Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  The broadside came from the Alliance. In the two hours since he had sheered out of Jones’s way, Landais had stayed out of both fights; now he came in for the kill, apparently unconcerned as to whom he was killing. The same broadside that struck the Bonhomme Richard also hit the Serapis. “Don’t fire into us!” Jones roared. “We are the Bonhomme Richard.” Jones sent several men for lanterns and ordered them hung in the shrouds, along with two taken aloft to hang at the mizzen—the commodore’s recognition signal at nighttime.

  If Landais was deaf to Jones’s cry, his second-in-command, Lieutenant James Degge, was not. But when Degge told Landais of his error, the captain screamed, “Do you obey my orders! I know very well what to do.” The Alliance sailed around the two deadlocked combatants, unleashing an even deadlier broadside. Among those struck down was young midshipman James Coram. “Alliance has wounded me,” he gasped. Coram was wrong. Alliance had killed him. As shock and rage battled inside him, Jones watched the Alliance disappear into the darkness.70

  He turned his attention back to his 9-pounders and winning what looked more and more to be an unwinnable fight, firing more rounds into the Serapis’s mainmast. His own mainmast had been a British target and was so damaged that she was held in place only by her shrouds and stays. Fanning feared that he and his men would soon be sent plummeting to the deck, or into the cold waters off Flamborough Head.

  To make matters worse, the mainsail and standing rigging were burning. The bucket of water the marines had hauled aloft before the fighting had been consumed long before; the marines extinguished the flames with their jackets. With the Serapis’s tops cleared of her marines, and the spars of the two ships literally interlocked, Fanning ordered his marines to cross to the opposite mast—in this case, the Serapis’s foretop. Taking their muskets, coehorns, stinkpots, and grenades with them, they inched along the footropes until they were safely across.71

  The situation below deck grew more perilous by the second. Water was pouring in so hard and fast that manning the pumps seemed futile to Gunnison, but the British prisoners kept to their task. Before returning to deck Gunnison found a friend, Gunner’s Mate Henry Gardner, an Englishman. He, too, had eyes, and could see the ship was sinking. They climbed the port ladder together to find their captain.

  They looked to the poop deck but did not see Jones or Dale. All they saw through the haze of stinging smoke were too many dead bodies to count—surely Jones and Dale were among them. Seeing no colors flying, they believed all was lost, and went forward to lower the commodore’s pendant atop the main peak, crying loudly, “Quarter! Quarter!” Pearson heard them, and called for his speaking trumpet.72

  But Jones heard them as well. Brandishing two pistols, he bolted from his gun, stepping over the dead without breaking his stride. “What dammed rascals are these?” he roared. “Shoot them! Kill them!”—an order he was giving as much to himself as anyone else within earshot.

  Any initial surprise Gardner and Gunnison had in finding Jones alive was quickly replaced by sheer fear for their safety as he approached. They had called for quarter to save their lives from the British; now it looked like their own captain would shoot them dead.

  And they would have been—at least Gunnison. Jones shot at the fleeing carpenter, but the pistol only clicked—he had forgotten to reload after firing it earlier. Enraged, Jones hurled it at Gunnison’s head, striking him so hard he fell unconscious down the ladder leading to the ship’s waist.

  Just then Pearson hailed Jones: “Have you struck?” he asked. “Do you call for quarter?”73

  Pearson’s question silenced any fighting, as men from both sides listened for Jones’s answer. From his post forward, Richard Dale also turned to hear his captain’s reply.

  Jones possessed two traits no one ever questioned: unflappable courage, and an actor’s gift for the moment. Forty years later, Dale would remember Jones’s reply for posterity: “I have not yet begun to fight.” Others recalled Jones replying, “I may sink, but I’m damned if I’ll strike”—an equally defiant phrase.74

  Whatever defiant words Jones used, they did not cow Pearson, who cried, “Boarders away!” Two dozen of his toughest marines and sailors wielding cutlasses, pikes, and pistols clambered over the side, leaping across to the Bonhomme Richard’s bow. Pearson’s 18-pounders resumed blasting away at what was left of the Bonhomme Richard’s hull.

