Jones bring Revolutionary War to sea
During the Revolutionary War, Commodore John Paul Jones, aboard the Bonhomme Richard, commanded a squadron of the warships, all with a compliment of Marines aboard.
On the afternoon of Sept. 23, 1779, Commodore Jones and his squadron met a convoy of forty-one British vessels and warships in the North Sea, escorted by a brand new fifty-gun frigate, ‘Serapis,’ and a twenty-gun sloop of war ‘Countess of Scarborough’.
When the British spotted the Americans bearing down on them, the merchant ships fled. Then the Countess of Scarborough engaged the American ship ‘Pallas’ while the Bonhomme Richard sailed for the larger British warship Serapis.
During the battle, Marine Lieutenant Richard Dale commanded the guns while Lieutenant James O’Kelly and 20 Marines were stationed on the poop deck. In the fighting tops, Lieutenant Stack led four sailors and 15 French-Irish Marine sharpshooters in clearing the tops of the Serapis of British and then raking her decks with gunfire. Jones quickly moved the Bonhomme Richard into range and fired a broadside into the Serapis. The British returned fire, putting most of Jones’ twelve-pound guns out of action. But Stack’s Marines had managed to clear the Serapis’s tops and decks, which were now bloody and littered with British corpses.
Jones had his ship lashed to the British vessel and the two warships continued firing into each other while their crews battled on the decks. Stack and his Marines swung into the rigging of the Serapis, just as the Bonhomme Richard was pierced by cannon fire. Jones flagship reeled and was in danger of sinking. But Stack’s Marines held their ground in the Serapis rigging as both ships began to burn.
The surviving British tried to board the American flagship, but were repelled by deadly musket fire from Stack’s Marines firing down on them from their own mast. When the British captain appeared on deck with a flag of truce and demanded that the Americans surrender, Commodore Jones answered – “I have not yet begun to fight.”
Finally, the Serapis struck her colors and surrendered. But it was too late to save the Bonhomme Richard. Long after the crew had abandoned her, she sank with the American flag still flying above her deck, as she slipped beneath the waves. Commodore John Paul Jones had won the single greatest sea battle of the Revolutionary War.
Many lives were given for our freedom during that war to secure our freedom, and an untold number has been given since, in war after war to maintain our freedom. Please keep our armed forces personnel and their families in your prayers.
Charles R. Pearson is the Chaplain of the Malvern Legion Post 375 and Carrollton VFW Post 3301