The fight occurred so close inshore as to be plainly visible from the bluff overlooking the sea, and hundreds of people from the country-side gathered there to gaze upon the scene. For a time, of course, there was nothing distinguishable but the flash of the guns through the night, but after an hour the moon rose out of the sea, and then two ships, locked in the embrace of death, stood out in the midst of a cloud of smoke. That these spectators looked on confidently rejoicing in the prospect of a victory for their own ship, need not be doubted. How they rejoiced as they thought that their shores were now to be rid of the “pirates” is easily imagined; but who shall picture their consternation when a boatload of their countrymen escaped ashore and told the direful facts?
To show the spirit in which English historians have always written about any matter in which the American navy had part, it is worth noting that Allen (“Battles of the British Navy”), ignoring the presence of tens of thousands of Hessians in the British forces in America, tries to throw contempt on the crew of the Bonhomme Richard by calling them “hirelings,” and even stigmatizes the established fact of the treachery of Landais as an “absurd” charge.
A brief statement of the comparative strength of the two ships is essential. The Bonhomme Richard entered the fight with forty-two guns, which could throw 557 pounds of projectiles at a discharge; the Serapis carried fifty, throwing 600 pounds. After the first broadside the Bonhomme Richard had no eighteen-pounders in action, while the Serapis had twenty. The crew of the American ship had been reduced to 304 by the drafts made in manning prizes, and of these no more than one-third were Americans. The Serapis carried 320, chiefly picked men. So effective had been the work of the crew of the Serapis that at the end of an hour any ordinary man would have surrendered the Bonhomme Richard; but John Paul Jones was of different character from ordinary men. With a tenacity of purpose that has never been surpassed, he continued the fight and won. The number of killed on each ship was forty-nine. The Serapis had sixty-eight wounded and the Bonhomme Richard sixty-seven, among whom were John Paul Jones himself and Richard Dale. Jones was hit in the head, and the wound afterwards seriously affected his eyes, but he said nothing about it in his report. Dale was wounded by a splinter during the fight, but did not even know it until after the fight was over. While sitting on the binnacle of the Serapis and giving orders to get her under way, he found she did not move when her sails were full. He did not then know she was anchored. Jumping up to see what was the matter, he fell at full length on the deck. His blood had cooled by this time, and the wound disabled him then.
Signature of Richard Dale.
From a letter at the Lenox Library.
The smaller British ship that was protecting the convoy, the Countess of Scarborough, is lost to sight during the remarkable conflict between the Serapis and the Bonhomme Richard, but she was forced into battle by the gallant Captain Piercy of the Pallas, and for two hours she maintained it. Then she surrendered. The Pallas was superior to her in guns and crew, but, on the whole, not to the extent that British historians would have their readers believe, for the Pallas was a merchant ship modelled to carry cargo only, while the Countess of Scarborough was built as a man-of-war.
Of the treachery of Captain Landais a brief space will suffice because, as already said, his disappointments while in the French service had made him partially insane. That he fired into the Bonhomme Richard was proved beyond any doubt by his own men, some of whom (the Americans) refused to fire the guns at his order. It was proved by his own officers (Frenchmen at that) that he said he would have “thought it no harm if the Bonhomme Richard had struck, for it would have given him an opportunity to retake her and to take the Serapis.” A sane man would have been executed for such treachery as his, of course, but he was very properly dismissed only. He settled down in New York City after the war, where he lived on an income of $100 a year, derived from prize money that he had obtained. It was his habit to take a walk on lower Broadway every day when the weather and his health permitted. He was a curious figure there, for he “never appeared abroad with his old-fashioned cocked hat in its legitimate station,” but “carrying it forever in his hand, as a mark of homage and respect to, and in commemoration of the cruel death of his beloved sovereign.”
A Letter from Pierre Landais.