The Admiral and the Ambassador (11 page)

Other than the success against the
Drake,
Jones's trip was a mixed bag. The
Ranger
seized several ships, but they sold for less money than Jones and, more important, his crew had hoped. The port of Whitehaven had barely been scorched. And though Jones had failed to kidnap Lord Selkirk, he did manage to sweep up the crew of the
Drake
—some 133 strong—and other hostages, who were eventually part of a trade through which the British released 228 American sailors held as pirates and traitors.

The biggest success, though, was one of perception. Jones's reputation soared as one of the fledgling American navy's savviest captains.

It would take ten months idling in France before another ship could be arranged for Jones, and six more months before it was outfitted and ready to sail. The ship was an East India trader named
Duc de Duras,
which Jones—with an eye toward keeping one of his patrons, Benjamin Franklin, happy—renamed
Bonhomme Richard,
after the French translation of Franklin's
Poor Richard's Almanac.
Jones also freshened his crew, sifting through the unattached sailors in port, including a number of American sailors released by their British captors during prisoner exchanges. One of them, Nathaniel Fanning, met Jones, who lied and said that the
Richard,
once she was outfitted, would sail directly to America and Fanning could get passage as a midshipman. Other officers told Fanning that Jones's true destination would be the waters off Great Britain; Fanning, lacking any other options, signed on anyway.
¹⁵

When Jones and his fleet of seven ships left Île de Groix on August 14, 1779, they were to be an ancillary part of a broad military plan hatched
by the French to invade southern England: the ill-fated Armada of 1779. With Spanish allies, they planned for a fleet with sixty-four ships of the line carrying 4,774 cannons, and scores of lighter craft arrayed against a depleted British navy, which had sent most of its ships to the colonies. The French part of the armada, which included forty thousand soldiers to serve as an invasion force, set sail in early June to rendezvous with the Spanish, who were slow in arriving. By then, smallpox and other diseases had swept through the French fleet. The ultimate goal was to land the fighting men somewhere in Plymouth as the start of an invasion, but with thousands of men dead or dying from illness, and food and water running low, the invasion was called off, and the ships limped back to their home ports.

Jones, meanwhile, had set out for his part of the plan, which was to sail around the western side of Ireland, over the top of Scotland and into the North Sea. He knew nothing of the failed invasion, and two of his ships—both privateers—quit the mission before the fleet reached its northward turn. Weather—fog, followed by a gale—separated many of the rest of the ships. Seven of his crew, all Irish seamen, slipped away in a small tender and made for shore; loyal crew members in a second tender who were sent to capture the runaways were themselves taken captive, news that quickly reached the newspapers. The
London Evening Post
reported “the country was in an uproar” and that the escaping Irish sailors warned “that Jones's intention was to scour the coast, and burn as many places as he could.”

It wasn't. The
Bonhomme Richard
continued north and then east and south—taking prizes or burning merchant ships as they sailed—and by mid-September the fleet of now four ships was off Dunbar, the southern entrance to the Firth of Forth, with Edinburgh a reachable target. Jones toyed with invading the Scottish seaport to draw British forces away from the south coast, where he presumed the invasion was underway. He hatched a plan to occupy the port of Leith and demand a ransom—under the threat of burning it to the ground. He had trouble persuading the French captains in his fleet, and by the time they came around, a gale blew up that led Jones to delay acting. One of his prize ships sank during the storm, and he released another for ransom rather than see it sink too. By the time the winds died down, Jones's ships had been spotted, the alarm raised, and the element of surprise destroyed. So Jones turned his ships and headed south,
collecting prizes as he went, though ships that got away continued to sound the alert. Rumors spiraled over the islands and were repeated in the newspapers that Jones had been sighted in several places—warships were still looking for him off Ireland. On the east coast of Scotland, where Jones had indeed been sighted, the fear reached near frenzy level.

Jones might have had more success if his fellow captains and their crews had shown as much fear of him. Throughout the voyage, Jones wrestled with insubordination from the other ships. Captain Pierre Landais, the French skipper of the
Alliance,
was a particular problem, refusing even to board the
Bonhomme Richard
to discuss attack plans and greeting an emissary from Jones's ship with an oath-laden denunciation of the man himself.

Still, Jones had a much better relationship with the crew of the
Bonhomme Richard
than the one he had maintained with the
Ranger
's crew. Jones selected most of the men himself. With plenty of time in port while the ship was readied, Jones was able to train with the men, shaping them into a loyal and effective fighting force. Still autocratic and prone to angry outbursts, Jones had earned the men's loyalty “like a temperamental orchestra leader who enrages almost every musician under him, yet produces a magnificent ensemble.”
¹⁶
Yet he also treated them, in anger, to the tantrums of a spoiled child. After losing the chase for one ship, Jones crowned members of his staff with his “trumpet,” or megaphone. In another instance, after an argument with one of his lieutenants, Jones ordered the man to the brig and kicked at his back as the man descended below deck.
¹⁷

With the ships once again separated after the storm, Jones made for the water off Flamborough Head, near Hull, which he had prearranged as a rendezvous point. As dawn broke on September 23, the
Bonhomme Richard,
the
Alliance
(with the unreliable Landais in charge), the
Pallas,
and the small cutter
Vengeance
were all together again, cruising off the headland looking for prize ships. Around two in the afternoon, they spotted an invigorating sight—more than forty sails from a convoy of trade ships en route from the Baltic under escort by the forty-four-gun British
Serapis,
and the twenty-gun sloop of war
Countess of Scarborough.
The captain of the
Serapis,
Richard Pearson, had been warned by a boat sent out from Hull that Jones was in the area, and as the convoy cut closer to shore the
Serapis
and the
Countess of
Scarborough
faced off against Jones and his ships. The
Serapis
was far better equipped (it had a double deck of cannons) and was more seaworthy than the
Bonhomme Richard,
which would help it survive the battle to come. But the
Serapis
would then sail away with Jones in charge.

