brought
together if he persisted in his course, he put his helm alee, bringing
the two vessels in a line; and the Serapis having lost her headway by
this evolution, the Richard ran into her weather quarter. Jones was
quick to make his first attempt to board, but he could not mass enough
men at the point of contact to succeed, and the ships soon swung apart.

The Richard, even at this early stage of the action, was in a deplorable
condition. Little of her starboard battery was left. Henry Gardner, a
gunner during the action, stated in his account of the battle that, at
this time, of the 140 odd officers and men stationed in the main
gun-deck battery at the beginning, over eighty were killed or wounded.
There were three or four feet of water in the hold, caused by the
Serapis's eighteen-pound shot, which had repeatedly pierced the hull of
the Richard.

It is no wonder that Captain Pearson, knowing that his enemy was hard
put to it, thought, after the failure to board, that Jones was ready to
surrender.

"Has your ship struck?" he called, and Jones made his famous reply:--

"I have not yet begun to fight."

That Jones really made some such reply, there is no doubt. Certainly, it
was characteristic enough. Jones fought all his life, and yet when he
died he had hardly begun the conflict, so many of his ambitious
projects remained unrealized.

When the ships had swung apart, the broadsiding continued, increasingly
to the advantage of the Serapis. Had not a lucky wind, favorable to the
Richard, arisen at this point, doubtless her time above water would have
been short. The veering and freshening breeze enabled the Richard to
blanket the enemy's vessel, which consequently lost her headway, and
another fortunate puff of wind brought the Richard in contact with the
Serapis in such a way that the two vessels lay alongside one another,
bow to stern, and stern to bow. Jones, with his own hand, helped to lash
the two ships together. The anchor of the Serapis fortunately hooked the
quarter of the Richard, thus binding the frigates still more firmly
together.

During the critical time when Jones was bending every nerve to grapple
with the Serapis, the Alliance made her first appearance, poured a
broadside or two into the Richard, and disappeared. Of this remarkable
deed Jones wrote to Dr. Franklin: "At last the Alliance appeared, and I
now thought the battle at an end; but to my utter astonishment he
discharged a broadside fu