Luckily a spare tiller had been fitted to the rudder stem of the Richard below the main tiller—before leaving port—because of the fear that the wheel would be disabled. The foresight of the Commodore had effected this; and now—by means of this extra steering-gear—the battered warrior-ship was enabled to make one, last, desperate lunge for victory. It was touch and go with John Paul Jones.
“I could distinctly hear his voice amid the crashing of musketry,” says a seaman. “He was cheering on the French marines in their own tongue, uttering such imprecations upon the enemy as I have never before or since heard in French, or any other language. He exhorted them to take good aim, pointed out the object of their fire, and frequently took their loaded muskets from their hands in order to shoot them himself. In fact, towards 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.”
Luck now came to the disabled Richard. A fortunate puff of wind struck and filled her sails, shooting her alongside of the growling Serapis, and to windward. The canvas of the Britisher flapped uselessly against her spars. She was blanketed and lost steering-way. In a moment the jib-boom of the English vessel ran over the poop-deck of the American ship. It was seized, grappled by a turn of small hawsers, and made fast to the mizzen-mast.
“She’s ours!” cried John Paul Jones. “Seize that anchor and splice it down hard!”
As he spoke, the fluke of the starboard anchor of the Serapis hooked in the mizzen chains. It was lashed fast, and the Richard had been saved.
Rattle! Rattle! Crash! sounded the muskets of the French marines. The English tried to cut their anchor chains and get free, but all who attempted to sever these hawsers were struck dead by the accurate balls from the marksmen on the poop-deck and round-house of the Richard.
“I demand your surrender!” shouted Pearson.
From an old print.