The battle remains a classic encounter of the sailing era. Just after sunset on a moonlit night, Jones, his
Bonhomme Richard
flying a British flag, sailed to within hailing distance of the
Serapis.
The vessel's suspicious captain—he thought it was Jones but wasn't yet sure—hollered out for Jones to identify his ship. A crew member, at Jones's order, shouted back a lie, and Pearson asked again for the ship's captain to identify himself. At that, Jones ordered that the British colors be struck and replaced by the new American insignia as both captains ordered their gunners to fire. At that close range, the power of the shots was incredible, but the biggest damage to the
Bonhomme Richard
came when two of its own cannons exploded, heavily damaging the ship and killing or maiming a large number of the crew.

The captains sailed their ships in a slow-motion dance, each trying to angle his ship such that his men could fire across the other vessel's deck, with cannonballs and grape shot shredding flesh, wood, and rigging. Jones, realizing that he was outgunned and likely to lose in a battle of broadsides, quickly changed strategy. Gliding to within feet of the
Serapis's
starboard quarter—the back right of the ship—he attempted to board her. As gunfire from the
Serapis
mowed down the men trying to cross over, Jones veered off. Pearson countered by trying to cut across the front of the
Bonhomme Richard,
where his gunners could fire blasts along the length of the deck, front to back. He miscalculated time and speed, however, and the bow of the
Bonhomme Richard
struck the
Serapis
's stern.

The most famous words of Jones's life never came from his mouth, but they are part of the lore anyway. Pearson asked Jones if he was ready to strike his colors—to surrender. Years later, one of his crew members would say that Jones replied, “I have not yet begun to fight.” According to biographer Morison, the true words were closer to “I have not yet thought of it, but I am determined to make you strike!” A memoir by the midshipman Fanning offered a different version: “Ay, ay, we'll do that when we can fight no longer, but we shall see yours come down first. For you must know, that Yankees do not haul down their colors till they are fairly beaten.”
¹⁸

Whatever his actual words, Jones was not ready to quit, even though the
Bonhomme Richard
had taken several cannon shots below the water line and was leaking badly, with many of her guns no longer working. The ships separated, and Pearson ordered several of his sails struck to reduce speed, letting the
Bonhomme Richard
come up alongside her where the British cannons blasted yet again as the American ship sailed past. Jones steered his ship to starboard—the right—as it cleared the
Serapis,
cutting across her path and getting the British bowsprit (the mast jutting forward from the front of the ship) caught up in the sails at the back of his ship. Jones kept steering to the right, using the
Serapis
's spar as a pivot point, and came alongside so close that “the muzzles of our guns touched each other's sides,” Pearson said later.
¹⁹
Jones ordered his men to tie the ship to the
Serapis,
which significantly reduced the cannon advantage the British enjoyed.

The crews battled for two hours under the near full moon. Each kept trying to board the other's ship, only to be repelled by lead and sword. The fighting was gory, the decks covered with bodies and limbs and blood as flames licked at the timbers. The Americans won the battle of the upper masts, with Fanning and others firing muskets and blunderbusses directly across at the men aloft above the deck of the
Serapis.
When the last of those British sailors fell, the Americans moved across and turned their weapons to the deck, peppering it like snipers.
²⁰

The
Alliance
had stayed out of the engagement (as had the
Vengeance).
In an act of treachery, its captain, Landais, now sailed around the bound ships and poured cannon fire to try to sink the
Bonhomme Richard,
hoping to claim the
Serapis
for himself. Cannon blasts did significant damage to the ship, disabled several of the
Richard
's cannons, and killed a number of crew members. Then Landais sailed off to watch the end of the death struggle between the
Serapis
and the
Bonhomme Richard.

The wind had died down, turning the sea to glass, and a current was carrying the two ships closer to shore. Pearson ordered an anchor dropped, hoping that if the grappling lines could be severed, the
Richard
would float free of his ship and give the
Serapis
enough space to finish her off with cannon fire. The effort failed and the ships remained tethered, a bond made faster after the Americans strapped their yardarms to those on the
Serapis.
The gunfire from above by Fanning and his men kept the British on the
lower gun decks, where they continued to blast holes in the
Bonhomme Richard
's hull—above the water line and on levels in which no American sailors remained—with eighteen-pound and twelve-pound cannons. More than a dozen fires broke out on the
Serapis
alone, from below deck to the sails and rigging, which meant sailors had to fight both fires and the enemy seamen. Pearson again ordered some of his men to cut the binds that held the two ships together, but they couldn't get past Fanning and his men in the rigging. Lashed together, Jones stood a chance; if the ships separated, and the
Serapis
could again use her cannons, the
Bonhomme Richard
would be lost.

As it was, the American ship was grievously damaged. The
Serapis
was holding together better, but around 9:30 PM one of Jones's men inched along a yardarm over the deck of the
Serapis
and began dropping grenades, one of which plummeted through an open hatch to the lower gun deck strewn with gunpowder cartridges. The grenade did its work; the blast and flash fire killed about twenty British fighters and badly burned many others.