to subdue the flames seemed
for a time to be unavailing. In one place they were raging very near the
magazine, and Jones at length had all the powder taken out and brought
on deck, in readiness to be thrown overboard. In this work the officers
of the Serapis voluntarily assisted.

While the fire was raging in so terrifying a manner, the water was
entering the ship in many places. The rudder had been cut entirely
through, the transoms were driven in, and the rotten timbers of the old
ship, from the main-mast aft, were shattered and almost entirely
separated, as if the ship had been sawn through by ice; so much so that
Jones says that toward the close of the action the shot of the Serapis
passed completely through the Richard; and the stern-post and a few
timbers alone prevented the stern from falling down on the gunroom deck.
The water rushed in through all these apertures, so that at the close
of the action there were already five feet of water in the hold. The
spectacle which the old ship presented the following morning was
dreadful beyond description. Jones says in his official report: "A
person must have been eye-witness to form a just idea of the tremendous
scene of carnage, wreck, and ruin that everywhere appeared. Humanity
cannot but recoil from the prospect of such finished horror, and lament
that war should produce such fatal consequences."

Captain Pearson also notices, in his official letter to the Admiralty,
the dreadful spectacle the Richard presented. He says: "On my going on
board the Bonhomme Richard I found her to be in the greatest distress;
her counters and quarters on the lower deck entirely drove in, and the
whole of her lower-deck guns dismounted; she was also on fire in two
places, and six or seven feet of water in her hold, which kept
increasing all night and the next day till they were obliged to quit
her, and she sunk with a great number of her wounded people on board
her." The regret which he must, at any rate, have felt in surrendering,
must have been much augmented by these observations, and by what he must
have seen of the motley composition of the Richard's crew.

On the morning after the action a survey was held upon the "Poor
Richard," which was now, more than ever, entitled to her name. After a
deliberate examination, the carpenters and other surveying officers were
unanimously of opinion that the ship could not be kept afloat so as to
reach port, if the wind should increase. The task