This Day in History: Battle of Flamborough Head
On this day in 1779, Navy legend John Paul Jones fights the Battle of Flamborough Head. He’d lost his biggest guns. His ship was flooding, and one of his own frigates was even shooting at him!
Naturally, he won anyway.
Jones was then commanding a squadron of ships in the North Sea, near the coast of Yorkshire. His flagship, the Continental Navy ship Bonhomme Richard, and a few others had been wreaking havoc, capturing British ships and threatening coastal towns. Trouble came on September 23 when he spotted a 41-ship British convoy. That convoy was protected by the British frigate HMS Serapis and the sloop-of-war HMS Countess of Scarborough.
Jones flew British colors, hoping to lure the convoy into a trap.
Unfortunately for Jones, his squadron would refuse to obey orders to form battle lines—and a light wind ensured that he didn’t come within range of the British for hours. By then, British Capt. Richard Pearson, aboard Serapis, had already ordered his convoy out of the area.
Bonhomme Richard thus approached Serapis, alone.
“What ship is that?” Pearson called out as Jones approached. “Princess Royal,” Jones replied, naming a known British merchant vessel. But the British captain was unconvinced. “Where from?” he called again, but Jones had gone silent. “Answer directly or I’ll fire into you,” Pearson threatened.
Jones defiantly answered by lowering the British colors and raising the American flag. Both sides opened fire.
Jones was left at an early disadvantage when two of his 18-pounders exploded, tearing a hole in the side of Bonhomme Richard and taking out their gun crews. One of the midshipmen later wrote that Serapis “made a dreadful havock among our crew. . . . our men fell in all parts of the ship by the scores.”
Amazingly, Jones managed to move his crippled ship close to Serapis, binding the two together. The two sides continued to fire upon each other. The American ship was especially battered and the crew was also battling fires aboard her. The hold of the ship was filling with water, and it seemed to be sinking.
Things got worse when Alliance, one of the ships in Jones’s squadron, decided to join the fight after all. She launched broadsides, presumably at Serapis, but the British and American ships were coupled, so Bonhomme Richard was taking hits, too.
“The commander of Alliance—former French naval officer Pierre Landais—and Jones had a longstanding feud,” Naval History and Heritage Command’s Brent Hunt explains, “that had come to a head . . . . [Later], Jones would claim Landais did it on purpose so he could sink Bonhomme Richard and take credit for sinking Serapis.”
Either way, Bonhomme Richard was in trouble. Some of Jones’s men tried to call for quarter—without his consent. The British captain yelled to Jones, asking if he was ready to surrender. Jones reportedly replied: “I have not yet begun to fight!”
Others remembered him saying: “I may sink, but I’m damned if I’ll strike.”
Maybe it’s unsurprising that Jones eventually got the upper hand? A grenade dropped into an open hatch on Serapis ignited some powder cartridges, sparking a series of devastating explosions.
The British captain finally struck his colors at 10:30 pm.
Nevertheless, Bonhomme Richard was mortally wounded. Jones struggled to save her until September 25, but the effort was hopeless. Bonhomme Richard sank beneath the waves and Jones sailed away aboard Serapis.
He’d lost his ship, but he also emerged victorious from one of the Revolution’s bloodiest and longest naval battles.
The impossible victory only added to the growing legend of John Paul Jones.
A note for those who are interested: Some of you might know I am running an experiment in history reels. If you are so inclined, check out my YouTube channel and/or subscribe to those HERE. Don’t miss the reel I created about Jimmy Stewart's service in WWII, posted over the weekend.
Primary Sources:
Brent Hunt, Navy History Matters (Naval History & Heritage Command; Sept. 20, 2022)
Evan Thomas, John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy (2003)
Fanning's Narrative: Being the Memoirs of Nathaniel Fanning an Officer of the Revolutionary Navy 1778-1783 (John S. Barnes; ed. 1912)
Mark P. Donnelly & Daniel Diehl, Pirates of Virginia: Plunder and High Adventure on the Old Dominion Coastline (2012)
Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959)
Tim McGrath, Give Me a Fast Ship: The Continental Navy and America’s Revolution at Sea (2014)
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