  Seizing a pike himself, Jones rushed forward to meet the enemy, but the intrepid Dale, leading thirty men, had already begun the counterattack. To Kilby, Dale fought “with bravery like that of Julius Caesar.” Jones was soon among the phalanx of Dale’s combatants in the bloody, hand-to-hand clash.

  It was fierce but brief, thanks in great part to Fanning and the marines in the fighting tops, whose marksmanship was unerring throughout the night. They had obeyed Jones’s orders to the deadliest letter. What boarders they missed were being dispatched by Jones, Dale, and their men. The attackers fell back. Feeling their way to the rail, trying not to trip over their own fallen shipmates, they returned to the Serapis. Jones returned to his 9-pounder and his dogged assault on the Serapis’s mainmast.75

  Fanning and the others in the tops poured such a withering fire down on the deck of the Serapis that Pearson sent everyone below, while shots from his 18-pounders now passed clear through the Bonhomme Richard. “Only an old timber here and there kept the poop from crashing down on the gun deck,” Jones later observed. By now half of the men on both sides were either killed or wounded; new fires sprang up above and below both decks. “The moon at this time, as though ashamed to behold this bloody scene any longer, retired behind a dark cloud,” Fanning poetically and chillingly recalled.76

  But Pearson was not yet ready to give up his ship. One of Jones’s prisoners had succeeded in gaining entry to the Serapis through one of the empty gun ports. Finding Pearson, he begged him to hold out—the Bonhomme Richard was sinking.77

  With British resistance now restricted to the gun deck, one daring man brought the battle to an end. William Hamilton, a Scotsman, was stationed in the maintop and had moved to the Serapis’s foretop with Fanning and the others. Now, carrying a leather bucket of grenades and a slow match in his other hand (or between his teeth), he crossed the footropes again, edging out along the spar. There was no enemy on deck to shoot at him—his balancing act alone was dangerous enough. Once he had a clear view of the Serapis’s deck and hatchway below him, he went to work, just as the moon rose above that black cloud.

  Still manning his 9-pounder, Jones watched Hamilton’s high-wire act, full of admiration for his fellow Scot. “As the flames from [the Serapis’s] railings and shrouds added to the light of the moon,” Jones prosaically recalled, Hamilton stood over the frigate, a veritable Zeus, armed with grenades instead of thunderbolts. With methodical coolness, he lit a fuse; it would burn a few seconds before detonating. With perfect timing, Hamilton threw one at a cluster of British sailors, then another. The Serapis rocked with the explosions.

  Hamilton threw one more. This grenade bounced down the hatchway to the gun deck, which was usually kept pristine, especially in battle. But this fight had been so frenetic that unspent cartridges littered the deck. No kindling could be more flammable or deadly. The grenade blew up, killing a score of men at the guns and igniting the cartridges. One blast followed another. Five of the nine starboard 18-pounders were blown off their carriages, and fire instantly swept through the gun deck. Those men not killed from the blasts climbed up the ladder screaming in pain, their skin and hair on fire, their lungs filled with smoke, while their shipmates blocked from the hatchway by the conflagration leapt through the gun ports into the sea.78

  Ascending to his quarterdeck, Pearson assessed the situation. The Serapis’s quarter rails had been completely leveled with the deck. Everywhere he looked his ship was on fire; dead and wounded lay everywhere. Most of his starboard guns were destroyed. He could see, hear, and feel his mainmast t
otter, mangled by Jones’s relentless barrage. “I fear,” he believed, “the greatest part of the people will lose their lives.” This madman who so willingly tethered his ship and his life to Pearson’s frigate showed no sign of surrendering.

  Then there was the Alliance—the undamaged, sound, thirty-six-gun frigate that had already hurt the Serapis. Even if Jones surrendered, Pearson could not possibly engage the Alliance “without our being able to bring a gun to bear on her.” Pearson saw his situation “impracticable” without “the least prospect of success.”79

  Looking over to the Bonhomme Richard, he found Jones still at his 9-pounder. Taking his speaking trumpet one last time, Pearson called, “Sir, I have struck! I ask for quarter!”

  Jones turned his attention towards the frigate’s quarterdeck. Looking through the black smoke he found Pearson, his red flag still hanging above him. Months before, John Adams had marveled at Jones’s “quiet voice”—he had obviously never witnessed Jones on deck. The commodore did not need his speaking trumpet now. “If you have struck,” he retorted, “haul down your ensign!”

