In Search of the Bonhomme Richard

Portsmouth’s love affair with the dashing and diminutive John Paul Jones is tied almost exclusively to one ship. The USS Ranger, launched from Portsmouth Harbor in 1777, carried the first American flag to foreign soil. And even though we have no true idea what that flag looked like, and even though the Ranger’s raid on the British coastline did little real damage, and even though the Piscataqua crew preferred to pillage and drink beer and abandon their captain ashore, Ranger still looms large in local history.

But Capt. Jones operated many ships in his time. They include Providence, Alfred, Alliance, Ariel, Serapis and America, not to mention his pre-Revolutionary days aboard Friendship, Two Friends and Betsy, plus his command of the Russian flagship Vladimir. Then there is the storied USS Bonhomme Richard. To see them all in their most historically accurate form, including the Ranger, check out “The Ships of John Paul Jones” by the late maritime artist William Gilkerson.

This week’s photograph shows British maritime archaeologist Sidney Wignall in 1976 with a model of the Bonhomme Richard. It was Jones’ attack on the HMS Serapis off the coast of England Sept. 23, 1779, that earned him naval fame. Refusing to quit, Jones conducted what has become the most brutal and famous ship-to-ship battle in American history. Although the Bonhomme sank, Jones boarded the heavily damaged HMS Serapis and sailed it into a foreign port for repairs. Considered an American victory, despite the huge loss of life and our warship, the battle helped convince the French to enter the American Revolution in support of the United States.

The 1976 supposed discovery of the wreck of the Bonhomme Richard, like so many since, was a false alarm. As recently as 2018, a group of researchers believed they had finally found the remains of the Bonhomme off the coast of Yorkshire, not far from the historic “Battle of Flamborough Head.” Hope runs high, but the jury is still out.

Readers interested in Capt. Jones’ most famous ship should seek out the incredibly illustrated volume by Jean Boudriot titled “John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme Richard.” Boudriot lays out every spar, plank and stanchion on the Bonhomme in minute detail. Originally a French merchant ship named Duc de Duras, the Bonhomme went through a complete make-over funded by the French. The most dramatic recounting of the battle may still be the 1978 book “Night on Fire” by John Evangelist Walsh.

And to every historical footnote, there is another footnote. What we do know is that this news photo was taken by Ellsworth Davis (1927-2013) of the Washington Post. Davis earned his own place in history as the first African-American photographer hired by a major metropolitan newspaper in the United States.

Copyright 2020 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved