continued in full measure, and to all his troubles Jones gave wide and
frequent publicity. All the ships of his squadron, with the exception of
the Alliance, were French, largely officered and manned by Frenchmen.
The expense of fitting out the expedition was the king's. The flag and
the commissions of the officers were American. The object of the French
government was to secure the services of the marauding Jones against the
coasts and shipping of England. This could better be done under the
United States flag than under that of France; for the rules of civilized
warfare had up to that time prevented the British from ravaging the
coasts of France as they had those of rebel America, and France was
therefore not morally justified in harassing the English shipping and
coasts directly; as, on the principle of retaliation, it was fair for
America to do.
This peculiar character of the expedition brought with it many drawbacks
and difficulties for the unfortunate Jones. He had a motley array of
ships,--those which were left over after the French officers had been
satisfied. The flagship, the Bonhomme Richard, was a worn-out old East
Indiaman, which Jones refitted and armed with six eighteen-pounders,
twenty-eight twelve-pounders, and eight nine-pounders--a battery of
forty-two guns. The crew of 375, of many nationalities, contained, when
the fleet sailed, only about fifty Americans; but fortunately, a few
days later, Jones was compelled to put back to port, where he was
unexpectedly able, owing to a recent exchange of prisoners, to get rid
of some of his aliens, and to secure 114 American officers and sailors,
who proved to be the backbone of the Richard's crew. The Alliance, the
only American ship, was a good frigate rating as a large thirty-two or
medium thirty-six, but captained by a mad Frenchman in the American
service, Landais, who refused to obey Jones, and in the important fight
with the Serapis turned his guns against his commander. The Pallas,
thirty-two guns, the Vengeance, twelve guns, and the little Cerf were
all officered and manned by Frenchmen.
The greatest hindrance, however, to the efficiency of the squadron was
the famous _concordat_, or agreement between the captains, which Jones
was compelled to sign just before sailing. The terms, indeed, which
related largely to the distribution of prize money, left Jones in the
position of commander in chief, but the fact that there was any
agreement whatever between Jones and his subordinates weakened his
authority. Of this, as of so many other injustices, Jones complained
most bitterly all through his subsequent life. He signed it, however,
because, he said in his journal, he feared that he would otherwise be
removed from his position as commodore. In a letter to Hewes he gave
Franklin's command as the cause.
The squadron, accompanied at the outset by two French privateers, sailed
finally from L'Orient, after one futile attempt, August 14, 1779, and
made during the first forty days of the fifty days' cruise a number of
unimportant prizes. On the 18th of August, the privateer Monsieur,
which was not bound by the _concordat_, took a prize, which the captain
of the Monsieur rifled, and then ordered into port. Jones, however,
opposed the captain's order, and sent the prize to L'Orient, whereupon
the Monsieur parted company with the squadron. According to Fanning, one
of Jones's midshipmen, who has left a spirited account of the cruise,
Jones attempted to prevent the departure of the privateer by force, and
when she escaped was so angry that he "struck several of his officers
with his speaking trumpet over their heads," and confined one of them
below, but immediately afterwards invited him to dinner. "Thus it was
with Jones," says Fanning, "passionate to the highest degree one minute,
and the next ready to make a reconciliation."
The defection of the Monsieur was, however, only the beginning of
Jones's troubles with the insubordinate officers. While attempting to
capture a brigantine, Jones, through the desertion of some of his
English sailors, lost two of his small boats, for which he was bitterly
and unjustly reproached by the crazy, incompetent, and greedy Landais,
captain of the Alliance, who said that hereafter he would chase in the
manner he saw fit. Shortly afterwards, the Cerf abruptly left the fleet,
and the other privateer also went off on its own account. Jones was left
with only the Bonhomme Richard, the Pallas, the Vengeance, and the
Alliance; and it would have been better, as the result showed, if the
last-mentioned vessel and its extraordinary captain had also decamped at
this time for good. Landais paid no attention to Jones's signals, but
left the squadron for days, unfortunately returning. Against Jones's
orders he sent two prizes into Bergen, Norway, where they were given by
the Danish government to the English, and were for many years after the
war a source of trouble between Denmark and the United States.
