Another log is also contained in the book. It immediately follows the "List of the Officers and Crew of the Ariel," and is headed, "A Journal Kept on Board the Ship Queen of France, from Cape Henlopen towards Lorient." Beginning on August 20, 1782, it records the courses, distances run, the latitudes and longitudes of each day, up to and including September 10th, when the ship was in latitude 47° 19' N. and longitude 19° 15' W. There are no entries in the column under "Remarks."
Importance is attached to this log because it shows conclusively that the book was in the possession of Dale until the end of the cruise of the Queen of France, in February, 1783, about the time of the end of the Revolution.
From Cooper's "Life of Richard Dale" we learn that after his return to the United States in the Ariel Jones was anxious to take him with him to the ship America, to which Jones had been appointed, but Dale declined the service and was employed on the Trumbull, which was captured by an English fleet, and for the fourth time Dale was made prisoner, but was exchanged in November, 1781. No new service in the regular navy offering, Dale obtained a furlough and joined a large letter-of-marque called the Queen of France, that carried twelve guns, as her first officer. Soon after he was appointed to the command of her and, in company with several other letters-of-marque, sailed for France, making many captures by the way. Dale's ship, however, parted from the fleet, and, falling in with an English privateer of fourteen guns, a severe engagement followed, in which both parties were much cut up, and they parted by mutual consent.[19]
Upon the termination of hostilities, in common with most of the officers of the navy, Dale was "disbanded," and engaged in the East India trade until 1792, when he was restored to the navy as captain in the reorganized marine.
It was probably during this period that our log-book passed into the possession of Jones, who was urging his claims for rank and prize money before Congress.[20] Failing to obtain what he termed "proper consideration," after a cruise with the French fleet Jones was commissioned as agent to look after the prizes made on his cruises in European waters and sailed for France November 10, 1783, in the Washington, late General Monk, the ship captured by Barney in the Hyder-Ally and then commanded by Barney. Jones left in the care of a Mr. Hyslop of New York a portion of his papers, being the same which later turned up in the keeping of the baker in New York, and upon which Sherburne based his life of Jones, and from him the logs of the Ranger and Bon Homme Richard appear to have been purchased in 1824 by Captain Boyd, before alluded to. But Jones took with him those papers which he deemed most important to the discharge of his mission to France, not the least of which was the book containing the muster-roll of the Bon Homme Richard, which probably was the only authentic and official list then in existence, and indispensable to the proceedings in the French prize courts.
The papers and property of Jones, upon his death in Paris in 1792, passed to his sister Mrs. Taylor, and upon them as a base followed the Edinburgh "Life of Jones," also that by Sands—by all conceded to be the best of the numerous biographies of Jones—while Sherburne's book, published in 1825, is properly criticized as a chaotic compilation, creating inextricable confusion in the mind of a reader.
There has always been some difficulty in finding a correct muster-roll of the Bon Homme Richard.[21] The list published by Sherburne he states is made from "official sources," and is shown by the correspondence on the subject to have been made from "a certified copy of a copy." This is undoubtedly the document now in the Congressional Library, being a copy, written by a Frenchman, of the muster-roll filed by Jones in the French prize courts and certified to by him as correct. As this list corresponds with great exactness to the muster-roll of the officers and crew of the Bon Homme Richard, making due allowances for desertions, men sent away in prizes, and possibly new enlistments, it seems evident that the original basis of the lists was that contained in the log-book. The names of the French volunteers and marines were not entered in the muster-roll, but were probably ascertained by Jones in France, and added to the copy filed by him.
The editor has alluded to the fact that the logs of the Serapis, Alliance, and Ariel, as well as the list of the officers and crew of the Ariel, are all written by the same hand. The penmanship is remarkably good, the orthography correct, showing the writer to have had some pretensions to scholarship and clerical ability, much more than that shown by either Dale or Lunt. It had been conjectured that the writer was Midshipman Nathaniel Fanning, who served under an appointment by Jones on the Richard, Serapis, Alliance, and Ariel. He it was who, stationed in the maintop, threw, or caused to be thrown, the bomb which, exploding on the gun-deck of the Serapis, created such havoc as to have been largely instrumental in bringing the action to a close.
Fanning has left a narrative of his life, in which he claims to have been Jones' private secretary, and to have had close and intimate relations with him. He also refers to the journal kept by him, and the dates of the occurrences, as stated at length in his narrative, correspond with some accuracy with the same events as recorded in the several logs.[22] The journal of the Ariel ceases when Fanning left the Ariel, probably because of the slight misunderstanding recorded in the Ariel's log on the 2d of September, an occurrence which sufficiently accounts for Fanning's severe criticisms of Jones, given in his narrative, with frequent allusions to his ungovernable temper.
Another reason for the conjecture arose from the fact that the name of Nathaniel Fanning, as well as that of Beaumont Groube, both in the muster-roll of the Richard and the Ariel, are in the unmistakable handwriting of the penman of the logs. As opposed to the conjecture, however, the name of Nathaniel Fanning is spelled Fenning in the Richard's list, while in that of the Ariel it is correctly spelled.