Stories of Our Naval Heroes Every Child Can Read

by Unknown

The British ships did come a little nearer. The forty merchant vessels sailed as fast as they could to the nearest harbor, and then the warships had a terrible battle.

At seven o'clock in the evening the British frigate and the Bon Homme Richard began to fight. They banged and hammered away for hours, and then, when the British captain thought he must have beaten the Americans, and it was so dark and smoky that they could only see each other by the fire flashes, he called out to the American captain: "Are you beaten? Have you hauled down your flag?"

And back came the answer of Captain John Paul Jones: "I haven't begun to fight yet!"

So they went at it again. The two ships were now lashed together, and they tore each other like savage dogs in a fight.

The rotten old Richard suffered terribly. Two of her great guns had burst at the first fire, and she was shot through and through by the Serapis until most of her timbers above the water-line were shot away. The British rushed on board with pistols and cutlasses, and the Americans drove them back. But the Richard was on fire; water was pouring in through a dozen shot holes; it looked as if she must surrender, brave as were her captain and crew. There were on board the old ship nearly two hundred prisoners who had been taken from captured vessels, and so pitiful were their cries that one of the officers set them free, thinking that the ship was going to sink and that they ought to have a chance for their lives. These men were running up on deck, adding greatly to the trouble of Captain Jones; for he had now a crowd of enemies on his own ship. But the prisoners were so scared that they did not know what to do. They saw the ship burning around them and heard the water pouring into the hold, and thought they would be carried to the bottom. So to keep them from mischief they were set to work, some at the pumps, others at putting out the fire. And to keep the ship from blowing up, if the fire should reach the magazine, Captain Jones set men at bringing up the kegs of powder and throwing them into the sea. Never was there a ship in so desperate a strait, and there was hardly a man on board, except Captain Jones, who did not want to surrender.

But the British were not having it all their own way. The American tars had climbed the masts and were firing down with muskets and flinging down hand grenades, until all the British had to run from the upper deck. A hand grenade is a small, hollow iron ball filled with powder, which explodes when thrown down and sends the bits of iron flying all around, like so many bullets.

One sailor took a bucketful of these and crept far out on the yard-arm of the ship, and began to fling them down on the gun-deck of the Serapis, where they did much damage. At last one of them went through the open hatchway to the main deck, where a crowd of men were busy working the great guns, and cartridges were lying all about and loose powder was scattered on the floor.

The grenade set fire to this powder, and in a second there was a terrible explosion. A great sheet of flame burst up through the hatchway, and frightful cries came from below. In that dreadful moment more than twenty men were killed and many more were wounded. All the guns on that deck had to be abandoned. There were no men left to work them.

Where was Captain Jones all the time, and what was he doing? You may be sure he was busy. He had taken a gun and loaded it with double-headed shot, and kept firing at the mainmast of the Serapis. Every shot cut a piece out of the mast, and after a while it came tumbling upon the deck, with all its spars and rigging. The tarred ropes quickly caught fire, and the ship was in flames.

At this moment up came the Alliance, one of Captain Jones's fleet. He now thought that the battle was at an end, but to his horror the Alliance, instead of firing at the British ship, began to pour its broadsides into his own. He called to them for God's sake to quit firing, but they kept on, killing some of his best men and making several holes under water, through which new floods poured into the ship. The Alliance had a French captain who hated Paul Jones and wanted to sink his ship.