Dale shipped with Jones as master’s mate, but he was what would be
called in the slang of these days a “hustler,” and before the ship
sailed the discriminating eye of the master had picked him out for
first lieutenant. Next to Jones, the credit of the great fight that
followed was due to the unwearied zeal and the undaunted courage of
this man.
[Illustration: _From an engraving by Dodson after the portrait by
Wood._]
Meantime arrangements had been making to give Captain Jones a fleet
instead of a single ship. The Congress had built a frigate of
thirty-two guns--she carried thirty-six, however, all told--which,
because of the recently formed alliance between France and the United
States, was named the _Alliance_. As a further compliment to the French
one Pierre Landais, a French naval lieutenant, was placed in command of
her. It was a pleasant thing to compliment France, but disastrous to
appoint Landais, for he had a vein of insanity in him due to brooding
over his previous failure to gain promotion in the service of his own
country. The _Alliance_ was detailed to carry Lafayette home to France
after his service in America, and this duty she performed, although
she was narrowly saved from capture when a number of Englishmen in her
crew mutinied--a crime, by the way, for which no penalty was inflicted,
because of the noble generosity of Lafayette. The _Alliance_ was
ordered to sail under Captain Jones. To these was added a merchant ship
called the _Pallas_, commanded by Capt. Denis Nicholas Cottineau. She
was armed with thirty-two guns. Then a brig, called the _Vengeance_,
Captain Ricot (also a Frenchman), was secured, and then the squadron
was completed with a man-o’-war cutter carrying eighteen small guns.
It was at first intended that Lafayette, with a considerable force
of soldiers, should go with the fleet and make a flying assault upon
Liverpool, but this project was abandoned because the French meditated
a more formidable assault upon the somewhat “tight little isle.” Then a
general cruise against British commerce was proposed and carried out.
But before any detail of this cruise is given a paragraph must be
inserted here from a letter of instructions which Franklin, as the head
of the American commissioners in France, sent to Captain Jones. When
considered in connection with the act of Parliament by which American
prisoners in England were starved, it is worth printing in italics:
“_As many of your officers and people have recently escaped from
English prisons, you are to be particularly attentive to their
conduct toward the prisoners which the fortune of war may throw into
your hands, lest the resentment of the more than barbarous usage by
the English in many places toward the Americans, should occasion a
retaliation and imitation of what ought rather to be detested and
avoided for the sake of humanity and for the honor of our country._”
It was on February 4, 1779, that Captain Jones was ordered to the
_Bonhomme Richard_. It was not until June 19th that he was able to sail
with his little fleet. He had a right to suppose that his troubles
were now at an end, but as a matter of fact they were only begun.
Capt. Pierre Landais was, from the start, mutinous. He had claimed
superiority of rank, and this not being allowed, he was determined to
thwart his chief in every way possible. On the first night out he ran
the _Alliance_ foul of the _Bonhomme Richard_ by steering across her
bows, carrying away his own mizzenmast and a lot of the headgear of
the _Bonhomme Richard_. At this a return to port became necessary, and
it was two months before the investigation by the authorities and the
repairs were completed.
Unfortunate as this mishap appeared at the time, it proved in the end a
blessing, for while lying in port 119 Americans came over from England
through an exchange of prisoners, and more than 100 of them shipped
with Captain Jones. In the fight that was to come not a man of these
could have been spared.
When, on August 14, 1779, the fleet once more sailed from L’Orient,
it had been augmented by the _Monsieur_ and the _Granville_, two very
good French privateers. But, although they added to the number of
guns, they were a source of trouble. When four days out the _Monsieur_
captured a Holland ship that was in the hands of a British crew. The
captain of the _Monsieur_ appropriated this as the private property of
his ship instead of the property of the squadron. When Jones interfered
the two privateers left the squadron. As they were Frenchmen many of
their countrymen in the fleet sympathized with them, and discontent was
thus spread in the crews.
On August 21st a brigantine was captured and sent to L’Orient. On the
23d, off Cape Clear, the _Bonhomme Richard_, during a calm, was set
toward some rocks by a current. When some rowboats were lowered with a
line to tow her clear some Englishmen in one of them cut the tow-line
and made a successful dash for shore. Sailing Master Lunt pursued them
in another boat, was lost in a fog, and was finally obliged to go
ashore. He was, of course, sent to Mill prison.
