By the autumn of 1779, the American Revolution had spilled onto the oceans. The young United States had almost no navy, so it depended on daring captains raiding British waters. John Paul Jones, a Scottish-born sailor who had thrown in his lot with the American cause, was given command of an old, worn-out French merchant ship. He renamed her Bonhomme Richard to honor Benjamin Franklin and his “Poor Richard’s Almanack.” Jones sailed a small, quarrelsome squadron around the British Isles, terrifying coastal towns. On the evening of September 23, 1779, off the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head on England’s Yorkshire coast, he found a fat Baltic merchant convoy guarded by two Royal Navy warships. The strongest was the brand-new frigate HMS Serapis, faster and better armed than anything Jones had...
Time Surfing: Graphic History
