Twelve Naval Captains / Being a Record of Certain Americans Who Made Themselves Immortal

by Molly Elliot Seawell

At last, about seven o'clock in the evening, the cannonade began. At the second broadside two of the battery of eighteen-pounders on the "Bon Homme" burst, the rest cracked and could not be fired. These had been the main dependence for fighting the ship. Most of the small guns were dismounted, and in a little while Paul Jones had only three nine-pounders to play against the heavy broadside of the Serapis. In addition to this, the shot from the Serapis had made several enormous holes in the crazy old hull of the Bon Homme Richard, and she was leaking like a sieve, while she was afire in a dozen places at once. The crews of the exploded guns had no guns to fight, but they had to combat both fire and water, either of which seemed at any moment likely to destroy the leaking and burning ship. They worked like heroes, led by the gallant Dale, and encouraged by their intrepid commander, whose only comment on the desperate state of the ship was, "Never mind, my lads, we shall have a better ship to go home in."

Below, more than a hundred prisoners were ready to spring up, and were only subdued by Dale's determined attitude, who forced them to work at the pumps for their lives. The Serapis pounded her adversary mercilessly, and literally tore the Bon Homme Richard to pieces between decks. Most captains in this awful situation would have hauled down the flag. Not so Paul Jones. Knowing that his only chance lay in grappling with his enemy and having it out at close quarters, he managed to get alongside the Serapis, and with his own hands made fast his bowsprit to the Serapis' mizzen-mast, calling out cheerfully to his men, "Now, my brave lads, we have her!" Stacy, his sailing-master, while helping him, bungled with the hawser, and an oath burst from him. "Don't swear, Mr. Stacy," quietly said Paul Jones, "in another moment we may be in eternity; but let us do our duty."

The Alliance lay off out of gunshot and quite inactive most of the time, but at this point she approached and sailed around the two fighting ships, firing broadsides into her consort, which did dreadful damage. After this, her captain, the crack-brained and treacherous Landais, made off to windward and was seen no more.

The combat deepened, and apparently the Bon Homme Richard was destined to go down fighting. At one moment the two ships got into a position in which neither could fire an effective shot. As they lay, head and stern, fast locked in a deadly embrace, and enveloped in smoke and darkness as they repeatedly caught fire from each other, a terrible stillness fell awhile, until from the bloody decks of the Serapis a voice called out,—

"Have you struck?"

To this Paul Jones gave back the immortal answer, which will ever mark him among the bravest of the brave,—

"We have not yet begun to fight!"

Soon the conflict was renewed. The Serapis' heavy guns poured into and through the Bon Homme Richard's hull, but the topmen on the American ship kept up such a hurricane of destruction on the Serapis' spar deck, that Captain Pearson ordered every man below, while himself bravely remaining. A topman on the Bon Homme Richard, taking a bucket of hand grenades, lay out on the main yard, which was directly over the main hatch of the Serapis, and, coolly fastening his bucket to the sheet block, began to throw his grenades down the hatchway. Almost the first one rolled down the hatch to the gun-deck, where it ignited a row of cartridges left exposed by the carelessness of the powder boys. In an instant came an explosion which seemed to shake the heavens and the ocean.

This was the turning-point. The men in the Bon Homme Richard's tops climbed into those of the Serapis, the yards of the two ships being interlocked, and swept her decks with fire and shot. Dazed by the explosion, and helpless against the American sharpshooters, the courageous men on the Serapis saw themselves conquered, and Captain Pearson himself lowered the flag which had been nailed to the mast. Lieutenant Dale, swinging himself on board the Serapis' deck, received the captain's surrender; and thus ended one of the greatest single ship fights on record. The slaughter on both ships was fearful, and the Serapis' mainmast went by the board just as she was given up. But the poor Bon Homme Richard was past help, and next morning she was abandoned. At ten o'clock she was seen to be sinking. She gave a lurch forward and went down, the last seen of her being an American flag left flying by Paul Jones's orders at her mizzen peak, as she settled into her ocean grave.