d longed to give it
back into the hands of those who had given it to him four years earlier.
"But, Miss Mary," he said, "I couldn't bear to strip it from the poor
old ship in her last agony, nor could I deny to my dead on her decks,
who had given their lives to keep it flying, the glory of taking it with
them." In his journal he wrote eloquently and almost as simply:--

No one was now left aboard the Richard but her dead. To them I gave
the good old ship for their coffin, and in her they found a sublime
sepulcher. She rolled heavily in the long swell, her gun-deck awash
to the port-sills, settled slowly by the head, and sank peacefully
in about forty fathoms. The ensign-gaff, shot away in action, had
been fished and put in place, soon after firing ceased, and our
torn and tattered flag was left flying when we abandoned her. As
she plunged down by the head at the last, her taffrail momentarily
rose in the air; so the very last vestige mortal eyes ever saw of
the Bon Homme Richard was the defiant waving of her unconquered and
unstricken flag as she went down. And as I had given them the good
old ship for their sepulcher, I now bequeathed to my immortal dead
the flag they had so desperately defended, for their winding sheet!

This is the story of the Portsmouth flag. At first its truth was
accepted without a doubt; then it was seriously questioned. Within the
last few years, new evidence in the shape of family tradition has
strengthened its position.

CHAPTER VIII

FLAGS ONE WOULD HAVE LIKED TO SEE

Probably the flag made by the skillful fingers of Mrs. Elizabeth
Griscom Ross was sewed with the tiniest of stitches imaginable; but it
is absolutely certain that the flag which made its appearance August
3, 1777, at Fort Schuyler, afterwards Fort Stanwix, was not put
together with any such daintiness of workmanship. For twenty days the
little fort in the New York wilderness, where Rome now stands, was
besieged by British and Indians. Reinforcements brought the news of
the adoption of the new flag. The troops within the fort had no flag,
and therefore, in true American fashion, they set to work to make one.
There was not even a country store to draw upon for materials, so they
made the best of what they had. As the story has been handed down, a
white shirt provided the white stripes and the stars, and the
petticoat of a soldier's wife the red stripes.