CHAPTER VI

Thenew treaty with France was to bring into special prominence one of the most remarkable characters of his time, John Paul Jones. On October 10, 1776, he had been made the eighteenth captain on a list of twenty-four then established. He considered himself ill-treated, and justly so, as having been first on the list of lieutenants he should have been placed higher. His animadversions on the subject, in a letter to Robert Morris, are worth quoting. It showed along with some very just criticisms that he had a high and fitting estimate of his duties as a sea officer, and of the demands of his calling. He said:

“I cannot but lament that so little delicacy hath been observed in the appointment and promotion of officers in the sea service, many of whom are not only grossly illiterate, but want even the capacity of commanding merchant vessels. I was lately on a court-martial where a captain of marines made his mark and wherethe president could not read the oath which he attempted to administer without spelling and making blunders. As the sea officers are so subject to be seen by foreigners, what conclusions must they draw of Americans in general, from characters so rude and contracted? In my judgment the abilities of sea officers ought to be as far superior to the abilities of officers in the army as the nature of a sea service is more complicated and admits of a greater number of cases than can possibly happen on the land; therefore the discipline by sea ought to be the more perfect and regular, were it compatible with short enlistments.”[7]

On June 14, 1777, Jones was assigned to the command of the little cruiserRanger, just completed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On the same day Congress established the Stars and Stripes as the national flag, and it is said, and is probable, that Jones was the first to hoist this flag on a man-of-war. His ship was but 116 feet overall and 28 feet broad. She mounted eighteen 6-pounders.

The delay in fitting out is not to the credit of the energy of those charged with providing the ship’s equipment. The sails were not ready until late in October. With a crew of aboutone hundred and forty, “nearly all full-blooded Yankees,” she sailed on November 1st, for France, carrying dispatches from Congress and taking two prizes on the way. Jones arrived at Nantes on December 2, 1777.

He had a long wait in France before he again got to sea, but his frequent consultations with our commissioners, his always excellent advice in naval matters, and his general activity were worth the delay. It was not until April 10th that he got to sea, starting on his famous cruise in the Irish Sea during which he took a number of prizes, among them theDrake, a sloop-of-war carrying twenty 6-pounders. He landed at Whitehaven, Scotland, and burned a ship, one of many which he had hoped to destroy in this port, and made the famous descent upon Lord Selkirk’s estate, where his men carried off the family silver. But Jones had a mutinous crew, thirsting for booty, and his concession of plunder was a case offorce majeure. He later redeemed the silver, giving to the crew several hundred pounds as its valuation as prize, and returned it to the family. Jones had had much difficulty with both officers and crew, partially no doubt through his own roughness (mentioned in Fanning’s narrative) toward theformer, and particularly through the peculiar ideas of liberty prevalent, which sometimes went so far as to claim that the movements of the ship should be put to a vote.

Jones having arrived at Brest in May, 1778, with his prize, theDrake, sought a larger command. He had to wait a year for it. After many strivings, one was found in theDuc de Duras, a fourteen-year-old East Indiaman, which was bought, fitted as a man-of-war, and renamed theBonhomme Richardin compliment to Franklin as being the nearest approach in French to the “Poor Richard” of the famous almanac. The ship was far from meeting requirements, being slow and weakly built, so that she finally carried twenty-eight 12 and 9 pounders instead of 18’s on the gun deck, eight 6’s on the forecastle, and on the after part of the lower deck six 18’s, forty-two guns in all. She was provided with a mixed crew of Americans, French, English, a few Scandinavians, and eighty-three Irish and Scotch, Jones himself being of the latter by birth. Of the first there were in the beginning but seventy-nine, chiefly exchanged prisoners. Later, owing to mutinous conduct of the British element, many of these were discharged and replaced by forty-threenewly arrived Americans just released from prison, and thirty Portuguese. The total was 227 officers and seamen, besides 130 French soldiers placed aboard to serve as marines.

Jones’s ideas were large: they included the fitting out of a large French squadron to act in concert and carrying a considerable number of troops to make an attack upon the English coast. This, however, fell through, and a squadron was organized of theBonhomme Richard, 42; theAlliance, 32; thePallas, 32; theCerf, cutter, 18, and theVengeance, brigantine, of 12 guns.

TheAlliancehad arrived at Brest, twenty-three days from Boston, carrying Lafayette, on February 6, 1779. She had an unreliable crew, with many English and Irish, and a still more unreliable captain, Landais, who had been an officer in the French navy. He had been appointed a captain in the American service on the recommendation of Silas Deane, who seemed to have a faculty for making errors of the kind. Landais was to give much and continuous trouble.

The squadron did not finally get off until August 14, 1779. Its orders, prepared by Franklin, with the advice of Sartine, the FrenchMinister of Marine, were to cruise to the north of the British islands and after six weeks to go into the Texel, Holland. There were varying incidents of capture of prizes, designs to attack Leith, insubordinations of the French captains, etc., but on September 23d, when a convoy of forty vessels accompanied by two men-of-war was discovered off Flamborough Head, a prominent point a few miles south of Scarborough, England, Jones’s moment had come.

