Naval Battle of Bonhomme Richard

On the evening of September 23, 1779, off Flamborough Head, Yorkshire, John Paul Jones took his flagship, Bonhomme Richard, a converted French merchantman named for Benjamin Franklin's 'Poor Richard,' against the 44-gun HMS Serapis, a new Royal Navy ship escorting a Baltic convoy.

It went badly. Two of the old 18-pounders Jones had added burst on the first broadside, killing the men around them. The ships fouled, Jones's crew lashed them together, and for about three and a half hours they fought at point-blank range, with a third American ship, Alliance, firing into the tangle and hitting as many Americans as British.

Asked by Captain Richard Pearson whether he had struck his colors, Jones is reported to have answered, 'I have not yet begun to fight.' The line comes from Lieutenant Richard Dale's recollections, published in 1825; no contemporary record has it. A little after 10:30 Pearson struck his own colors. Bonhomme Richard sank two days later.

At the center an officer in a tricorn and long dark coat stands braced on a splintered deck, one arm flung toward the enemy. Sailors crouch at his feet with muskets, a man clings in the rigging near a small fire, and two ships under sail lie in smoke beyond, gunfire flashing yellow across dark water.