Jones was also compelled to treat with the other French captains, and
several times modified his course in compliance with their demands. He
had formed a daring design to lay Leith, on the coast of Scotland, and
perhaps Edinburgh, under contribution, but first he had to argue the
matter with his captains. Fanning says: "Jones displayed so artfully his
arguments in favor of his plan that it was agreed pretty unanimously to
put it in immediate execution." Jones's art was manifested in this
instance, according to his account, by showing the captains "a large
heap of gold at the end of the prospect." During this enforced
conference, however, the wind shifted, and the undertaking had to be
given up. Fanning quaintly remarks: "All his [Jones's] vast projects of
wealth and aggrandizement became at once a shadow that passeth away,
never more to appear again!"
Jones, however, said that he would have succeeded, even at this late
hour, if his plan had been followed, and showed a touch of the weak side
of his character when he added: "Nothing prevented me from pursuing my
design but the reproach that would have been cast upon my character, as
a man of prudence, had the enterprise miscarried. It would have been
said: 'Was he not forewarned by Captain Cottineau and others?'"
With his old ship, his motley squadron, and his insubordinate officers,
Jones then cruised along the Yorkshire coast, destroyed or captured a
number of vessels, and was preparing to end his voyage at the Texel,
Holland, when chance threw in his way the opportunity which he so
greatly embraced.
On the 23d of September the squadron was chasing a ship off Flamborough
Head, when the Baltic fleet of merchantmen, for which Jones had been
looking, hove in sight. The commodore hoisted the signal for a general
chase. Landais, however, ignored the signal and went off by himself. The
merchant ships, when they saw Jones's squadron bearing down upon them,
made for the shore and escaped, protected by two ships of war, frigates,
which stood out and made preparations to fight, in order to save their
convoy.
These British ships of war were the Serapis, a new frigate of forty-four
guns, and the Countess of Scarborough, twenty guns. The Alliance, at
that time, which was late in the afternoon, was not in sight, and the
little Vengeance, which had been sent to look for Landais, was also not
available. There were, therefore, two ships on each side, and Jones
ordered Captain Cottineau, of the Pallas, to look after the Countess of
Scarborough, while he himself took care of the Serapis. Jones never lost
his head in action, and yet he decided, with that "cool, determined
bravery," of which Benjamin Franklin spoke, and with "that presence of
mind which never deserted him" in action, recorded by Fanning, to engage
a ship known by him to be the superior of the Bonhomme Richard in almost
every respect. It has been said of Jones by one who fought with him that
only in battle was he absolutely at ease: only at times of comparative
inaction, when he could not exert himself fully, was he restless and
irritable. On this occasion he joyfully engaged a ship which threw a
weight of metal superior to his by three to two, that sailed much
faster, and was consequently at an advantage in manoeuvring for
position, and that had a crew equal to that of Jones in numbers, and
far more disciplined and homogeneous. A battle resulted which for
desperate fighting has never been excelled, and perhaps never equaled on
the sea.
V
THE FIGHT WITH THE SERAPIS
Jones crowded on all possible sail, and the Bonhomme Richard came within
pistol shot of the Serapis. It was seven o'clock of a fine moonlight
night. Captain Pearson, of the British ship, then hailed, and was
answered with a whole broadside from the Bonhomme Richard, an unfriendly
salute which was promptly returned by the British ship.
From the beginning the fight seemed to go against the Bonhomme Richard.
There was hardly any stage of the three and a half hours' desperate
combat when Jones might not, with perfect propriety, have surrendered.
Hardly had the battle begun when two of the six old eighteen-pounders
forming the battery of the lower gun-deck of the Richard exploded,
killing the men working them and rendering the whole battery useless for
the rest of the action. Captain Pearson, perceiving his advantage in
speed and power of shot, attempted again and again to pass the bow of
the Richard and rake her. Jones's whole effort, on the other hand, was
to close with the Serapis and board, knowing that it was only a question
of time when, in a broadside fight, the Richard would be sunk.