On the 24th Captain Landais came on board the flagship, and in a
most insolent manner accused Captain Jones of losing the men through
incapacity. He declared that “he was the only American in the squadron
and was determined to follow his own opinion in chasing when and
where he thought proper, and in every other matter that concerned the
service.”
And he did it, too. Had he done no worse Captain Jones would have been
thankful.
[Illustration: Pierre Landais.
_From a copy, at the Lenox Library, of a miniature._]
On the 26th the squadron separated in a gale, only the _Vengeance_
and a captured brigantine remaining in sight of the flagship, but on
September 1st, while the flagship was chasing a vessel near the Flannen
Islands, the _Alliance_ was sighted with a prize she had taken. The
prize proved very valuable, for she was well loaded with all sorts of
rigging and stores that were in route to Quebec for use in fitting out
a fleet on the American lakes.
On September 2d the _Pallas_ was sighted, and two days later a Shetland
pilot was taken, and Captain Jones called a council of his captains to
consider the news obtained from him. Captain Landais refused to attend
this, even when a written order to do so was sent him. However, he
continued with the squadron that then sailed down the east coast of
Scotland, until September 8th, when his vessel disappeared once more.
The squadron now consisted of but two vessels beside the flagship--the
_Vengeance_ and the _Pallas_. The _Cerf_ had disappeared in the gale.
On the 13th the Cheviot Hills were descried, and on nearing the coast
next day a ship and a brig were captured. From the crews of these it
was learned that there was no land battery to defend Leith, and that
the only armed vessel in the firth or bay on which it stands carried
but twenty guns.
Captain Jones called the captains of the other two ships on board and
proposed an attack on Leith. “It is a matter of the utmost importance
to teach the enemy humanity by some exemplary stroke of retaliation,”
he said. He explained that they could at once capture some people of
note to hold as hostages, and could so alarm the nation that public
attention would be drawn to the north and away from the south coast,
where the French were really preparing to invade. The French captains
hesitated and argued half the night away, until Jones proposed to levy
a heavy contribution on both Leith and Edinburgh that lay just behind
Leith. Then they agreed with enthusiasm, but they had really lost their
opportunity.
Returning to their ships, the captains made sail for Leith. The
little squadron succeeded in entering the firth, and got as far as
Kirkcaldy. They had, meantime, been seen from the coasts roundabout,
and especially from the heights of Edinburgh, so that the country-side
was in a terrible state of alarm. But luck was against the fleet, and
the only result of the attempt on Leith that is worth mention is a good
story of the parson of the Kirkcaldy Church.
[Illustration: Leith Pier and Harbor.
_From an old engraving._]
The tide had run well out as the fleet approached Kirkcaldy. Some
of the women of the town, at the first alarm of the coming of “the
pirate,” ran to the parson for protection. In answer to their cries
he picked up the armchair in his study, and with it ran down to the
low-water mark on the beach. He was in a perspiration when he got there
and very much out of breath, but as his flock gathered around him he
plumped himself down in his chair, facing the sea, and appealed to
Almighty God as follows:
“Now, Lord, dinna ye think it is a shame for ye to send this vile
pirate to rob our folk o’ Kirkcaldy? For ye ken they are puir enough
already, and hae naething to spare. They are all fairly guid, and it
wad be a pity to serve them in sic a wa’. The wa’ the wind blows, he’ll
be here in a jiffy, and wha kens what he may do? He is nane too guid
for onything. Muckle’s the mischief he has done already. Ony pocket
gear they hae gathered thegither, he will gang wi’ the whole o’t, and
maybe burn their houses, tak’ their cla’es, and strip them to their
sarks! And wae’s me! Wha kens but the bluidy villain may tak’ their
lives? The puir women are maist frightened out o’ their wuts, and the
bairns skreeking after them. I canna tho’t it! I canna tho’t it! _I
hae been long a faithfu’ servant to ye, Lord_; but gin ye dinna turn
the wind about, and blow the scoundrel out o’ our gate, I’ll nae stir
a foot, but just sit here until the tide comes in and drowns me. _Sae
tak’ your wull o’t, Lord!_”
While the parson prayed came one of the sudden squalls down from the
mountains. The squalls are common enough at that season, but the
parson’s flock, on seeing the bay flecked over with the white foam
ripped by a contrary wind from the tiny waves, with one accord shouted
that the parson’s prayer had been answered. The parson was so proud of
his prayer that he wrote it out for his admirers, and so it has been
preserved for the amusement of posterity.
