Battle of Flamborough Head - Two Gunnery Duels

Two Gunnery Duels

Shortly afterwards, John Paul Jones got the opportunity he had been striving for- not a moment too soon, as his ship had been holed below the waterline, and was becoming increasingly unresponsive. Serapis’ jib-boom caught in the rigging of Bonhomme Richard’s mizzen mast, and Jones immediately led his crew in attaching the two ships together as strongly as they could. Seeing the danger, Pearson dropped anchor- because both ships were under sail, when Serapis came to an abrupt halt, Richard would keep going, and with luck tear free. Jones’s men had been very efficient, so what actually happened was that the Richard’s motion was turned into rotation, and the two ships, still firmly attached, ended up side-by-side, facing in opposite directions, their great guns touching each other’s hull planks. Better still for Jones, Serapis’ spare anchor caught in the woodwork of the Richard’s stern, locking the two ships in that extraordinary position. Making a virtue of necessity, Pearson’s crew fired broadsides straight into the Richard’s hull, tearing huge holes in its side, and doing terrible damage to the gun-decks. For Jones’s boarding plan to succeed, he needed to drive all the Royal Navy sailors from Serapis’ deck before his ship was destroyed beneath him. He had prepared well for such an eventuality, and his men at stations up the masts were equipped both with small guns and with incendiary grenades. Three 9-pound guns on the quarter-deck (the rear part of the upper deck) were still usable, although one was on the wrong side, and had to be dragged round. Two of these guns were loaded with anti-personnel grapeshot to help drive Pearson’s men from the deck, but the third was used with solid bar-shot (see Naval Artillery page) aimed at Serapis’ main-mast.

By this time, towards 8.30 pm, the moon had risen. Moving slowly downwind away from the anchored ships, Pallas and Countess of Scarborough began a second battle of broadsides (which for Pallas meant 16 guns firing just over 130 pounds (59 kg) of shot together). Hovering in the background, still, were Vengeance and the schooner, with the boarding party which John Paul Jones really needed. Captain Landais, of the Alliance, after observing for a time, formed another plan, and set off after Pallas. On the way, Alliance passed the two locked ships, still anchored, still firing broadsides at each other. As the direction of shots was now predictable, Captain Landais could safely approach within firing range of Serapis, from the right direction- bow or stern rather than flank. This he did, firing a broadside including round-shot, bar-shot and grapeshot at Serapis’ bow. Right next to that bow, still, was Bonhomme Richard’s stern. As much lethal shot hit Jones’s men as Pearson’s, and metal also flew along Richard’s gun-deck, killing some of the remaining gunners and wrecking several gun-carriages. His good deed done, Landais continued on his way.

After that, Bonhomme Richard started definitively losing the battle against Serapis. Still, efforts to make the situation too hot for the British, both figuratively and literally, continued, and just after 9.30 pm, one of these attempts succeeded in spectacular fashion. According to Jones's published campaign report, grenade-thrower William Hamilton ventured right out along a yard-arm until he could look almost straight down on the deck of Serapis (by this time, almost cleared of men), and began trying to drop grenades, not onto the deck but down the hatches. By good fortune, one of these ignited a charge of gunpowder placed in readiness (contrary to standard fire safety practice, but Captain Pearson had encouraged his men to "fire briskly") for loading into one of Serapis’ 18-pound guns. The problem with this version of the story is that the 18-pounders were on the lower deck, so it would be a very lucky drop to reach them from high above. Captain Pearson speculated that either a grenade had been thrown through a hole in the hull, from Richard’s gun deck, or that the charge had been ignited by accident. Whatever the cause, the effect was devastating: as the ignited charge blew up, it scattered burning gunpowder, setting off other charges nearby, and ultimately the chain-reaction covered the entire rear half of Serapis’ lower gun-deck, killing or severely burning many of the gunnery crewmen, forcing some to leap into the sea to extinguish their burning clothes, and putting five guns out of action. In the confusion, some of the crew clambering back on board after jumping into the sea were nearly mistaken for American boarders.

Still in action, still moving with the wind away from the main fight, were Pallas and the Countess of Scarborough. Alliance was catching up fast, though, and as the near-undamaged, speedy, well-armed frigate approached, Captain Piercy understood that with seven of his own guns dismounted, four of his crew dead, twenty wounded, his rigging and sails too badly damaged to make a speedy getaway, he could neither win nor escape. With Landais hovering just beyond the range of his guns, he therefore struck his colours. Alliance approached him, seeking to take the Captain’s formal surrender, but after brief exchanges with both Piercy and Cottineau, Captain Landais accepted that his colleague should take the surrender and attend to casualties, while Alliance returned to the main battle. Because the return journey would be against the wind, this would, as Captain Piercy presumably intended, take a while.