“Well done, my brave lads. We have got her now.”
And so they had in one way. One anchor of the Serapis dropped over on the Bonhomme Richard, and was secured where it would help to hold her, and more lashings were passed elsewhere. Even when the Serapis anchored she could not get away. But in the sense of capturing the Serapis, never was such a triumphant cry raised with a less hope of accomplishing the result.
The ships now lay with their starboard sides together. During the last half hour or so the crew of the Serapis had been working their port battery. When they ran across to work their starboard guns they were unable to open their ports amidships because the ships were touching each other, so they fired through their own closed ports, blowing the port-lids off.
On the Bonhomme Richard the men were no less determined. Their remaining guns were fought even with cheerful vigor. Lieut. Richard Dale used to tell how, on going down on the gundeck, he saw a gun’s crew of his men racing with a crew over in the Serapis to see which would get loaded first. The ships were side to side and the guns were muzzle-loaders. Each crew, to get its charge set home, had to poke its long-handled rammer through the enemy’s port before it could be inserted into the gun’s bore.
“Fair play, you damned Yankee,” roared an English gunner, poking his rammer through the Yankee’s port.
“Mind your eye, Johnny Bull,” replied the Yankee, following the same movement.
Alas! the “Johnny Bull” had been a trifle ahead of the “damned Yankee,” and firing his gun, he dismounted that on the Bonhomme Richard.
The British were, in fact, soon quite as successful in their handling of the main-deck battery as they had been with that on the lower deck. Every twelve-pounder but one on the Bonhomme Richard was silenced in one way and another, and so, too, were the little nine-pounders on the forecastle. There were then but two cannon left in service on the Bonhomme Richard, the two nine-pounders on the fighting side of the quarter-deck.
The Serapis and the Bonhomme Richard.