As the old parson told the Lord, “the pirate” would have been upon
them all “in a jiffy”--had he not been delayed by the argument with
his captains, he would have reached Leith before the wind came out of
the west. It seems singular at the first look that Jones should have
consulted the captains at all, but it must be told that he was obliged
to do so because the jealous Landais had, before sailing, succeeded in
getting the French minister to order such consultations when matters
of great importance were in hand. The squadron was sailing under the
American flag, but it had French orders.
On leaving the Firth of Forth the French captains became mutinous
through fear of the British fleet sure to be sent from the south when
the tale of the attempt on Leith was told there. They gave the captain
until the 22d to make sail for other waters, and threatened to leave
him if he did not do so. But they thought better of it afterwards.
The _Pallas_ did, indeed, disappear on the 22d while the squadron was
near Flamborough Head, but on the morning of the 23d the flagship, with
the _Vengeance_, fell in with her at daylight and found the _Alliance_
with her.
It should be told, by the way, that on the 22d, while the _Bonhomme
Richard_ was lying close in shore, she was accosted by a man in a
small boat who said he had been sent by a member of Parliament living
near the coast to ask for some powder and bullets for defence against
“the pirate Jones,” who was known to be on the coast. The _Bonhomme
Richard_ had been mistaken for a British warship. Captain Jones sent a
barrel of powder ashore with a message of regret saying that he had no
projectiles of proper size.
[Illustration: _From an engraving by Guttenberg, after a drawing by
Notté, in the collection of Mr. W. C. Crane._]
But the day of all days in the career of John Paul Jones, the 23d of
September, 1779, was now at hand. At noon, as the four vessels of
the squadron were jogging along to the north, they saw with mingled
feeling of consternation and hope a fleet that numbered forty-two ships
come around Flamborough Head. If this was a war fleet the fate of the
squadron under the American flag was sealed, and he who was called in
British state papers “the pirate Jones, a rebel subject and criminal
of the state,” would hang at Execution Dock. If it was a merchant
fleet under an ordinary convoy the condition of affairs would be
different--it would be a most exhilarating condition of affairs. There
was a light breeze at the time, and the big fleet was well inshore. As
Captain Jones, after a prolonged examination, concluded that he had
merchantmen in a convoy of two frigates before him, he saw a small boat
pull hastily off to the larger of the two frigates and a man mounted
from it to her deck. A moment later three signal flags were fluttering
from the maintruck of the frigate and a gun was fired to windward--a
signal to the merchantmen to seek safety in flight.
In wild confusion the merchantmen obeyed, scattering hither and yon;
but the frigates, one of which was the _Serapis_, Captain Pearson,
of fifty guns, and the other the _Countess of Scarborough_, Captain
Piercy, of twenty-two six-pounders, bravely bore down to meet the
enemy, in spite of the fact that the Yankee fleet numbered four to
their two. The captains of these two English ships were so far worthy
foes of any naval commander that ever sailed.
Captain Jones now had what appeared an opportunity to not only capture
two good warships of the enemy without a too severe fight, but, with
good luck, some of the convoy. But once more the insubordination of
Landais on the _Alliance_ became manifest, and well-nigh fatally. He
not only refused to obey the signal of the flagship to fall in line,
but he sailed up near the _Pallas_ and said to her captain:
“If it is a ship of more than fifty guns we have nothing to do but to
run away.”
Fortunately, Captain Cottineau saw that more glory was to be obtained
by fighting the enemy than in quarrelling with the flag officer, and he
gallantly sailed to meet the smaller British frigate.
The _Alliance_ was held aloof. The _Vengeance_ was too far away to take
part in the battle.
In the movements of the fighting ships that followed, the wind was so
light that they merely drifted over the oil-smooth water. The sun sank
out of sight behind the hills and daylight faded away into darkness so
that even the lofty towers of canvas were seen only as the faintest
shadows. But each side was hunting for the other, and eventually, in
the profound silence of a night at sea, the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the
_Serapis_ drew near each other. When but ten yards away from each other
a voice from the _Serapis_ demanded:
“What ship is that?”
