by Tim McGrath
The ships were now close enough to hear the orders of their opposing captains. The Alliance was in the lead, and would have been the first ship in Jones’s squadron to encounter the Serapis—but Landais abruptly sheered off, leaving that honor to Jones. Taking a quick look behind him, Jones saw Cottineau do the same thing. The coming fight would begin, at least, as Bonhomme Richard versus Serapis.44
The two ships would soon be in hailing distance. Jones could see Pearson on his quarterdeck. Like the Bonhomme Richard, the Serapis had been flying St. George’s colors—the white flag with the narrow red cross. Jones watched as the colors were lowered, and saw Pearson take a carpenter’s maul and begin banging on a strip of wood too small to be a spar. It was a flagstaff; Pearson was nailing the red Royal Navy ensign, with the union in the canton, to the pole. Once done, Pearson raised it for friend and foe alike to see: there would be no lowering of his colors. Here was a captain equal to Jones in courage and determination, to be sure.45
Jones ordered his courses hauled up. Years later, Quarter-Gunner John Kilby remembered the deathly silence of the gun crews. “You may be sure,” he wrote, “that our ship was as well prepared for action as it was in the power of man.” Nevertheless, Jones wished he still had Lunt and his thirty men aboard. He would need them. Looking through his 18-pounder’s gun port, Kilby saw the Serapis close in. Side lanterns ran along her gunwales, allowing Kilby to see every British tar on her deck. Also below with Kilby, young Joseph Brussels was given the assignment of “powder boy,” to bring fresh powder horns on deck for the 12- and 9-pounders.46
From the maintop, Fanning waited as the Serapis tacked, bearing down to engage. The ships were well within hailing distance. For the rest of his life, Fanning recalled how “the moon was rising with majestic appearance, the weather being clear, the surface of the great deep perfectly smooth, even as in a mill pond”: false serenity meeting desperate, quiet anxiety.47
It was Pearson who broke the silence. Taking his speaking trumpet, he cried across the water, “What ship is that?”
Jones had Sailing Master Samuel Stacey reply. “The Princess Royal,” he shouted, hoping that Pearson would take the old French East Indiaman for a well-known British East Indiaman. Below, on the Bonhomme Richard’s gun deck, Kilby could hear everything being said.
“Where from?” the suspicious Pearson asked.
This time Jones answered, “I can’t hear what you say,” he replied. For a few seconds, all was quiet but the lapping of the water against the ships.
Breaking the silence, Pearson threatened, “Tell me instantly from whence you came and who you be, or I’ll fire a broadside into you!”
Again, silence.
Then in a split second, the game playing ended, as did the peaceful night at sea under a harvest moon. With alacrity, Jones hauled down his false colors, raised the American flag, and ordered Dale to fire a broadside, just as Pearson gave the same order. “No man living could tell which ship fired first,” Kilby wrote. The two simultaneous broadsides made for a deafening explosion.48
They were also deadly. Jones’s doubts about the soundness of his 18-pounders were proven correct—two of them burst, killing several of the men manning them, burning and maiming several others from the blasts. Thrown free of their breeching rope and tackle, the guns ripped a gaping hole in the starboard hull just above the waterline. Add to this the casualties on the deck and the damage to the masts and rigging from Pearson’s experienced gunners, and it seemed as if the devil himself was unleashing all hell aboard the Bonhomme Richard.49
But the Americans had struck hard at the Serapis. Jones’s gunners were accurate, the 12- and 9-pounders striking their targets, ripping into the frigate’s rigging and felling several sailors. From his quarterdeck, Pearson had his guns reloaded and fired, just as Jones was ordering aboard the Bonhomme Richard. Two more broadsides were exchanged; having seen that his 18-pounders were deadlier to his own men than to the enemy, Jones would not fire those on the port side in the engagement.50
Both captains now jockeyed their ships into a position that would put their foe at a disadvantage. Jones looked to get to windward of the Serapis and get the weather gauge to control the fight. But no matter what he tried, he could not gain an edge. From the maintop, Fanning saw “The Serapis out-sailing us two feet to one,” outmaneuvering the Bonhomme Richard at every opportunity. Ten minutes into the fighting, Jones sent the Bonhomme Richard to windward, the old merchantman actually pulling ahead of the trim frigate—Jones could soon cross Pearson’s bow, and fire at least one unanswered broadside into the Serapis.
