“When he opened the cabin door, Jones must have had difficulty finding anything that was not blown to smithereens, much less a pair of wineglasses and a bottle of claret. His once elegant great cabin had taken a broadside from the Serapis in the first minutes of battle. Captain Pearson was stunned at the condition of the Bonhomme Richard belowdecks. “I found her in the greatest distress,” he wrote in his official report to the Admiralty. Jones was also taken aback by what he saw. “A person must have been an eye witness to form a just idea of the tremendous scenes of carnage, wreck, and ruin which everywhere appeared,” he recorded. The timbers on the lower deck were “mangled beyond my powers of description,” wrote Jones after surveying the impact of the 18-pound balls that had smashed, by the dozens, through the ship during three hours of combat. “Only an old timber here and there kept the poop from smashing down on the gundeck.” Gaping holes had been knocked in the topsides of the Bonhomme Richard. One breach was so wide, Fanning wrote, “One might have drove in with a coach and six.” The human toll was ghastly. Fanning wrote of his horror at seeing “the dead lying in heaps.” The surgeons on both ships were overwhelmed. The burns were particularly gruesome aboard the Serapis. On the gun deck , Dale found men wearing “only the collars of their shirts.” Their clothes, their hair, and their skin had been singed off. “The flesh of several of them dropped off from their bones and they died in great pain,” wrote Fanning. The number of dead and wounded for the two crews [the Serapis had about 270 men aboard, the Bonhomme Richard roughly 320] has never been worked out with precision, but the casualty rate on both ships was close to 50 percent, extraordinarily high for a single ship action in the Age of Sail. The death toll was very nearly higher. The fires aboard the Bonhomme Richard threatened to blow up the ship. The flames came “within a few inches of the powder,” reported Jones, who hastily ordered that the kegs of gunpowder be moved from the magazine to the upper decks. A human chain was formed to pass the volatile barrels up the smoky companionways. The fact that British officers volunteered to stand shoulder to shoulder with American sailors suggests the sense of urgency. Jones tried to lighten his sinking ship by ordering the useless old 18-pounders thrown over the side. At daybreak, the ship’s log cryptically reported, “The leak still gaining on us. We were supplied with men from the other ships who assisted in heaving the lower deck guns overboard & the dead, etc.” Once their captains could see the American ensign flying from both the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis, the Alliance, Vengeance, and Pallas [with her prize the Countess of Scarborough] all came skulking back to Jones. There is no record of the words exchanged between the various captains and Jones, but the congratulations must have been strained, particularly in the case of Captain Landais. Jones had already formed the opinion that Landais had intentionally fired upon him. Dawn of September 24 came with a mercifully thick blanket of fog and still calm seas. Jones needed time to jury-rig a mainmast and a mizzen topmast for the Serapis before he could make a run for it. British cruisers could not be far off. Jones was determined to save the Bonhomme Richard. He wanted to sail her into port leading his prize. But the old Indiaman’s wounds were mortal. Slowly the pumps lost the batttle. By nightfall on the 24th, Jones had given orders to abandon ship. The wounded were carried over to the Serapis and the other ships. At the last minute, Jones sent Fanning back to recover his papers and personal effects, but the midshipman never made it on board the Bonhomme Richard. He could see the water pouring through her lower gun ports. With a great heave, the battered warship plunged quickly, bow first, with her colors flying. Jones watched, he wrote, “with inexpressible grief.” He was not really mourning his ship, which he had regarded as an old clunker. More likely, he was feeling the letdown that always followed the exhilaration of battle.” fini.
Excerpted from “John Paul Jones” author, Evan Thomas. Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER, Rockefeller Center, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY. 10020.
Wooden ships and iron men indeed. Islander.