The English ship was much cut up, both in her hull and aloft, and Captain Jones computed her loss at about forty men. Her captain and lieutenant were both desperately wounded, and died shortly after the engagement. The Ranger suffered much less, having Lieutenant Wallingford and one man killed, and six wounded. The Drake was not only a heavier ship, but she had a much stronger crew than her antagonist. She had also two guns the most.
With this prize, Jones returned to Brest, where for a time he remained in hope of receiving a more important command, and which had brought him to Europe.
After many delays, the king of France purchased for him the Duras, an old Indiaman, which name Jones exchanged for Le Bon Homme Richard.[51] To this were, added by order of the French ministry, the Pallas, Cerf, and Vengeance, and, by Dr. Franklin, commissioner, the Alliance, thirty-two, then in France. The Cerf and Alliance were the only vessels of the squadron fitted for war.
Paul Jones.
With this squadron, Commodore Jones, on the 19th of June, 1779, sailed from the anchorage under the Isle of Groix, off l'Orient, bound southward; but, finding it necessary to return, he left the anchorage a second time, on the 14th of August. About the 23d of September, he fell in with a fleet of merchantmen, of more than forty sail, under convoy of the Serapis, forty-four, Captain Richard Pearson, and the Countess of Seaborough, twenty-two.
The Serapis was a new ship, mounting on her lower gun-deck, twenty eighteen-pound guns, on her upper gun deck, twenty nine-pound guns, and on her quarter-deck and forecastle, ten six-pound guns; making an armament of fifty guns in the whole. Her crew consisted of three hundred and twenty men. The Bon Homme Richard was a single-decked ship, with six old eighteen-pounders mounted in the gun-room below, and twenty-eight twelve-pounders on her main or proper gun-deck, with eight nines on her quarter-deck forecastle, and six in the gangways, making in all a mixed, or rather light amount of forty-two guns. Her crew consisted of three hundred and eighty men, of whom one hundred and thirty-seven were marines or soldiers.
Our narrative will be confined to the action between the Richard and the Serapis, which proved one of the most terrible and hotly-contested engagements recorded in the annals of naval warfare.