II. Jones First Hoists the Stars and Stripes
Commissioned captain on the 14th of June, 1777, in the same resolution which established an American flag, he was ordered to the Ranger, a little ship-rigged corvette of three hundred tons. In her, on the 4th of July of the same year, he hoisted the first stars and stripes that had ever waved over a ship-of-war. In Quiberon Bay—famous as one of the battle-grounds of the world—on the evening of the 14th of February, 1778, in the Ranger, he received the first formal recognition ever given by a foreign fleet to the United States in a salute to the American flag. As it was after sunset when the salutes were exchanged, and in order that there should be no mistake about it, the next morning, the 15th of February, Jones transferred his flag to the Independence, a small privateer, and deliberately sailed through La Motte Picquet's great fleet of towering line-of-battle-ships, saluting and receiving salutes again.
Still on the Ranger, on the 24th of April, he fought the British sloop-of-war Drake, of equal force and larger crew, to a standstill in an hour and five minutes. When the Drake struck her flag, her rigging, sails and spars were cut to pieces. She had forty-two killed and wounded—more than one-fifth of her crew—and was completely helpless. The Ranger lost two killed and six wounded.
In 1779 Jones hoisted his flag on the Duc de Duras, a condemned East Indiaman, which would have been broken up had he not turned her into a makeshift frigate by mounting forty guns in her batteries—fourteen twelve-pounders, twenty nines and six eighteens. This, in honor of Franklin, he named the Bonhomme Richard. Accompanied by the fine little American-built frigate Alliance and the French ship Pallas, with the brig Vengeance, and the cutter Cerf, he cruised around England, taking several prizes, and striking terror all along the shore.
III. The Battle With the Serapis
On the evening of the 23rd of September he fell in with the Baltic convoy. He was accompanied at the time by the Alliance and the Pallas. The Baltic convoy was protected by the Serapis and the Scarborough. The Serapis was a brand-new, double-banked frigate of eight hundred tons, carrying twenty eighteen-pounders, twenty nines and ten sixes. Inasmuch as the eighteen-pounders on the Richard burst and were abandoned after the first fire, the Serapis could and did discharge nearly twice as many pounds' weight of broadside as the Richard, say three hundred pounds to one hundred and seventy-five. The Pallas grappled with the Scarborough—a more equal match—and Jones attacked the Serapis, which was not unwilling—quite the contrary—for the fight.
The battle was one of the most memorable and desperate ever fought upon the ocean. The Richard was riddled like a sieve. Her rotten sides were literally blown out to starboard and port by the heavy batteries of the Serapis. Jones had several hundred English prisoners on board. The master-at-arms released them, but, with great readiness and presence of mind, Jones sent them to the pumps, while he continued to fight the English frigate, his own ship kept afloat by their efforts.
Captain Pearson, of the Serapis, was as brave a man as ever drew a sword, but he was no match for the indomitable personality of the American commander. After several hours of such fighting as had scarcely been seen before on the narrow seas, he struck his flag. The Alliance, accompanied by a jealous and incapable Frenchman, had contributed nothing to Jones's success. Indeed, she had twice poured her broadsides into the Richard. The American vessel was so wrecked below and aloft that she sank alongside, and Jones had to transfer the survivors of his crew to the English frigate. The aggregate of the two crews was nearly seven hundred, of which about three hundred and fifty were killed or wounded.
It is the greatest pity that the poverty of America did not permit Jones to get to sea in a proper frigate, or in a ship of the line, before the close of the war. After the Revolution, in which he had borne so conspicuous a part, so much so that his exploits had electrified both continents, he took service under Catherine of Russia, carefully reserving his American citizenship. In her service he fought four brilliant actions in the Black Sea, in which he had to contend with the usual discouragement of indifferent personnel and wretched material, and in which he displayed all his old-time qualities, winning his usual successes, too.
Worn out in unrequited service, disgusted with Russian court intrigues of which he was the victim, resentful of the infamous Potemkin's brutal attempts at coercion, he asked leave of absence from Catherine's service and went to Paris, where, in the companionship of his friends, and in the society of the beautiful Aimèe de Telison, the one woman he loved, he lived two years and died at the age of forty-five.