Lieutenant Governor of Greenwich Hospital
And then came John Paul Jones to receive the sword of the defeated Pearson. According to the older accounts of this fight, Pearson said, as he handed his sword to his conqueror:
“It is painful to deliver up my sword to a man who has fought with a halter around his neck.”
To this, it is said, Jones replied:
“Sir, you have fought like a hero; and I make no doubt your sovereign will reward you in the most ample manner.”
John Paul Jones.
After a rare engraving.
In the present era of intense desire for arbitration instead of war a historian of this battle has written that “The story that Captain Pearson said, in giving up his sword, that it added to his mortification to give up his sword to a man who fought with a rope around his neck, is an idle fabrication, and a slur on Captain Pearson.”
Whether Captain Pearson said it or not cannot now be definitely determined, but the reader shall judge for himself, further on, whether the story is “a slur on” him or not.