Commodore Paul Jones 26

Commodore Paul Jones 26

As soon as Jones had gained sufficient distance, he smartly filled

away again and headed the clumsy Richard at the Serapis; but the slow

old vessel was not equal to the demands of her commander. The Richard

only succeeded in striking the Serapis on the port quarter very far

aft. To have attempted boarding from such a position would have been

madness. There are only two positions from which a ship can be boarded

advantageously. In one case, when two ships are laid side by side, by

massing the crew at some point of the long line of defense

necessitated by the relative position of the vessels, it may be

possible to break through and effect a lodgment on the enemy's deck.

The other case is when the ship desirous of boarding succeeds in

crossing the bows of her enemy so that the latter vessel is subjected

to a raking fire from the battery of the attacking ship, which beats

down opposition and sweeps everything before it, thus affording a

chance for favorable attack. Neither of these opportunities was

presented at this time.

 

Jones, nevertheless, mustered his boarders on the forecastle at this

moment, heading them himself, but the English appeared in such force

at the point of contact that the attempt was of necessity abandoned.

The two ships hung together a moment, then separated, and, the Serapis

going ahead, the Richard backing off, they formed a line ahead, the

bow of the Richard following the stern of the Serapis. There was not a

single great gun which bore on either ship. The roar of the battle

died away, and even the crackle of the small arms ceased for a space.

At this moment Pearson hailed the Richard. Having been subjected to

the battering of his superior force for so long a time, Pearson

concluded that it was time for the Richard to surrender. He was right

in theory--in practice it was different. His own ship had suffered

severely in the yardarm to yardarm fight, and he realized that the

loss upon the Richard must have been proportionately greater. Even the

most unskilled seaman had learned by this time the difference in the

power of the two vessels. Therefore, taking advantage of the momentary

cessation of the battle, he sprang up on the rail of the Serapis in

the moonlight and called out:

 

"Have you struck?"

 

And to this interrogation Paul Jones returned that heroic answer,

which since his day has been the watchword of the American sailor:

 

"_I have not yet begun to fight!_" he cried with gay audacity.

 

The ringing tones of his voice carried his answer not only to the ears

of the English captain, but threw it far up into the high tops where

the eager seamen had so busily plied their small arms. The men on the

gun deck heard it with joy. It even penetrated to the gloomy recesses

of the gun room, which had been the scene of such misfortune and

disaster as would have determined the career of any other ship. The

wounded caught the splendid inspiration which was back of the glorious

declaration, and under the influence of it stifled their groans,

forgot their wounds, and strove to fight on. It told the dying that

their lives were not to be given in vain. Nay, those mighty words had

a carrying power which lifted them above the noise of the conflict,

which sent them ringing over the narrow seas, until they reverberated

in the Houses of Parliament on the one side and the Court of

Versailles on the other. They had a force which threw them across the

thousand leagues of ocean until they were heard in every patriot camp,

and repeated from the deck of every American ship, until they became a

part of the common heritage of the nation as eternal as are its

Stripes and Stars! The dauntless phrase of that dauntless man:

 

"_I have not yet begun to fight!_"

 

It was no new message. The British had heard it as they tramped again

and again up the bullet-swept slopes of Bunker Hill; Washington rang

it in the ears of the Hessians on the snowy Christmas morning at

Trenton; the hoof beats of Arnold's horse kept time to it in the wild

charge at Saratoga; it cracked with the whip of the old wagoner Morgan

at the Cowpens; the Maryland troops drove it home in the hearts of

their enemies with Greene at Guilford Courthouse, and the drums of

France and England beat it into Cornwallis' ears when the end came at

Yorktown. There, that night in that darkness, in that still moment of

battle, Paul Jones declared the determination of a great people. His

was the __EXPRESSION__ of an inspiration on the part of a new nation. From

this man came a statement of an unshakable determination at whatever

cost to be free! A new Declaration of Independence, this famous word

of warning to the British king. Give up the contest now, O monarch! A

greater majesty than thine is there!

 

I imagine a roar of wild exultation quivering from truck to keelson,

a gigantic Homeric laugh rising from the dry throats of the rough men

as yet unharmed on the Richard as they caught the significance of

their captain's reply. "It was a joke, the character of which those

blood-stained ruffians could well appreciate; but the captain was in

no mood for joking. He was serious, and in the simplicity of the

answer lay its greatness. Strike! Not now, nor never! Beaten! The

fighting is but just begun! The preposterous possibility of surrender

can not even be considered. What manner of man this, with whom you

battle in the moonlight, brave Pearson! An unfamiliar kind to you and

to most; such as hath not been before, nor shall be again. Yet all the

world shall see and understand at this time.

