{"id":2311,"date":"2021-04-23T21:30:16","date_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/?page_id=2311"},"modified":"2021-04-23T21:30:16","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:30:16","slug":"john-paul-jones-4","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/john-paul-jones-4\/","title":{"rendered":"John Paul Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“A basic tactic of single ship battles is to rake the enemy, to cross his undefended bow or stern and send cannonballs or grapeshot sweeping down the length of the enemy ship. One by one, the guns of the British ship crashed out, smashing through the stern of the Bonhomme Richard<\/em>, shattering glass and wood and ripping through anyone standing in the way. With the wind dying, Pearson backed his sails and got off another broadside. Then another. The carnage aboard the Bonhomme Richard <\/em>was unspeakable. On the poop deck, twenty-two of the twenty-five marines had been killed or wounded. Down the length of the ship, guns had been overturned or knocked off their carriages. The superior tactics, manueverability, and firepower of Serapis<\/em> threatened to turn the battle into a slaughter. “She made a dreadful havoc of our crew,” Fanning wrote. “Men were falling in all parts of the ship by the scores.<\/em>” In the cockpit, Surgeon Brooke was already splattered with blood; a clutch of seamen, skin blackened by burns, limbs shattered or missing, lay groaning and crying around him. More dreadfully wounded men, carried by their shocked mates, were arriving every moment. The Serapis <\/em>was outsailing the Bonhomme Richard “by two feet to one,<\/em>” recorded Fanning. She rounded up to leeward of the American ship and continued to pour in grape- and roundshot as fast as her crews could fire and load–a rippling broadside about every two minutes or less. Stabs of flame flared across the narrow gap of water. The Bonhomme Richard<\/em> was holed several places below the waterline. The ship’s carpenter dashed below with canvas and large wooden plugs to stanch the flow, but the pumps were barely keeping up. Jones was losing the battle of his life, and he knew it. “I must confess that the enemy’s ship being much more manageable than the Bonhomme Richard<\/em> gained thereby several times an advantageous situation in spite of my best endeavors to prevent it,” Jones later wrote, a bit stiffly, in his official report. As he stood on the quarterdeck, trying not to notice the splinters and body parts flying around him, Jones tried to concentrate. He needed to change the terms of engagement; his ship would not survive a cannon duel much longer.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpted from “John Paul Jones”, author, Evan Thomas. Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER. Rockefeller Center, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Islander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A basic tactic of single ship battles is to rake the enemy, to cross his undefended bow or stern and send cannonballs or grapeshot sweeping down the length of the enemy ship. One by one, the guns of the British ship crashed out, smashing through the stern of the Bonhomme Richard, shattering glass and wood … Continue reading “John Paul Jones”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2311","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2312,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2311\/revisions\/2312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}