“I can’t hear what you say,” replied Jones, wishing to get nearer
before opening fire. For a moment the ships drifted on in silence as
before, and then the voice was heard once more through the night:
“What ship is that? Answer, or I shall be under the necessity of firing
into you.”
Instead of answering the hail, Captain Jones in a low voice passed
the word to fire, and the next instant the spurting flames from the
American guns were answered, as it were, in the same breath by those of
the British, and the night battle was begun. It was then exactly seven
o’clock.
At the first fire two of the three eighteen-pounders in the lower-deck
broadside of the _Bonhomme Richard_ burst. “We could see that as we
sighted for our next broadside, because we could see how they hove
up the gun-deck above them,” wrote Capt. Francis Heddart, who was a
midshipman on the _Serapis_ during the fight. And the midshipman and
his men noted with glee that thereafter none of these, the heaviest
guns on the Yankee’s ship, was fired. The crews of the two guns that
burst were all either killed or seriously wounded, and the men on that
deck were called up to the main deck to help work the guns there. And
most remarkable results followed on this move.
[Illustration: The Engagement between the _Bonhomme Richard_ and
_Serapis_.
_From an engraving by Hamilton of a drawing by Collier._]
The _Serapis_ had entered the fight close-hauled on the port tack and
to leeward. The _Bonhomme Richard_, running free, sailed across the
enemy’s bow and then came to the wind, while the enemy veered off a
little, and thereafter for one hour the two ships drifted side by side,
drawing slowly nearer to each other, while the men, with desperate
energy, worked their guns. But there was a vast difference in the guns.
“We had ten eighteen-pounders in each battery below,” wrote an officer
of the _Serapis_ afterward. “I do not see why any shot should have
failed.”
And no shot of that battery did fail during the first hour, and when
they failed later it was because they had shot the six ports of the
_Bonhomme Richard_ into one huge chasm, not only on the side of her
next to them, but on the further side as well, so that when they fired
some of the battery the balls passed clear and fell into the sea
beyond. There was not a splinter of the American ship left in front of
them. They had not only cut away the walls of the _Bonhomme Richard_;
they had practically cleared her lower gundeck. There was no one left
there save only a few marines that guarded the line of boys passing
cartridges from the magazine up to the guns on the upper deck.
Nor was that the worst effect the English fire had had upon the
_Bonhomme Richard_. Taking advantage of the rolling of the vessels in
the long gentle swell, the English had been able to send a half dozen
of their eighteen-pound shot into the _Bonhomme Richard_ below the
water-line, and she was “leaking like a basket.”
By this time the _Serapis_, having the wind of the _Bonhomme Richard_,
drew ahead, intending to lie across the latter’s bows and rake her.
But the captain miscalculated his distance, got too far down in front,
yawed off, and then putting his helm alee, came to the wind fair in
front of the _Bonhomme Richard_. A minute later the _Bonhomme Richard_
ran her jibboom over the stern of the _Serapis_, and then, because no
great gun would bear on either side, the fire, save for an occasional
musket shot, ceased.
For a moment the two ships hung together in silence, and then the
voice of Captain Pearson was heard asking if the American ship had
surrendered. And John Paul Jones replied:
“I have not yet begun to fight.”
By the shifting of sails the two ships drifted apart. Once more the
commander of the _Serapis_ strove to get into position to rake, but as
the _Serapis_ wore around, the _Bonhomme Richard_ forged ahead. Jones
was determined to keep close to the enemy, and soon the jibboom of the
_Serapis_ fouled the starboard mizzen rigging of the _Bonhomme Richard_.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF THE SERAPIS-BONHOMME RICHARD BATTLE
_Note._--At 7.30 o’clock, when John Paul Jones said, “I have not yet
begun to fight,” the bow of his ship was against the stern of the
_Serapis_. He then backed his sails and went astern while the enemy,
with full sails, went ahead until, say, 7.45, when the _Serapis_
backed her foretopsail and wore around, bow from the wind, and came
back. Meantime Jones had filled away, and the two ships got together
at, say, 8.10 o’clock just where they had first touched. They then
drifted westerly until 9 o’clock, when the _Serapis_ anchored.
]
Turning to Carpenter Stacy, who was near at hand, Jones ordered a
hawser brought. When it came he helped with his own hands to lash
the jibboom of the _Serapis_ fast to the mizzenmast of the _Bonhomme
Richard_. While doing this the hawser fouled in some way and Stacy
began to curse.