After the broadsiding had continued with unremitting fury for about
three quarters of an hour, and several of the Richard's twelve-pounders
also had been put out of action, Captain Pearson thought he saw an
opportunity, the Serapis having veered and drawn ahead of the Richard,
to luff athwart the latter's hawse and rake her. But he attempted the
manoeuvre too soon, and perceiving that the two ships would be brought
together if he persisted in his course, he put his helm alee, bringing
the two vessels in a line; and the Serapis having lost her headway by
this evolution, the Richard ran into her weather quarter. Jones was
quick to make his first attempt to board, but he could not mass enough
men at the point of contact to succeed, and the ships soon swung apart.
The Richard, even at this early stage of the action, was in a deplorable
condition. Little of her starboard battery was left. Henry Gardner, a
gunner during the action, stated in his account of the battle that, at
this time, of the 140 odd officers and men stationed in the main
gun-deck battery at the beginning, over eighty were killed or wounded.
There were three or four feet of water in the hold, caused by the
Serapis's eighteen-pound shot, which had repeatedly pierced the hull of
the Richard.
It is no wonder that Captain Pearson, knowing that his enemy was hard
put to it, thought, after the failure to board, that Jones was ready to
surrender.
"Has your ship struck?" he called, and Jones made his famous reply:--
"I have not yet begun to fight."
That Jones really made some such reply, there is no doubt. Certainly, it
was characteristic enough. Jones fought all his life, and yet when he
died he had hardly begun the conflict, so many of his ambitious
projects remained unrealized.
When the ships had swung apart, the broadsiding continued, increasingly
to the advantage of the Serapis. Had not a lucky wind, favorable to the
Richard, arisen at this point, doubtless her time above water would have
been short. The veering and freshening breeze enabled the Richard to
blanket the enemy's vessel, which consequently lost her headway, and
another fortunate puff of wind brought the Richard in contact with the
Serapis in such a way that the two vessels lay alongside one another,
bow to stern, and stern to bow. Jones, with his own hand, helped to lash
the two ships together. The anchor of the Serapis fortunately hooked the
quarter of the Richard, thus binding the frigates still more firmly
together.
During the critical time when Jones was bending every nerve to grapple
with the Serapis, the Alliance made her first appearance, poured a
broadside or two into the Richard, and disappeared. Of this remarkable
deed Jones wrote to Dr. Franklin: "At last the Alliance appeared, and I
now thought the battle at an end; but to my utter astonishment he
discharged a broadside full into the stern of the Bon Homme Richard." It
is probable that the Serapis also suffered from Landais's attack, but
not so much as the Richard, which lay between the other two ships.
After the Serapis and the Richard had been well lashed together, there
began a new phase of the battle, which had already lasted about an hour.
There were only three guns left in action on the Richard, nine-pounders
on the quarter-deck, and the ship was badly leaking. The
eighteen-pounders of the enemy had riddled the gun-deck of the American
ship, rendering her, below-decks, entirely untenable. The real fight
from this time to the end was consequently above-decks. Jones abandoned
any attempt at great gun fire, except by the three small pieces on the
quarter-deck, drew practically his entire remaining crew from below to
the upper deck and the tops, and devoted his attention to sweeping the
decks of the enemy by the musketry of his French marines from the
quarter and poop decks, and of the American sailors in the tops. The
crew of the Serapis, on the other hand, were forced mainly to take
refuge in their well-protected lower decks, from which they continued to
fire their great guns into the already riddled hull and lower decks of
the Richard.
After the juncture of the vessels Captain Pearson made several desperate
attempts to cut the anchor loose, hoping in that way to become free
again of the Richard, in which case he knew that the battle was his.
Jones, of course, was equally determined to defend the anchor
fastenings. He personally directed the fire of his French marines
against the British in their repeated attempts to sever the two ships,
to such good purpose that not a single British sailor reached the
coveted goal. So determined was Jones on this important point that he
took loaded muskets from the hands of his French marines and shot down
several of the British with his own hand.
The captain of the French marines, who rendered at this important stage
of the action such good service, had been wounded early in the battle,
and the succeeding lieutenants had also been either killed or disabled.
