of 41 ships escorted by the powerful new British two-decker Serapis. Her armament was 50 guns, including twenty 18-pounders, superior to Jones’s 40 guns with six 18-pounders. As the two warships approached each other, both opened fire. For the next three hours, as the scene darkened between sunset and moonlight, onlookers watched the melodrama of a battle unforgettable in naval history. When the ships closed to a distance within pistol shot, a hit by the Serapis exploded powder charges on the Richard’s gundeck, killing many of the gunners and putting Jones’s heaviest guns out of action. Having the advantage of the wind in his sails, an unquenchable spirit and a mastery of seamanship, he furled his mainsail to slow the Richard and bring her across the Serapis’ stern in position for greater broadside or raking fire. Calculating his only chance, he closed for boarding and in a smart maneuver brought his ship alongside the enemy. Calling for grappling hooks, he fastened the Richard onto the Serapis while his sharpshooters fired at every British head, knocking men off the yardarms and strewing the deck with dead. Grenades lobbed onto the Serapis’ deck blew up a pile of powder cartridges, wrecking half her cannon. Under the darkening sky, both ships at close range poured on fire. For the onlookers, flashes of flame lit the silhouettes of the two ships locked in their death grip like two fighting elk. The Richard’s decks were on fire and her hull taking in water. With his ship faced with the danger of sinking, the Richard’s chief gunner screamed to the Serapis, “Quarter! quarter! for God’s sake!” Jones hurled a pistol at the man, felling him. But the cry had been heard by Pearson, the Serapis’ commander, who called, “Do you ask for quarter?” Through the clash of battle, gunshot and crackle of fire the famous reply came faintly back to him: “I have not yet begun to fight!” Making good his boast, Jones sprang to a 9-pounder whose gun crew were killed or wounded, loaded and fired it himself, aiming at the Serapis’ mainmast, then loaded and fired again. As the mast toppled, Pearson, surrounded by dead, with rigging on fire, hauled down his red ensign in token of surrender. Escorted to Richard’s quarterdeck, he handed over his sword to Jones just as the Serapis’ mainmast crashed over the side and its sail, nevermore to carry the wind, collapsed in a dying billow into the sea. Bonhomme Richard, the shattered victor, too damaged to repair, sank the next day. On board the Serapis as his prize, Jones headed east for Holland and, after a ten days’ crippled sail, limped into the Texel on October 3. His destination, requiring shelter in a neutral harbor for his captive ship and the provisioning and care of the wounded and guard of his prisoners, was certain to make trouble for Holland with the British, and it did, exacerbating the British resentment that already existed.
That this was the deliberate purpose of Jones in going to Holland instead of to France, as he might have done, was believed to have been ordered as part of his mission by the Committee of Secret Correspondence of the Continental Congress, the department in charge of foreign affairs, and conveyed to Jones by Charles Dumas, the Committee’s semi-official agent and general busybody. Dumas was a collaborator of Ben Franklin, who was then in Paris conducting America’s relations with France and was said to have acted as intermediary. Supposedly, the maneuver to use Jones as a cat’s-paw to put Holland at war with Britain was a French idea of which the British were made aware through Sir Joseph Yorke’s network of channels. He had access to Dumas’ correspondence with Vergennes, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, which was intercepted and copied for him by a person especially assigned to the task and who, over time, learned the cipher. In the 18th century, embassies were penetrated without benefit of electronic devices or seducible marines. It was the general practice of nations to open and copy correspondence of a foreign minister. Jones was happy to oblige the French idea. His