  The sailors near Pearson stood stock-still. Having witnessed the marksmanship of the Bonhomme Richard’s marines, they were not about to move. Instead, Pearson, turning his back on Jones and the world, took charge one last time aboard his ship. The red flag he had nailed defiantly with his own hands was in tatters, shot through by musket fire and grapeshot. With as much dignity as he could muster, the brave captain of the Serapis ripped his colors, nail by nail, off the flagstaff.80

  Seeing the flag in Pearson’s hand, Jones cried, “Cease firing!” He ordered Dale to bring Pearson aboard the Bonhomme Richard. Dale leapt upon the gunwale, grabbed a line, and swung over the side, while Midshipman John Mayrant followed with a boarding party. Dale landed on the Serapis’s deck unscathed, but the battle of Flamborough Head was not yet over. As Mayrant came aboard the Serapis, one last skirmish began. A British tar stabbed Mayrant in the thigh with a pike—not everyone had heard Pearson ask for quarter.

  Nor did the second-in-command, Lieutenant John Wright, climbing up the hatchway just as Dale addressed Pearson: “Sir, I have orders to send you on board the ship alongside.”

  Pearson was about to reply when Wright, sweat-stained and hoarse, asked Pearson if the rebels had struck. It was Dale who answered him: “No, sir, to the contrary; he has struck to us.”

  The shocked Wright accosted his captain. “Have you struck, sir?”

  “Yes, I have,” Pearson replied.

  “I have nothing more to say,” Wright responded. He turned his back on Pearson to return below when Dale informed him that he, too, was to come aboard the Bonhomme Richard. Now the battle was over.81

  Pearson kept his shock at the human and physical wreckage he found aboard the Bonhomme Richard to himself until he made his report to the Admiralty three weeks later:

  I found her to be in the greatest distress; her counters and quarter on the lower deck entirely drove in, and the whole of her lower deck guns dismounted; she was also on fire in two places, and six or seven feet of water in her hold which kept increasing on them all night.82

  Jones played the gallant host, exhibiting the traditional courtesies extended to the vanquished commander. Pearson, his handsome uniform smudged with soot, handed Jones his sword. Jones took it, complimenting Pearson on his gallantry and the hopes that King George would reward him handsomely for his devotion to duty. Then Pearson cleared his throat, and asked of the nationality of the crew—hoping against hope that the French-built ship was not manned by Frenchmen, which would only add to Pearson’s mortification at losing his ship.

  “Mostly Americans,” Jones replied.

  This was music to Pearson’s ringing ears. The Americans were rebels, but at least of the same blood. “Then it was Diamond cut Diamond,” he said. Jones invited him into his cabin for a glass of wine.83

  It is not recorded whether, once the captains entered Jones’s obliterated cabin, he found two unbroken wineglasses. On this night, above all others, the sharing of a glass of wine seems incongruous while two ships were burning and one of them was sinking.

  Their formal pleasantries concluded, Jones and Pearson returned to battle the elements. Jones ordered Dale to cut loose the mizzen stay and grappling lines that had held the ships fast; he was to command the Serapis and follow the Bonhomme Richard. Returning to the frigate, Dale could not understand why she would not answer her helm, and sent a man below to see if her wheel ropes were cut away. Dale sat himself down on a binnacle—the box near the wheel that housed the compass. At this point, the sailing master of the Serapis came to the quarterdeck, informing the unknowing Dale that his prize was rocking at anchor.

  Dale rose, only to collapse to the deck as if shot. During the fighting, a flying splinter had embedded itself in his leg, creating a deep wound he had been completely unaware of until this second. He was being helped back to the binnacle when he ordered a hand to cut the anchor cable. Suddenly, a sharp series of cracking sounds came from the waist. It was the mainmast. Jones’s 9-pounders had done their work well; with one last loud snap, it toppled over the side. The Serapis was not going anywhere.84

  Nor was the Bonhomme Richard. The rotten wood, pitch, and oakum that held her carcass together made a perfect torch for the fire that now threatened the powder magazine. Jones ordered his distress signal run up. Remarkably, the Alliance, Pallas, and Vengeance responded (along with Lieutenant Lunt’s boat), sending their longboats over with more hands. But Jones could not wait for these men—according to Fanning, the fire was now “within the thickness of a pine board to the bulkhead” of the powder magazine. It would be the Randolph all over again, only doubly so: if the Bonhomme Richard blew up, being so close to the Serapis, Fanning was certain “we must have all gone to eternity together.”85

