ll into the stern of the Bon Homme Richard." It
is probable that the Serapis also suffered from Landais's attack, but
not so much as the Richard, which lay between the other two ships.

After the Serapis and the Richard had been well lashed together, there
began a new phase of the battle, which had already lasted about an hour.
There were only three guns left in action on the Richard, nine-pounders
on the quarter-deck, and the ship was badly leaking. The
eighteen-pounders of the enemy had riddled the gun-deck of the American
ship, rendering her, below-decks, entirely untenable. The real fight
from this time to the end was consequently above-decks. Jones abandoned
any attempt at great gun fire, except by the three small pieces on the
quarter-deck, drew practically his entire remaining crew from below to
the upper deck and the tops, and devoted his attention to sweeping the
decks of the enemy by the musketry of his French marines from the
quarter and poop decks, and of the American sailors in the tops. The
crew of the Serapis, on the other hand, were forced mainly to take
refuge in their well-protected lower decks, from which they continued to
fire their great guns into the already riddled hull and lower decks of
the Richard.

After the juncture of the vessels Captain Pearson made several desperate
attempts to cut the anchor loose, hoping in that way to become free
again of the Richard, in which case he knew that the battle was his.
Jones, of course, was equally determined to defend the anchor
fastenings. He personally directed the fire of his French marines
against the British in their repeated attempts to sever the two ships,
to such good purpose that not a single British sailor reached the
coveted goal. So determined was Jones on this important point that he
took loaded muskets from the hands of his French marines and shot down
several of the British with his own hand.

The captain of the French marines, who rendered at this important stage
of the action such good service, had been wounded early in the battle,
and the succeeding lieutenants had also been either killed or disabled.
The marines had been greatly diminished in numbers and were much
disheartened at the time Jones took personal command of them. Nathaniel
Fanning vividly narrates the manner in which Jones handled these
Frenchmen: "I could distinctly hear, amid the crashing of the musketry,
the great voice of the commodore, cheering the French marines in the