Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (6 page)

Paul Jones wrote: “Not a single ship of more than 200 could have escaped and the whole world would not have been able to save the town.”

There were forts on either side and each would have to be taken and silenced, the guns spiked to ensure no shots could be fired upon the
Ranger
as she made her escape after the raid. The captain’s party landed successfully on a nearby beach and did their job to the letter. The other team, however, made straight for a harbor-side tavern and started drinking rum and ale with the locals! Though Paul Jones managed to start a fire in one of the collier brigs, the townspeople were alerted in time and extinguished it before any harm was done. In any event, the greatest testament to the captain was in his ability
to get his recalcitrant men back aboard their ship and away before the local militia could attempt any kind of retaliation.

The propaganda effect of the abortive raid, however, far outweighed any actual damage to shipping. Panic spread around the nation faster than any blaze and in short order a total of 40 ships of the Royal Navy were recalled from active service in American waters and put on sentry duty around the British coast. No raid on that part of England had been attempted since the time of the Vikings and Paul Jones had written his name in infamy. For the British, the news was unthinkable: the American War—that had seemed so distant—had come all the way home and struck at them as they lay in their beds! After further mischief-making, striking seemingly at will around the British coast, though to little practical effect, he returned to safe harbor in France. His place in legend already assured, it was in the following year that John Paul Jones would truly show what he was capable of—and in so doing light a fire that burns still in the hearts of US Navy men.

Soon after returning to Brest, Paul Jones was given charge of a new ship, a 900-ton former French East Indiaman called
Le Duc de Duras.
He oversaw her conversion to a ship of war and personally renamed her the
Bonhomme Richard
. This detail was a tribute to Benjamin Franklin, whom Paul Jones had met and befriended in Paris. The great man had taken to the young captain at once and championed his cause for the rest of his life. It says much about the always controversial and mercurial character of John Paul Jones that one of the greatest men of his generation should think so highly and care so much about him—a young man just half his age. Franklin’s book
Poor Richard’s Almanac
had recently been translated into French as
Les Maximes du Bonhomme Richard
—and it was from this title that Captain Jones chose the name his new ship would bear.

It was aboard the good ship
Bonhomme Richard
that Paul Jones sailed out of Brest in the second week of August, and set a course
for immortality. Accompanying him were the
Pallas,
the
Cerf,
the
Vengeance
and the
Alliance.
Later they were joined by the
Monsieur
and the
Granville,
and this flotilla of seven ships was set to conduct a full-scale raiding season on British shipping.

His crew, gathered from several nationalities, was far superior to the rascals and degenerates that had filled the hammocks aboard the
Ranger.
Among the officers aboard the
Bonhomme Richard
were men as committed to the cause of liberty as the captain himself. Even so, for Paul Jones it seemed it was always to be a matter of driving each exploit forward by the undiluted force of his own personality. Whatever the limitations of those around them—however short they might fall of the standards he needed and demanded—his was a single-minded determination that could not and would not be discouraged by any eventuality. Short and slight of stature though he was, those who knew him described a man obsessed with honor and pride, determined always to improve his status in life. Powerfully driven, at odds with himself and with the world around him, he burned with a fire that caused as much harm to himself as to those who came too near. Such men draw other men—and women—always to their sides, and must not be judged too harshly by us for the scars inflicted by their brightness.

While anchored off the Kerry coast of Ireland, 23 British crewmen deserted him. By the time he had rounded the north and eastern coasts of Scotland, his flotilla had lost all cohesion and the accompanying vessels drifted in and out of sight of the flagship in pursuit of bounty and enemy merchant ships to capture. Most worrying of all was the on-off presence of the
Alliance,
captained by an unpredictable Frenchman named Pierre Landais who was to prove to be, in more ways than one, a loose cannon.

Undaunted by his diminished resources, Paul Jones menaced the towns on either side of Scotland’s Firth of Forth before sailing south to contemplate an attack on Newcastle. Then, in the last week
of September, he struck maritime gold. Off Flamborough Head on the Yorkshire coast of England, he ran across a Baltic convoy—41 merchant ships stuffed with bounty and escorted by two British warships, the 44-gun frigate
Serapis
and the 20-gun sloop-of-war the
Countess of Scarborough.
The action that followed, a dance of death between two ill-matched warships, was one of the most ferocious duels of the sea ever fought.

Richard Pearson, captain of the
Serapis,
was already on the lookout for the “pirate” John Paul Jones. He was confident of his abilities, those of his crew—and most importantly of his newly copper-bottomed warship. This process had the double bonus of protecting the hull from infestation by barnacles and weeds while simultaneously making the ship much faster through the water. Speed of maneuver might mean everything in any battle to come. His first sight of the American came at around one o’clock in the afternoon of September 23, and he immediately ordered his men to “clear the decks” for action. A ship of war needed ten times as many men to fight her than to sail her—and the gun decks were crowded as a result. When battle drew near, it was vital to stow away all the moveable stuff—hammocks, tables, personal items and the like—to give the gun crews room to work. Sawdust was then scattered over the planking to give better grip for bare-footed men and to soak up their blood.

The ships of the convoy had taken their own emergency action—beating inshore to take shelter under the walls of Scarborough Castle on the cliffs high above. Word of a fight quickly spread ashore and crowds of locals began to gather for a grandstand view of a battle that would long outlive them in the memories of two nations.