  British officers and sailors quickly boarded the Bonhomme Richard. Minutes earlier the crews were trying to kill each other; now they formed a long line, passing the half barrels of gunpowder hand over hand to the Serapis. They completed the task in minutes. Then Jones transferred the wounded to the other ships in the squadron, followed by his prisoners.86

  Atop Flamborough Head, the spectators that had stood transfixed for three hours began to head home. But there was no rest for the weary combatants. Fires required fighting; pumps still needed manning, while aboard the other ships, surgeons and their assistants went from one grisly casualty to another.

  The burn victims were in the worst shape; Fanning was aghast at the sight of men “burnt in such a shocking manner that the flesh of several of them dropped off their bones.” When Surgeon Brooke came on deck to help transfer the wounded, Fanning found him “as bloody as a butcher.” In addition to John Jordan and Joseph Brussels, Fanning saw literally scores who “had their legs and arms shot away.”87

  The casualties of the battle were as horrific as they were high. The percentage in a sea fight—dead and wounded combined—rarely exceeded 10 percent; it was 50 percent for both sides at Flamborough Head. Jones put it best: “A Person must have been an Eye Witness to form a just Idea of the tremendous Scenes of Carnage Wreck and Ruin which every where appeared,” he wrote. “Humanity cannot but recoil from the Prospect of such finished Horror and lament War should be capable of producing Such fatal Consequences.”88

  The fires on the Bonhomme Richard were not put out until ten the next morning. Pumps were manned on both ships throughout the night, but while the Serapis was free of water in four hours, it became obvious to all that the Bonhomme Richard would not last the day; “the leak still gaining on us,” Jones had entered in the ship’s log as if he was being chased, not sunk.89

  Morning came with fog. Jones could still see his squadron and his two prizes, but no sign at all of the Baltic fleet. Pearson’s actions—and the dawdling of Landais and Ricot—had given it time to escape. Bone-weary as his men were, Jones knew he had not a moment to lose. Brit
ish warships had been looking for him for weeks; at any instant they might sail over the horizon. While a new mainmast was being fished aboard the Serapis, other hands repaired her damaged bowsprit. Jones, meanwhile, summoned his captains to a council.

  One can only imagine the reception Jones gave to Cottineau, Ricot, and especially Landais. At least Cottineau had acquitted himself in taking the Countess; Ricot, in his smaller ship, could be excused for his timidity—to a point. As for Landais, Jones had already made up his mind. Days later he would, in detail, make Franklin aware of the Frenchman’s abhorrent behavior.90

  After attempting to ascertain why the Baltic fleet was not pursued—especially by the Alliance and the Vengeance—Jones invited Cottineau “and other men of sense” to examine the squadron’s wounded flagship. Officers and carpenters found it remarkable that the ship was still afloat. Fanning thought the massive hole through the ship’s quarter and gun room was so wide “one might have drove in with a coach and six, at one side of the breach and out the other.” All believed she should be abandoned except Jones, but by sunset he realized “It was Impossible to keep the Bon Homme Richard Afloat So as to reach a Port.”91

  For the past six months, Jones had had a true love-hate relationship with the Bonhomme Richard: glee at getting a command after his time “on the beach”; dismay that she was no l’Indien or Alliance; pride in his refitting of her; disgust with her sluggish sailing. More than anything, he wanted her to sail, or at least limp, into port with his prizes and consorts. It was not to be. The ancient East Indiaman had come through the most horrific of battles, and Jones was heartsick to leave her to her fate. He was not alone; years later, Fanning wrote, “It was even painful for me to quit this ship.” She may not have been a fast ship, but she was a noble one.

  Jones sent his men to recover their belongings, but almost all of the sea chests had been shot through so badly that the clothes inside were nothing more than rags, and even Jones lost some personal effects. The men transferred over to the Serapis. The frigate was some distance away from the sinking Bonhomme Richard when Jones thought of some valuable papers still in his cabin. He sent three men under Fanning across the water to retrieve them just when a gale blew up.