Origin
Little is known about the early career of Bonhomme Richard other than she was originally an East Indiaman named Duc de Duras; a merchant ship built in France for the French East India Company in 1765. In that capacity she sailed between France and the Orient until purchased by King Louis XVI of France in early 1779 and placed under the command John Paul Jones on 4 February. The size and armament of Duc de Duras made her a rough equivalent of half of a 64-gun ship of the line
Jones renamed her Bon Homme Richard - usually rendered in more correct French as Bonhomme Richard, to honor Benjamin Franklin, the American Commissioner at Paris whose Poor Richard's Almanac was published in France under the title of Les Maximes du Bonhomme Richard.
Read more about this topic: USS Bonhomme Richard (1765)
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)
“Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.”
—Neal Cassady (1926–1968)