But the instant Jones had waited for was the moment that Pearson anticipated. Being to windward, once the Bonhomme Richard moved ahead of the Serapis, Jones literally took the wind out of Pearson’s sails. But Pearson turned the tables on Jones’s advantage by backing his sails, sending his frigate behind the Bonhomme Richard. Jones’s momentum now worked against him. Instead of his ship, it was the Serapis that “crossed the T” behind the Bonhomme Richard’s stern. Pearson was proving to be every bit the expert sailor Jones was; another British broadside smashed into the old ship’s handsomely filigreed cabin windows and up into the poop deck.
Looking to keep control of the engagement, Pearson ever so delicately backed his sails again, slowing the Serapis and allowing him to fire two more unanswered broadsides. “Our men,” Fanning recalled, “fell in all parts of the ship by the scores.”51
Thus far, the captains were equal in courage and cunning, but the Bonhomme Richard, no match from the beginning for the Serapis, was now in disastrous shape. “I must confess,” Jones later told Franklin, “That the Enemies Ship being much more Manageable than the Bon Homme Richard gained thereby several times an advantageous Situation in spite of my best endeavour to prevent it.” These early broadsides caused extensive damage to her hull and rigging; she began taking in water.
Several of the 12-pounders had been directly hit by British cannonballs, killing and wounding the gun crews assigned them, blowing the guns off their carriages and rendering them as useless as the 18-pounders on the gun deck. When the fight began there were twenty-five marines on the poop deck with Jones, Chamillard, the helmsman, and other officers. Now there were three. Everywhere Jones looked he saw carnage and wreckage. Two thoughts raced through his mind: how to get the Bonhomme Richard close enough to board the Serapis—his only hope for a victory—and where in God’s name was the Alliance?52
The scene below deck was even more harrowing. In the cockpit, Surgeon Brooke was overwhelmed by the numbers of wounded and burned men brought to him by the minute. To keep from slipping, he ordered one of the Loblolly Boys to pour sand on the blood-soaked floor. One of his first patients was John Jordan, the East Indian, his right leg pulverized by a British cannonball. Brooke reached for his saw.53
Ship’s Carpenter John Gunnison hastened below with several hands carrying canvas and “plugs”—large wooden dowels. They approached each hole below the waterline, forcing the canvas against the inrushing water, and then hammering the plug in to secure—or at least slow—each leak. Once finished, they sloshed through the water to another opening, then another. Other hands manned the pumps in what looked like a futile effort to return the surging water back to the sea.54
By now over a thousand onlookers were swarming around the lighthouse on Flamborough Head, watching the battle beneath them. Lit from on high by the moon, the townsfolk of Scarborough could see the orange-yellow flash of the cannons; then, seconds later, they heard the echoing blast. Soon they were joined on the bluff by throngs from nearby Bridlington, all eyes on the macabre, otherworldly spectacle—horror from afar.55
Jones watched from the poop deck of the devastated Bonhomme Richard as Pearson sent the Serapis ahead this time to “cross the T” at Jones’s bow. Until this very moment, everything had been going Pearson’s way in the battle, including the wind.
No longer.
But attempting to board the Serapis now meant the Americans had to walk out single file along the bowsprit, making them easy targets for Pearson’s marines. Within seconds Jones saw the folly of the attack. What grappling lines had not been severed by the British Jones’s men now cut themselves, as Stacey backed the Bonhomme Richard’s sails. The ships separated. Wasting no time himself, Pearson let fly another broadside at the rebels. At such close range it was impossible to miss.