It was not until seven o’clock in the evening that theBonhomme Richardcame within gunshot of the larger ship which turned out to be theSerapis, Captain Richard Pearson, of 50 guns, 18 of which were 18-pounders. She carried 320 men. There then ensued the most remarkable duel in naval history. Jones was left unsupported by his accompanying subordinates, and he went into action short sixteen of his best men and a lieutenant, Lunt, who had been sent to secure a prize. The story of this remarkable battle must of necessity here be short; the full details must be sought elsewhere. But short as it must be, there is enough of it, however baldly told, to stir the blood.

Jones closed with his antagonist early in theaction, and as they came in contact the two ships were lashed together by Jones, the stern of theSerapisbeing at the bow of theBonhomme Richard. The latter’s main deck battery of 12-pounders was silenced, two of the old six 18-pounders on the lower deck had burst, killing nearly all the guns’ crews. Only three 9-pounders on the quarter deck could be used, and one of these had to be shifted from the off side. The guns of theSerapiswere still active, but her upper deck had been cleared by the musketry fire from the tops of theBonhomme Richard. The latter’s prisoners (some 200) were released without orders, and in their fright that the ship was sinking, willingly worked the pumps; both ships were frequently afire. The men in theBonhomme Richard’stops crawled along the yards into the tops of theSerapisand dropped hand grenades whenever any one appeared on deck; these grenades, at times going down the hatches and exploding on the lower deck, finally brought about an explosion of cartridges below which ran from gun to gun. This went far toward determining the battle. Meantime the erratic Landais fired three broad-sides, chiefly to the damage of theBonhomme Richard, as the shot holes were found in thelatter’s unengaged side. There can be little question that he hoped this ship would surrender when, with his own unharmed, he would capture both. Jones’s doggedness won the day: at half-past ten Captain Pearson, influenced no doubt somewhat by the presence of theAlliance, surrendered. He stated that an incomplete list of his killed and wounded were forty-nine of the former and sixty-eight of the latter, or more than a third of the whole 320. Jones estimated his loss at about 150, without stating the proportions.

While this action was going on, thePallas, 30, Captain Cottineau, had engaged and taken theCountess of Scarborough, of 20 guns. The Baltic fleet under convoy was not attacked, as it should have been by theAllianceor theVengeance, a curious instance of inertia and incapacity or worse, so long as neither chose to take part in the main action.

Both theSerapisandBonhomme Richardwere terribly mauled. The latter’s rudder, stern frame, and transoms were cut away, and the sides between the ports were at points driven in. It was ten next morning before the fires could be extinguished. On examination it was decided that it would be impossible to keep the shipafloat if rough weather should come on (which in fact was the case), and during the night and next morning the wounded were removed. The men who had been brought from thePallasto work the pumps were taken off the evening of the 25th (two days after the battle). Says Jones:

“They did not abandon her until after nine o’clock; the water was then up to the lower deck, and a little after ten I saw with unexpressible grief the last of theBonhomme Richard. No lives were lost with the ship, but it was impossible to save the stores of any sort whatever. I lost even the best part of my clothes, books and papers; and several of my officers lost all their clothes and effects.”

The masts of theSerapisfell soon after the surrender, and jury masts were rigged from spars furnished by theAlliance, all the spare spars of theSerapisbeing too badly cut by shot. On September 26th she was able to steer for Holland in company with the rest of the squadron, and on October 3d entered the Texel after some demur on the part of the Dutch. Though Jones’s instructions gave the Texel as the port to be made at the end of his six weeks’ cruise,his own wish was to go into Dunkirk and thus be under the shelter of an ally. The other captains adhered to the letter of the instructions, and Jones felt obliged to yield. Much trouble would have been saved had his views prevailed. As an offset, however, to such disabilities as arose from the inability of Jones to dispose of theSerapis, the anger of the British Government against the Dutch as to the reception of the squadron in Dutch waters went far to bringing later the declaration of war by England against Holland. Jones was allowed to land his sick and wounded, who were cared for on an island in the bay, as were the prisoners, numbering 537, sufficient to release by exchange all the American seamen who were prisoners in England.

For Jones’s further history, his having to put all his ships but theAllianceunder the French flag to avoid the difficulties raised by Great Britain with Holland; his going in theAllianceto Lorient, France; the arrival there and sale of theSerapis; the charges against Landais; his short cruise in theAlliance; his unjust treatment by Arthur Lee, by which Landais regained command of theAlliance; Lee’s embarkation in theAlliancefor America and the necessityduring the voyage of depriving Landais of the command on account of evident insanity; the dismissal of Landais from the service; Jones’s arrival in command of theArielat Philadelphia, February 18, 1781, after more than three years’ absence, and his reception of the thanks of Congress; his appointment to the command of the new line-of-battle shipAmericawhich he lost through its presentation to France; his return to Europe, and the rest of his adventurous career must be read in the many books devoted to the history of his life, not the least interesting part of which is to be found in Fanning’s graphic narrative. He will always stand out boldly as one of the most fearless spirits of the sea, and had he lived in the Napoleonic epoch he would have been met by Napoleon as a kindred soul who might have saved him the great misfortune of Trafalgar, which so changed the history of Europe and the world.

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