When Captain Pearson, with the new frigate “Serapis,” on a fine September afternoon in 1779, sighted Paul Jones, he signalled his merchant convoy to scatter, and piped all hands, who rushed jubilantly to quarters. The opportunity of his life had come, for the capture of the rebel frigate meant glory and a baronetcy. But he reckoned without his host.
Across the oily waters came the cheery pipes of the boatswain’s mate of the “Richard” as Jones swung her up to meet her adversary, and Pearson knew his task would not be an easy one. The wind fell so light that the sun had sunk behind the light on Flamborough Head before the ships drifted up to fighting distance, and it was dark before they were ready to come to close quarters. On the “Bonhomme Richard,” Jones’s motley crew, stripped to the waist, were drawn up at the guns, peering out through the ports at the dark shadow on the starboard bow they were slowly overhauling.
The decks were sanded, the hammocks piled around the wheel, and there at the break of the poop stood the captain, trumpet in hand, turning now and then to give an order to Richard Dale or his midshipmen, quiet and composed, with the smile on his face men saw before the fight with the “Drake.” The clumsy hulk rolled to the ground-swell, and the creaking of the masts and clamping of the sheet-blocks were all that broke the silence of the night. No excitement was apparent, and the stillness seemed the greater for an occasional laugh from the gunners, or the rattle of a cutlass newly settled in its sheath.
Then close aboard from out the blackness came a voice,—
“What ship is that?”
Paul Jones moved to the lee mizzen-shrouds and slowly replied,—
“I can’t hear what you say.”
He wanted all of his broadside to bear on the Englishman.
“What ship is that? Answer, or I shall fire.”
The moment had arrived. For answer Jones leaned far over the rail of the poop and passed the word. A sheet of flame flashed from one of the “Richard’s” after eighteen-pounders, followed by a terrific broadside which quaked the rotten timbers of the “Richard” from stem to stern. At the same time the guns of the “Serapis” were brought to bear, and her side seemed a mass of flame.