During all this, young Joseph Brussels had been running up and down the hatchway, carrying powder horns to the deck from the magazine and back again. A concussive blast struck nearby, and his powder horn fell to the deck. The boy reached down to pick it up, only to see his hand still gripped around it. The explosion had blown his arm off.
Joseph fell to the deck, unconscious. He was carried below, where Surgeon Brooke, using a device called a crow’s beak to draw out the blood vessels from the wound, sutured the stump. An ointment of turpentine and egg yolk was applied before Brooke bandaged the area, leaving a channel open for the wound to drain. With no time to ponder the boy’s age or condition, Brooke said, “Next.” Young Brussels was carried away, while another poor wretch was laid before the surgeon.57
Another small puff of wind came Jones’s way, and Stacey roared at the helmsman to change course. If the Bonhomme Richard could turn fast enough, she could cross the Serapis’s stern, letting her remaining starboard guns fire a devastating broadside into the defenseless frigate. But the old ship’s rudder had been shot away, and instead of turning, she stalled, putting the Serapis on a collision course. In seconds she struck the Bonhomme Richard on her starboard side. With a jerk, the frigate’s bowsprit enmeshed itself in the East Indiaman’s mizzen shrouds and vang—the rope that set the spanker into position.58
The jolting contact took away the American colors flying at the ensign staff. Believing the rebels had struck, the British tars gave three cheers, only to be answered by a volley of small-arms fire from Jones’s men. Kilby later recalled Jones crying, “Look at my mizzen peak!” while another ensign was run up.59
Entangled as they were, Jones and Pearson both took action—Jones to keep the ships in this deadly embrace, Pearson to escape it. Seeing the tide running out, Pearson ordered “drop anchor,” hoping the combination of his secured ship and the moving current would pull the combatants apart and allow him to resume sailing around the crippled rebel ship and hammer her at will.60
But Jones was equally quick-thinking. Seeing the Serapis’s jib stay lying on his deck, Jones grabbed it and called Stacey to help him secure it to their mizzenmast. Straining to get the stiffened rope around the mast, Stacey began cursing. Jones cut him short. “Mr. Stacey, it is no time for swearing now, you may by the next moment be in eternity; but let us do our duty.” Surrounded by death, Jones still found time to be both officer and gentleman. “Now,” said Jones as they finished their task, “we’ll hold her fast by this until one or the other sinks.”61
For a second time, Jones called, “Grappling hooks away!” Once more, his sailors took the lines in hand, swinging the hooks over their heads once, twice, and then over to the Serapis. Clusters of men grabbed the lines; pulling sharply, they brought the ships closer, inch by inch. Again Pearson’s men approached their bulwarks with axes raised, only to be cut down this time by Jones’s marines in the fighting tops of the Bonhomme Richard.62
Now luck, so long against Jones in the fight, turned his way—along with the Bonhomme Richard. The Serapis could not break free, and the grappling hooks, the tied jib stay, the ship’s anchor, and the current held Pearson’s frigate in place while the Bonhomme Richard slowly but inevitably came 180 degrees around. As she did, the fluke of the Serapis’s spare anchor caught in the Bonhomme Richard’s quarter. With succinct eloquence, Pearson later reported that “we dropt alongside each other, head to stern.” The ships were facing in opposite directions, unable to go anywhere.63
The battle was a little over an hour old. Despite skyrocketing casualties, neither side was close to victory. Jones’s spur-of-the-moment stratagem had worked; now, like a punch-drunk boxer, he had his foe in a clinch he could maintain until a strong enough punch ended this butchery.
From the fighting tops Fanning and the others were firing “without intermission, with musketry, blunderbusses, coehorns, swivels, and pistols” into the enemy tops. In minutes they had wiped out all but one British marine, remaining in the foretop, bravely firing his musket, then ducking behind the mast to reload before firing again. Fanning ordered his men to hold their fire until he peeked out. Like a firing squad on high, they sent him falling to the deck. Small-arms fire came from both ships, Jones firing his pistol at a British officer on the Serapis’s quarterdeck.
