The American Navy

by French Ensor Chadwick

On June 14, 1777, Jones was assigned to the command of the little cruiser Ranger, 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 about one 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 the Drake, 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 of force 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 the former, 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, the Drake, sought a larger command. He had to wait a year for it. After many strivings, one was found in the Duc de Duras, a fourteen-year-old East Indiaman, which was bought, fitted as a man-of-war, and renamed the Bonhomme Richard in 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-three newly 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 the Bonhomme Richard, 42; the Alliance, 32; the Pallas, 32; the Cerf, cutter, 18, and the Vengeance, brigantine, of 12 guns.

The Alliance had 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 French Minister 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 the Bonhomme Richard came within gunshot of the larger ship which turned out to be the Serapis, 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 the action, and as they came in contact the two ships were lashed together by Jones, the stern of the Serapis being at the bow of the Bonhomme 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 the Serapis were still active, but her upper deck had been cleared by the musketry fire from the tops of the Bonhomme 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 the Bonhomme Richard’s tops crawled along the yards into the tops of the Serapis and 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 the Bonhomme Richard, as the shot holes were found in the latter’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 the Alliance, 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, the Pallas, 30, Captain Cottineau, had engaged and taken the Countess of Scarborough, of 20 guns. The Baltic fleet under convoy was not attacked, as it should have been by the Alliance or the Vengeance, a curious instance of inertia and incapacity or worse, so long as neither chose to take part in the main action.