The marines had been greatly diminished in numbers and were much
disheartened at the time Jones took personal command of them. Nathaniel
Fanning vividly narrates the manner in which Jones handled these
Frenchmen: "I could distinctly hear, amid the crashing of the musketry,
the great voice of the commodore, cheering the French marines in their
own tongue, uttering such imprecations upon the enemy as I never before
or since heard in French or any other language, exhorting them to take
good aim, pointing out objects for their fire, and frequently giving
them direct example by taking their loaded muskets from their hands into
his and firing himself. In fact, toward the very last, he had about him
a group of half a dozen marines who did nothing but load their firelocks
and hand them to the commodore, who fired them from his own shoulder,
standing on the quarter-deck rail by the main topmast backstay."
A French sailor, Pierre Gerard, who has left a memoir of the battle,
tells how his countrymen responded to Jones's presence: "Commodore Jones
sprang among the shaking marines on the quarter-deck like a tiger among
calves. They responded instantly to him. In an instant they were filled
with courage! The indomitable spirit, the unconquerable courage of the
commodore penetrated every soul, and every one who saw his example or
heard his voice became as much a hero as himself!"
Both vessels were at this time, and later, on fire in various places.
Captain Pearson says in his official report that the Serapis was on fire
no less than ten or twelve times. Half the men on both ships had been
killed or disabled. The leak in the Richard's hold grew steadily worse,
and the mainmast of the Serapis was about to go by the board. The
Alliance again appeared and, paying no heed to Jones's signal to lay the
Serapis alongside, raked both vessels for a few minutes
indiscriminately, went serenely on her way, and brought her inglorious
and inexplicable part in the action to a close. Captain Pearson had, for
a moment, towards the end of the action, a ray of hope. A gunner on the
Richard, thinking the ship was actually sinking, called for quarter, but
Jones stunned him with the butt end of a pistol, and replied to Pearson,
who had again hailed to know if the Richard had struck, to quote his own
report, "in the most determined negative." About the same time, the
master at arms, also believing the ship to be sinking, opened the
hatches and released nearly two hundred British prisoners, taken in the
various prizes of the cruise.
Nothing, apparently, could be more desperate than the situation of Paul
Jones then. His guns useless, his ship sinking and on fire, half of his
crew dead or disabled, the Alliance firing into him, a portion of his
crew panic-stricken, and two hundred British prisoners at large on the
ship! But with Lieutenant Richard Dale to help him, he boldly ordered
the prisoners to man the pumps, and continued the fight with
undiminished energy. Soon after occurred the event which practically
decided the battle in his favor. He had given orders to drop hand
grenades from the tops of the Richard down through the enemy's main
hatch. It was by this means that the Serapis had been so often set on
fire. Now at an opportune moment, a hand grenade fell among a pile of
cartridges strung out on the deck of the Serapis and caused a terrible
explosion, killing many men. This seemed to reduce materially the
fighting appetite of the British, and soon after a party of seamen from
the Richard, with the dashing John Mayrant at their head, boarded the
Serapis, and met with little resistance. Captain Pearson thereupon
struck his colors, and the victory which marked the zenith of Jones's
career, and upon which all else in his life merely served as commentary,
was scored. Captain Pearson, in his court-martial, which was a formality
in the British navy in case of defeat, explained Jones's victory in a
nutshell: "It was clearly apparent," he said, "that the American ship
was dominated by a commanding will of the most unalterable resolution,"
and again, "the extraordinary and unheard-of desperate stubbornness of
my adversary had so depressed the spirits of my people that, when more
than two hundred had been slain or disabled out of 317 all told, I could
not urge the remnant to further resistance."
The capture of the British ship, which took place about half-past ten at
night, came none too soon, for the old Bonhomme Richard was sinking. The
flames were extinguished by combined efforts of crew and prisoners by
ten o'clock the next morning, but with seven feet of water, constantly
increasing in the hold, it was then apparent that it was impossible to
keep the old vessel afloat, and men, prisoners, and powder were
transferred to the Serapis. On the morning of the 25th Jones obtained,
"with inexpressible grief," as he said, "the last glimpse of the
Bonhomme Richard," as she went down.