Jones’s ploy succeeded in negating the sailing advantage of the Serapis, but it also brought the enemy’s mighty 18-pounders literally within inches of the Bonhomme Richard. Dale’s gun crews—those whose cannons were still serviceable—joined their foe in a frantic scherzo of load and fire, load and fire. To work their cannons, the gun crews on both sides found themselves running their sponges and rammers through their enemy’s gun ports. “The muzzles of our guns touched each other’s sides,” Pearson marveled.
That being the case, he kept his guns firing round after round into the Bonhomme Richard, taking out more rebel guns and battering holes below the waterline until she was perforated like a Swiss cheese. Jones’s ship was no longer just taking on water; she was beginning to sink.64
Jones sent Carpenter John Gunnison to assess the damage below. He soon found himself in over six feet of water. The only sound that drowned out the roar of cannon and the inrushing seawater were the cries Gunnison heard coming from the British prisoners in the hold. Literally and figuratively in the dark, they were unaware of which way the battle was going; they only knew the hold was filling up with water. Locked inside, they were sure they were soon going to drown in a sinking ship. Gunnison went on deck to tell Jones his ship was sinking. Jones dismissed him: “Never mind,” Kilby heard his captain tell the carpenter. “If she sinks, there are plenty of spars on deck and we shall not be drowned. Go back and do the best you can.”65
Gunnison went for John Burbank, master-at-arms. Both went below to open the hold before it became a drowning pool. Scores of British prisoners clambered up the hatchway behind them, escaping the near certainty of drowning only to find themselves in the midst of a nightmare of cannon and musket fire. Before the escapees thought to mount an attack on their rebel captors, Jones sent them below again to man both the chain pumps and the hand pumps, relieving the sailors at that task and allowing them to rejoin the fight.66
By now the Serapis’s gunners had knocked out the last 12-pounder under Dale’s command. This left Jones with only two starboard 9-pounders to return the enemy’s broadside. Undaunted, he took a couple of men across the deck, where they freed another 9-pounder from her breeching rope and tackle, trundling it across the deck. The 9-pounders were under the command of Purser Mease, but now he fell with a serious head wound. In most sea fights, the captain never leaves the poop or quarterdeck, but this w
as no textbook battle. Jones manned this gun himself, directing each shot at the bright yellow mainmast of the Serapis.67
While British cannons slowly demolished the Bonhomme Richard’s hull, Jones’s marines were firing volley after volley down at the Serapis’s sailors. Within half an hour, Fanning and the rest had all but cleared the enemy’s deck; only the gun crews manning the forward guns were under cover and safe from the marines’ marksmanship. As there was no breeze, smoke burned the eyes and choked the lungs of every man in the fight, officer and sailor alike. But they kept fighting.
With no wind, and water funneling into the Bonhomme Richard, another element came into play: fire. The sails of both ships, hanging limply in the air, were soon ablaze. In minutes both ships were burning, the Serapis in a dozen different places. The battle was halted so that bucket brigades could douse the fires with what Pearson called “the greatest difficulty and exertion imaginable.”68
As both sides fought the flames and not each other, Jones found a moment’s respite and sat on a hen coop—an image no novelist could imagine. Hearing distant gunfire, he turned his attention across the water, looking for the Alliance, Pallas, and Vengeance. He could make out another battle taking place between the Pallas and the Countess of Scarborough. As for his other two ships, Jones could only guess whether they were lurking somewhere in the darkness, chasing the Baltic fleet up the coast, or just plain gone.69
Once the fires on both ships were brought under control, the battle resumed. By this time Jones had all three 9-pounders loaded with bar-shot, firing at the Serapis’s mainmast, each shot slowly but surely weakening the massive pole. Within minutes, both ships were afire again. Suddenly, there was a broadside of grapeshot fired across the Bonhomme Richard’s decks, killing or wounding several of the men still on her poop deck. With the Serapis lashed lengthwise to his ship, Jones knew the barrage did not come from the frigate, and the Countess was embroiled in a fight of her own with the Pallas. Who had fired on him?