 

"'_I have not yet begun to fight!_'

 

"Surprising answer! On a ship shattered beyond repair, her best guns

exploded and useless, her crew decimated, ringed about with dead and

dying, the captain had not yet begun to fight! But there was no delay

after the answer, no philosophizing, no heroics. The man of action was

there. He meant business. Every moment when the guns were silent

wasted one."[13]

 

The Richard was in a dreadful condition, especially below. At the

first fire two of the 18-pounders in the gun room had exploded,

killing most of the officers and men of their crews, blowing out the

side of the ship, shattering the stanchions, blowing up the deck above

them, and inflicting injuries of so serious a character that they

virtually settled the fate of the ship. The other guns there were

immediately abandoned, and the men left alive in the division, who

were not required to guard the prisoners, were sent to the gun deck to

report to Dale and de Weibert. The battery which had been the main

dependence of Jones had proved worse than useless. Indeed, it had done

more harm than had the guns of the Serapis. I know of no action

between two ships in which a similar, or even a less frightful,

happening did not cause the ship suffering it to surrender at once.

 

The two ships hung in line for a moment, then Jones put his helm hard

a-starboard again and swung off to port, perhaps hoping to rake the

Serapis; but the English captain, anticipating his maneuver, backed

his own topsails, and the two ships passed by each other once more,

the batteries reopening their fire at close range. The combat at once

recommenced with the most heroic determination. Fortunately, however,

the captain of the Serapis miscalculated either the speed at which his

own ship backed or the speed with which the Richard drew ahead, for,

before Pearson filled away again, Jones had drawn so far ahead that by

consummate seamanship and quick, desperate work he managed to swing

the Richard across the path of the Serapis, an astonishing feat for

the slower and more unwieldy American frigate. It was his one

opportunity and he embraced it--one was enough for Jones. Pearson had

just succeeded in checking the stern board of his own ship, and was

going ahead slowly, when the bow of his frigate ran aboard the

starboard quarter of the American, thrusting her jib boom through the

mizzen rigging far across the quarter-deck of the Richard. Pouring a

raking fire upon the English frigate from his starboard battery,

Jones, with his own hand, sprang to lash the two ships together. The

sailing master, Mr. Stacy, leaped to assist him. As the officer strove

to overhaul the gear lying in a tangled mass upon the deck, he broke

into the natural oath of a sailor at the delay.

 

"Don't swear, Mr. Stacy," Jones is reported to have said quietly,

although he was working with feverish energy to the same end--"in

another moment we may all be in the presence of our Maker--but let us

do our duty."

 

The lashing was soon passed, and passed well. The American boarders

were called away again, but they could do nothing in the face of the

sharp fire of the English repelling force. Meanwhile, the pressure of

the wind upon the after-sails of the Serapis had broken off her

bowsprit and forced her stern around until she lay broadside to the

American ship. A spare anchor on the Serapis caught in the mizzen

chains of the Richard, and with it and the grapnels which were hastily

flung the two ships were firmly bound together, the bow of one ship by

the stern of the other, heading in different ways, their starboard

sides touching. Pearson at once dropped his port anchor, hoping that,

his ship being anchored and the Richard under way, the American would

drag clear, when his superiority in gun power would enable him to

continue the process of knocking her to pieces at long range; but,

fortunately for the Richard, the wind had gradually decreased until it

was now nearly killed, or so light that it did not prevent the ships

from swinging to the Serapis' anchor with the tidal current then

setting strongly to the northward.

 

[Illustration: Plan: Showing maneuvers of Bon Homme Richard and

Serapis, September 23, 1779; showing also course and conduct of

Alliance. After a drawing by Captain A. T. Mahan, U. S. N., by

permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.]

 

It was some time after eight o'clock now, and the battle at once

recommenced with the utmost fury. As the Serapis had not hitherto been

engaged on the starboard side,[14] it was necessary for her men to

blow off the port lids of their own ship at the first discharge of her

battery. They were so close together that the conflict resolved itself

into a hand-to-hand encounter with great guns. As Dale said, the

sponges and rammers had to be extended through the ports of the enemy

in order to serve the guns. Though the American batteries were fought

with the utmost resolution, they were, of course, no match whatever

for those of the English ship, which had two tiers of heavier guns to

oppose to one of the American. Below decks, therefore, the Americans

were at a fearful disadvantage. Above, however, the number of soldiers

and marines, constantly re-enforced by a stream of men sent from below

as their guns were put out of action, gave them a compensating factor,

and by degrees the concentrated fire of the Americans cleared the deck

of the Serapis. The two ships lying side by side, slowly grinding

together in the gentle sea, the yardarms were interlaced and the

American topmen, again outnumbering their English antagonists, ran

along the yards, and a dizzy fight in midair ensued, as the result of