{"id":2319,"date":"2021-04-27T15:16:12","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T15:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/?page_id=2319"},"modified":"2021-04-27T15:16:12","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T15:16:12","slug":"john-paul-jones-5","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/john-paul-jones-5\/","title":{"rendered":"John Paul Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“He did have one small advantage. Because the Bomhomme Richard <\/em>was to windward of the Serapis<\/em>, Jones was able to blanket his opponent and steal his wind, catching what little zephyrs still rippled the water in the settling darkness. A slight puff nudged the American warship ahead, and Jones made his move. “It was my intention to lay the Bonhomme Richard <\/em>athwart the enemy’s bow,” Jones wrote. He wanted to cross the T, putting his ship at a right angle to the Serapis<\/em> in order to rake the enemy ship with cannon and musket fire from bow to stern. The sailing master ordered the helmsman to spin the wheel, and the old Indiaman made the last course change of her life. The Bonhomme Richard’<\/em>s bow began to swing ponderously around, but the maneuver didn’t quite work. Some of the braces, the blocks and tackles used to swing the yardarms to trim the sails, had been shot away. The Bonhomme Richard <\/em>stalled in front of the Serapis. <\/em>Pearson ordered his helmsman to steer around the smoldering hulk, but too late: the bowsprit of the British ship drove into the Bonhomme Richard<\/em>‘s mizzen rigging. Jones decided to make a virtue of necessity. A forestay of the Serapis<\/em> had parted and lay across the Bonhomme Richard<\/em>‘s poop deck. Jones scrambled up the ladder to the poop deck and made fast the line to the mizzenmast. He called for Sailing Master Stacey to find a heavier rope and help him lash it around the Serapis<\/em>‘s jib boom and Bonhomme Richard<\/em>‘s mizzenmast, binding the two ships together. Stacey, a salty sea dog, was swearing a blue streak. “Mister Stacey, it’s no time to be swearing now,” teased Jones, almost lighthearted in the gloom and chaos. “You may by the next moment be in eternity, but let us do our duty.” The wind had now died altogether. The sea was “smooth as glass,” recalled Fanning. A strong tide was running. Pearson was anxious not to be caught in a fatal embrace with the dying Bonhomme Richard<\/em>, which, he feared, could blow up at any minute. The British captain ordered an anchor dropped. he figured that as the anchor bit into the bottom and held the Serapis<\/em>, the Bonhomme Richard<\/em> would pull away and drift off on the tide. Once the two ships were apart, the British guns could deliver the final blows. But the Serapis <\/em>could not break free. As the two ships swung around in the tide, the Serapis<\/em>‘s jib boom bent and snapped off, but Jones’s men were able to throw grappling hooks—“at least 50 of them,” according to one witness— onto the rigging and bulwarks of the British ship. The sailors of the Serapis <\/em>tried to cut away the lines, but the marines in the tops of the Bonhomme Richard<\/em> picked the sailors off as they were swinging their axes. The fluke of Pearson’s spare anchor caught in the mizzen chains of the Bonhomme Richard<\/em>. The two ships ground together facing in opposite directions but hopelessly entangled. They were literally muzzle to muzzle now. It was 8:30 P.M. The battle was more than an hour old. A few miles away, atop the cliffs of Flamborough Head, large crowds were gathering. About a thousand people had walked or ridden from the surrounding villages, lured by the news that a British man-o-war had trapped the Pirate Jones. Under the silvery moon, across the glistening water, they witnessed a fantastic sight. The two warships were locked inside a yellowish cloud that pulsated with flashes of orange and white light. In the dead calm, the smoke from the cannon and numerous small blazes created a thick blanket of sulfurish smoke, eerie and ghostly to the onlookers on the cliff, choking and toxic to the men trapped within” <\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“He did have one small advantage. Because the Bomhomme Richard was to windward of the Serapis, Jones was able to blanket his opponent and steal his wind, catching what little zephyrs still rippled the water in the settling darkness. A slight puff nudged the American warship ahead, and Jones made his move. “It was my … 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-2319","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2319","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=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2320,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2319\/revisions\/2320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}