Never, since the beginning of time, has there been a fiercer sea-fight
than that between the “Bonhomme Richard” and the “Serapis.” No struggle
has been more dogged--no victory greater.
Three--four times during the night-long battle any other man than Paul
Jones would have struck his colors. His main-deck battery and crews blown
to pieces--his water-line gaping with wounds--his sides battered into
one great chasm--still he fought on. His prisoners released--his masts
tottering--his rudder gone--his ship afire below and aloft, his resistance
was the more desperate. The thought of surrender never occurred to him.
After taking the “Drake” in a gallant fight, burning Whitehaven, and
terrorizing the whole British coast, Paul Jones went to Paris, where a
commission to the converted East Indiaman, the “Bonhomme Richard,” awaited
him. Putting her in the best shape possible, he boldly steered across for
English waters. Paul Jones thirsted for larger game.
When Captain Pearson, with the new frigate “Serapis,” on a fine September
afternoon in 1779, sighted Paul Jones, he signalled his merchant convoy
to scatter, and piped all hands, who rushed jubilantly to quarters. The
opportunity of his life had come, for the capture of the rebel frigate
meant glory and a baronetcy. But he reckoned without his host.
Across the oily waters came the cheery pipes of the boatswain’s mate of
the “Richard” as Jones swung her up to meet her adversary, and Pearson
knew his task would not be an easy one. The wind fell so light that the
sun had sunk behind the light on Flamborough Head before the ships drifted
up to fighting distance, and it was dark before they were ready to come to
close quarters. On the “Bonhomme Richard,” Jones’s motley crew, stripped
to the waist, were drawn up at the guns, peering out through the ports at
the dark shadow on the starboard bow they were slowly overhauling.
The decks were sanded, the hammocks piled around the wheel, and there at
the break of the poop stood the captain, trumpet in hand, turning now
and then to give an order to Richard Dale or his midshipmen, quiet and
composed, with the smile on his face men saw before the fight with the
“Drake.” The clumsy hulk rolled to the ground-swell, and the creaking
of the masts and clamping of the sheet-blocks were all that broke the
silence of the night. No excitement was apparent, and the stillness seemed
the greater for an occasional laugh from the gunners, or the rattle of a
cutlass newly settled in its sheath.