As was so often the way of war at sea in the days of great ships of the line, the opening feints and moves were slow as molasses—an agony both to watch and to be a part of. From first sighting the
British warships, it took Paul Jones more than three hours to close the handful of miles separating him from his prey. If the Baltic convoy was to be his, he would first have to take or destroy its escort—and it was on the
Serapis
that he set his sights. Immaculately turned out in his uniform as always, and constantly to the fore among his men, he cajoled and bullied them by turns.

It was sunset, the last of the autumn light seeping from the sky like blood, when he judged he was close enough to order flags raised signaling “Form Line of Battle.” Far from obeying the command however, the
Alliance
and the
Pallas
—the only vessels of his squadron still in contact with the flagship—abruptly changed direction and left the
Bonhomme Richard
to face the foe alone. By the time she drew alongside the
Serapis,
daylight was a memory and the moon was on the rise. There was barely any wind and the sea was sluggish as oil. With the ships just yards apart, Paul Jones drew first blood with a full broadside that tore into the
Serapis
both above and below the waterline. Pearson’s gunners replied in kind—with more and larger guns. Adrenaline pumping and eyes bright with the thrill of the fight, Paul Jones waited on the quarterdeck for a second broadside to blast forth from beneath his feet. What he heard, and felt, instead was the explosion of two of his own 18-pounders on the gun deck below. The blast killed dozens of his crew and, worse, disabled much of the rest of gun battery.

Battle had only just been engaged and already the
Bonhomme Richard
was severely disabled, hopelessly outgunned now by a ship that had started out with the upper hand in terms of armament. Undaunted—in fact more committed than before—Paul Jones realized his only hope of victory lay in coming alongside the
Serapis
and boarding her. Once aboard the enemy ship, he and his men would have to settle the matter with muskets and blades. Barking orders all the while, he sought desperately to bring his vessel alongside that of his enemy. Still the gunners aboard the
Serapis
were firing broadside
after broadside from just a few yards away. But although the
Bonhomme Richard
was being severely blasted—iron shots tearing through her from one side to the other, lethal wooden shards flying like shell fragments—her men had abandoned the crippled gun deck and were now up top, taking positions on deck and in the rigging and picking off their enemies one by one with muskets and pistols.

High on the cliffs above, the folk of Scarborough looked on in wonder. The moon was fully risen now and casting a light as cold as death over the scene playing out below. The fight was close enough at times to let the onlookers feel the percussion of the big guns ripple their clothes and hair.

After another hellish quarter hour of killing and dying at close range, Paul Jones succeeded in tangling his bow with the stern of the
Serapis.
Thinking that his foe had lost all control of his vessel—and briefly hoping the time had come for the American to surrender—Pearson demanded to know if he was now prepared to take down his colors in the accepted gesture of defeat.

“Have you struck?” he bellowed into the night, while cannon and muskets tore at the darkness.

And for a reply, from within the hellish chaos aboard his stricken vessel littered with dead and dying, John Paul Jones roared out the line that was to live ever after, repeated time and again by men digging deep for hope and defiance when all seems lost:

“I have not yet
begun
to fight,” he cried.

All at once, while the words hung in the air, a breath of wind let the
Serapis
slip free of her tormentor. The
Bonhomme Richard
moved forward, too, and while Pearson and his crew struggled to get their own vessel into position to rake her with more fire, both ships began a ghastly waltz, slowly turning and turning like exhausted dancers on the point of collapse. When the wind dropped again, both vessels settled alongside one another, bow to stern, the muzzles
of their guns touching. Seeing this as a result in his favor, Paul Jones shouted out to his men to ready the grappling irons and prepare to board for a fight to the death, hand to hand.

“Well done, my brave lads,” he shouted. “We’ve got her now!”

So saying, he grabbed part of the
Serapis
’s collapsing rigging and lashed it tightly to a shattered spar of his own vessel. Musketeers on both sides kept blasting one another at near point blank range, and amid the hail Pearson shouted desperate orders: the lines fixing the two ships had to be cut—for only if they could put some distance between themselves and the American ship could they bring their superior firepower back into play. From below the
Serapis
’s decks came the shout that some of the lower batteries could be brought back into action. Within seconds the air was filled once more with the sound of nine-pounders blasting yet more rends and tears into the hull of the
Bonhomme Richard
. Surely now the American must strike his colors?

Far from it. Filled with defiant rage, the sharpshooters on deck and in the rigging kept up their withering fire. Unable to get close enough to cut the tethers, the crewmen on the British deck, galled by American fire, had retreated below. It was at this moment that the madman Landais, captain of the
Alliance
, joined the fray for the first time. But instead of coming to his comrades’ assistance, he suddenly and inexplicably fired a broadside of his own into the side of the
Bonhomme Richard
. Though he would claim later it was a mistake, some reports at the time claimed that he fired not one but three broadsides into his own flagship. The moment of madness seemingly past, Landais wheeled his vessel away and out of range once more.

Some aboard the
Bonhomme Richard
were certain the ship was on the point of sinking and now set to begging their captain to surrender—but he was having none of it. On his feet and pugnacious as ever, he rallied the survivors with nothing more than the gravel in
his gut and the fire in his eyes. A daring Scotsman—inspired by his skipper—shimmied out on a yardarm and managed to drop a grenade into the main hatch of the
Serapis
’s gunroom. The resultant explosion tore through the ship, killing or disabling at least 40 men. Stunned and horrified, Pearson might have struck his own colors at this point—until a commotion on the deck of the other vessel made him think otherwise. A handful of Paul Jones’s officers, aware that their ship was sinking fast, made fresh appeals for their captain to surrender. Instead of submitting, he silenced the loudest of the protesters by clubbing him to the deck with the butt of his pistol.