“Don’t swear, Mr. Stacy,” said Jones. “In another moment we all may be
in eternity, but let us do our duty.”
They did their duty, and the ships were held hard and fast, and John
Paul Jones emphasized his faith in what had been done by saying:
“Well done, my brave lads. We have got her now.”
And so they had in one way. One anchor of the _Serapis_ dropped over
on the _Bonhomme Richard_, and was secured where it would help to hold
her, and more lashings were passed elsewhere. Even when the _Serapis_
anchored she could not get away. But in the sense of capturing the
_Serapis_, never was such a triumphant cry raised with a less hope of
accomplishing the result.
The ships now lay with their starboard sides together. During the last
half hour or so the crew of the _Serapis_ had been working their port
battery. When they ran across to work their starboard guns they were
unable to open their ports amidships because the ships were touching
each other, so they fired through their own closed ports, blowing the
port-lids off.
On the _Bonhomme Richard_ the men were no less determined. Their
remaining guns were fought even with cheerful vigor. Lieut. Richard
Dale used to tell how, on going down on the gundeck, he saw a gun’s
crew of his men racing with a crew over in the _Serapis_ to see which
would get loaded first. The ships were side to side and the guns were
muzzle-loaders. Each crew, to get its charge set home, had to poke
its long-handled rammer through the enemy’s port before it could be
inserted into the gun’s bore.
“Fair play, you damned Yankee,” roared an English gunner, poking his
rammer through the Yankee’s port.
“Mind your eye, Johnny Bull,” replied the Yankee, following the same
movement.
Alas! the “Johnny Bull” had been a trifle ahead of the “damned Yankee,”
and firing his gun, he dismounted that on the _Bonhomme Richard_.
The British were, in fact, soon quite as successful in their handling
of the main-deck battery as they had been with that on the lower deck.
Every twelve-pounder but one on the _Bonhomme Richard_ was silenced in
one way and another, and so, too, were the little nine-pounders on the
forecastle. There were then but two cannon left in service on the
_Bonhomme Richard_, the two nine-pounders on the fighting side of the
quarter-deck.
[Illustration: The _Serapis_ and the _Bonhomme Richard_.
_From an engraving by Lerpinière after a drawing by Fitler._]
John Paul Jones had been working these two with his own hands, loading
one with double shot to cut down the enemy’s mainmast, and the other
with grape and canister to sweep away the crew on her deck.
In this desperate strait and when just in the act of ordering another
nine-pounder brought from the off side that he might use it on the crew
of the _Serapis_, his chief surgeon came up from below to announce that
the water was coming in so fast as to float the wounded, and to ask
that the ship be surrendered before she sank with all hands.
Turning on the surgeon with perfect self-possession, Captain Jones
replied, as if astounded at the request:
“What, Doctor! Would you have me strike to a drop of water? Here, help
me get this gun over.”
The doctor ran back to the wounded without delay, but Jones got the gun
over, and he served it, too.
A squad of twenty marines under Colonel de Chamilard had fled from the
quarter-deck, where they had been stationed to pick off the enemy’s gun
crews.
The enemy made an attempt to board. John Paul Jones, with a few men,
pikes in hand, stopped him. The moonlight was now bright, and seeing
this man before them--this “pirate”--they quailed.
Meantime matters had been going from bad to worse below decks on the
_Bonhomme Richard_. Not only was she steadily filling with water; the
blazing wads from the enemy’s guns had set her afire in several places.
These fires spread rapidly in spite of the efforts of some men sent
below.
And then came the _Alliance_ under Captain Landais. Sailing across
the bow of the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the stern of the _Serapis_, of
course, as they lay together, he fired a broadside. The forecastle of
the _Bonhomme Richard_ received the greater part of the projectiles,
and Midshipman Caswell was killed, while ten or a dozen seamen were
killed and wounded. Private signals were set, and a score of voices
yelled to the _Alliance_ that they were firing into the wrong ship;
but coming down on the broadside of the _Bonhomme Richard_, she fired
again, so that the cry arose:
“The _Alliance_ has been captured by the British and is now attacking
us.”
It is likely that this was the only moment when John Paul Jones thought
of yielding, but as the _Alliance_ drew off he continued the fight not
only against the enemy, but against the fire and water in his own ship.
