Bruce Alan Orr

On this day in 1779, an American captain stood on the deck of a ship that was literally sinking under his feet, on fire, riddled with holes, half his crew dead or wounded, and when the enemy shouted across the water asking if he surrendered, he roared back a line that the United States Navy has never forgotten: "I have not yet begun to fight!" His name was John Paul Jones, and what he did that night made him the founding legend of the American navy. Understand how insane the setting was. Jones was not defending American waters. He had taken the fight to the enemy's home, cruising in a small squadron right off the coast of England itself, terrorizing British shipping in their own front yard. His flagship was an old, worn-out French merchant vessel he had converted into a warship and renamed the Bonhomme Richard, in honor of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard." It was slow, tired, and outgunned. Off Flamborough Head, Jones ran into a British convoy escorted by a brand-new, faster, more powerful Royal Navy frigate called the Serapis. By every rational measure, Jones should have run. The Serapis was a better ship with heavier guns. Instead, Jones attacked. The battle that followed, fought into the night under a rising moon, was one of the most savage ship-to-ship duels of the entire age of sail. Early on, disaster struck the Americans: two of the Bonhomme Richard's big old cannon burst when fired, blowing apart their own gun crews and leaving Jones dangerously short of firepower. The Serapis hammered the Richard mercilessly, its heavier guns tearing the American ship to splinters, opening holes below the waterline, setting fires. The Richard was being destroyed. So Jones did the only thing that could save him. If he could not win a gunnery duel, he would not fight one. He drove his ship straight into the Serapis and lashed the two vessels together, hull against hull, muzzle to muzzle, so close the gun crews were practically fighting through each other's ports. Now it was not a naval battle so much as a brawl, and Jones's American and French sailors and marines could rake the enemy's decks with musket fire and grenades from the rigging. It was in the middle of this hell, with his ship clearly sinking and afire, that the British captain called over, reasonably, to ask if the Americans had had enough and wished to strike their colors. And Jones, standing on a doomed deck, gave the answer that became immortal: he had not yet begun to fight. And he meant it. The turning point came from above. One of Jones's men climbed out on a yardarm over the enemy ship and dropped a grenade down through an open hatch into the Serapis, where it touched off a chain of gunpowder charges. The explosion ripped through the British gun deck, killing and maiming dozens of men in an instant. The fight went out of the Serapis. Its captain, his own ship now wrecked and burning, finally surrendered. And here is the almost unbelievable ending. John Paul Jones had won, but his own ship was beyond saving. The Bonhomme Richard was so shattered that it slowly sank over the next day, and Jones had to move his victorious crew onto the captured Serapis and sail away in the enemy's ship, because his own had gone to the bottom. He won the battle and lost his vessel, all at once. The victory made him a hero on both sides of the Atlantic, a symbol that the infant United States could carry the war to the mightiest navy on earth and win. To this day, the Navy calls John Paul Jones its father, and it teaches new sailors his answer from that burning deck. Remember September 23, 1779, and the man who was sinking, and on fire, and outgunned, and answered a demand for his surrender by saying he had not yet begun to fight, and then proved it.