The desperate battle fought in the bright moonlight was witnessed by
many persons in Scarborough and on Flamborough Head, and they spread
the alarming tidings throughout England. In a letter to Robert Morris,
written soon after, Jones said, of the cruise in general: "We alarmed
their coasts prodigiously from Cape Clear round to Hull; and had I not
been concerned with sons of interest I could have done much."
With his two new prizes (for the Countess of Scarborough had after a
short action struck to the greatly superior Pallas) Jones set off for
the Texel, with a most dilapidated crew and fleet. The Alliance, well
called a "Comet" by the editor of the Janette-Taylor collection of
Jones's papers, disappeared again after the battle. Landais, whose
conduct was described by Jones as being that of "either a fool, a
madman, or a villain," was afterwards dismissed the service, but not
until he had cut up other extraordinary pranks. He now went off with his
swift and uninjured frigate to the Texel, leaving Jones, laden down with
prisoners and wounded, unassisted. Of the Richard's crew of 323, 67 men
had been killed, leaving 106 wounded and 150 others to be accommodated
on the injured Serapis. Then there were 211 English prisoners on the
Richard at the beginning of the action; and of the 332 (including 8 sick
men and 7 non-combatants) men composing the crew of the Serapis, there
were 245 left to be cared for--134 wounded, 87 having been killed. There
were, consequently, only 150 well men to look after 562 wounded and
prisoners. Some of the latter were afterwards transferred to the Pallas,
but altogether it was an unwieldy fleet which slowly sailed for the
Texel, at which neutral port Jones arrived October 3, none too soon, for
as he entered the roads, an English squadron, consisting of a sixty-four
ship of the line and three heavy frigates, which had been looking for
him, hove in sight.
The effect of the cruise was very great. The English people, alarmed and
incensed, never forgot it. Never before had one of their ships of war
been conquered by a vessel of greatly inferior force. Their coasts,
deemed impregnable, were again invaded by the man whom they called, in
the blindness of their rage, pirate and renegade. Professor Houghton, a
serious-minded historian, writing of Jones said: "His moral character
can be summed up in one word--detestable." English comment on Paul Jones
may be summed up truthfully in one word,--envenomed. Jones's exploits,
moreover, greatly increased the prestige of young America, and made of
himself a still greater hero at home and particularly in France. For the
rest of his life, indeed, Jones, in France especially, where spectacles
are peculiarly appreciated, was the man on horseback, and he enjoyed the
position intensely. Fanning narrates how Jones, while at Amsterdam, soon
after his arrival in the Texel, "was treated as a conqueror. This so
elated him with pride, that he had the vanity to go into the State
House, mount the balcony or piazza, and show himself in the front
thereof, to the populace and people of distinction then walking on the
public parade."
VI
DIPLOMACY AT THE TEXEL
Jones found himself in a position at the Texel which demanded all the
shrewdness as well as the determination of his character. Impatient,
irritable, and passionate as he often was, his judgment was nevertheless
excellent. Benjamin Franklin, when Jones at a later time was again put
in a delicate situation, wrote him:--
"You have shown your abilities in fighting; you have now an opportunity
of showing the other necessary part in the character of a great
chief,--your abilities in policy."
Jones's ability in policy appeared in a more favorable light in the
Texel than at any other period of his career, although too great weight
has been laid upon the degree of it. The important problem to be solved
was how to induce the Dutch authorities to allow him and his battered
ships to remain for a time in the shelter of their port. Jones knew
that the attainment of this object would help to bring about a rupture
between England and Holland. The latter country was secretly in sympathy
with the revolted colonies, but eager at that time to maintain
officially friendly relations with England. Consequently, when Jones
arrived with his prizes, the Dutch authorities were in a quandary, much
aggravated by the action of the British minister in Holland, Sir Joseph
Yorke, who demanded that the "pirate's" prizes be delivered up to
England. He reiterated his demand to the States-General in the following
language: "I only discharge the orders of his Majesty in renewing the
most strong and urgent demand for the seizure and restitution of said
vessels as well as for the enlargement of their crews, who have been
seized by the pirate, Paul Jones, a Scotchman, a rebellious subject, and
state criminal."