And more to be feared were the fire and water. The ship was filling,
and when the carpenter tried the water, he found it five feet deep
in her hold, while the fire was rapidly approaching the magazine.
On coming from the well, he said disconsolately that the ship would
sink. At that the Master at Arms liberated the prisoners, two or
three hundred in number, who were confined below, and told them to
save themselves. The struggle and confusion that followed as these
men came from their quarters were frightful. Here were, indeed, many
more English subjects running free than all the crew of the _Bonhomme
Richard_ who were below decks. There were almost as many as the entire
crew. Then the gunner, who had heard the remark about sinking and had
seen the prisoners liberated, ran to the poop-deck, and in a panic of
fear strove to find the signal halliards that he might haul down the
flag in token of surrender. He was shouting as he ran:
“Quarter! for God’s sake, quarter! Our ship is sinking”; but John Paul
Jones heard the words, and turning around, he hurled an empty pistol
at the man’s head, fractured his skull by the blow, and knocked him
headlong down the hatch.
“Do you call for quarter?” shouted Captain Pearson, who had heard the
cry.
“Never!” replied John Paul Jones.
“Then I’ll give you none,” replied Pearson, and the fight went on,
while Jones sent his resourceful lieutenant, Richard Dale, below to see
why the cartridges of powder were no longer coming up, for neither he
nor Dale at this moment knew that the prisoners had been released.
But when he saw the condition of affairs below, Dale, instead of
quailing, with ready wit told the prisoners that the _Serapis_ was
just sinking and their only hope of life was in keeping the _Bonhomme
Richard_ afloat. At this the whole mob of them went to the pumps and to
fighting the fire. They worked in gangs till they dropped from sheer
exhaustion, when other gangs took their places.
There was one of them--a captain of a captured ship--who did not
believe the story. He climbed through the ports to the _Serapis_ and
told of the hopeless condition of the American crew. But his story was
discredited because of an extraordinary occurrence on the _Serapis_. As
the ships lay together the mainyard of the _Bonhomme Richard_ stretched
fair over the main hatch of the _Serapis_. Noticing this fact, a bright
marine in the maintop of the _Bonhomme Richard_ took advantage of it.
The marines in the tops had been of the utmost service in clearing the
decks of the enemy already, but this man, with a leather bucket of hand
grenades and a candle, climbed out on the mainyard until over the hatch
of the _Serapis_, and then, securing his bucket to the sheet-block, he
began dropping the lighted grenades into her hold.
The hand grenade is a shell near the weight of a baseball. The first
one he dropped exploded on a great heap of gun cartridges that had
accumulated along the lower deck behind the guns. A tremendous
explosion followed.
“It was awful! Some twenty of our men were fairly blown to pieces.
There were other men who were stripped naked, with nothing on but the
collars of their shirts and wristbands. Farther aft there was not so
much powder, perhaps, and the men were scorched or burned more than
they were wounded. I do not know how I escaped, but I do know that
there was hardly a man forward of my guns who did escape.” So wrote
Captain Heddart, already quoted. The explosion also set the _Serapis_
on fire.
[Illustration: Paul Jones Capturing the _Serapis_.
_From an engraving of the picture by Chappel._]
That was the decisive moment of the battle. While the British had been
disabling all but three or four of the guns on the upper deck of the
_Bonhomme Richard_, the men in the tops of the Yankee ship and the
murderous fire of the nine-pounders, which Jones himself had worked,
had gradually driven all the men off the upper deck of the _Serapis_.
That Captain Pearson had escaped injury is a marvel, for he had with
undaunted courage directed the battle from the quarter-deck. But as the
smoke of the great explosion rose through his hatches, he found himself
practically alone, while Jones, with a cocked pistol in hand, was
rallying his men successfully to increase the fire of his upper-deck
guns.
As the British commander saw the fight, he was now without men, and the
other Yankee frigate had but a short time before fired a broadside from
which some balls entered the _Serapis_. Captain Pearson knew nothing
of the treachery on the _Alliance_. He knew nothing (and this was to
his discredit) of the real state of affairs on the lower decks of the
_Bonhomme Richard_. Going to his flag that had been nailed to the mast,
he tore it down with his own hands.
A moment later John Paul Jones saw that the flag was down, and with
such feelings of relief as can scarcely be imagined, gave the order
“cease firing.”