all privateer, and deliberately sailed through
La Motte Picquet's great fleet of towering line-of-battle-ships,
saluting and receiving salutes again.

Still on the _Ranger_, on the 24th of April, he fought the British
sloop-of-war _Drake_, of equal force and larger crew, to a standstill
in an hour and five minutes. When the _Drake_ struck her flag, her
rigging, sails and spars were cut to pieces. She had forty-two killed
and wounded--more than one-fifth of her crew--and was completely
helpless. The _Ranger_ lost two killed and six wounded.

{285}

In 1779 Jones hoisted his flag on the _Duc de Duras_, a condemned East
Indiaman, which would have been broken up had he not turned her into a
makeshift frigate by mounting forty guns in her batteries--fourteen
twelve-pounders, twenty nines and six eighteens. This, in honor of
Franklin, he named the _Bonhomme Richard_. Accompanied by the fine
little American-built frigate _Alliance_ and the French ship _Pallas_,
with the brig _Vengeance_, and the cutter _Cerf_, he cruised around
England, taking several prizes, and striking terror all along the shore.

III. The Battle With the _Serapis_

On the evening of the 23rd of September he fell in with the Baltic
convoy. He was accompanied at the time by the _Alliance_ and the
_Pallas_. The Baltic convoy was protected by the _Serapis_ and the
_Scarborough_. The _Serapis_ was a brand-new, double-banked frigate of
eight hundred tons, carrying twenty eighteen-pounders, twenty nines and
ten sixes. Inasmuch as the eighteen-pounders on the _Richard_ burst
and were abandoned after the first fire, the _Serapis_ could and did
discharge nearly twice as many pounds' weight of broadside as the
_Richard_, say three hundred pounds to one hundred and seventy-five.
The _Pallas_ grappled with the _Scarborough_--a more equal match--and
Jones attacked the _Serapis_, which was not unwilling--quite the
contrary--for the fight.

The battle was one of the most memorable and desperate ever fought upon
the ocean. The _Richard_ was riddled like a sieve. Her rotten sides
were literally blown out to starboard and port by the heavy batteries
of the _Serapis_. Jones had several hundred English {286} prisoners on
board. The master-at-arms released them, but, with great readiness and
presence of mind, Jones sent them to the pumps, while he continued to
fight the English frigate, his own ship kept afloat by their efforts.

Captain Pearson, of the _