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make you strike!” A memoir by the midshipman Fanning offered a different version: “Ay, ay, we’ll do that when we can fight no longer, but we shall see yours come down first. For you must know, that Yankees do not haul down their colors till they are fairly beaten.” 18
    Whatever his actual words, Jones was not ready to quit, even though the
Bonhomme Richard
had taken several cannon shots below the water line and was leaking badly, with many of her guns no longer working. The ships separated, and Pearson ordered several of his sails struck to reduce speed, letting the
Bonhomme Richard
come up alongside her where the British cannons blasted yet again as the American ship sailed past. Jones steered his ship to starboard—the right—as it cleared the
Serapis,
cutting across her path and getting the British bowsprit (the mast jutting forward from the front of the ship) caught up in the sails at the back of his ship. Jones kept steering to the right, using the
Serapis
’s spar as a pivot point, and came alongside so close that “the muzzles of our guns touched each other’s sides,” Pearson said later. 19 Jones ordered his men to tie the ship to the
Serapis,
which significantly reduced the cannon advantage the British enjoyed.
    The crews battled for two hours under the near full moon. Each kept trying to board the other’s ship, only to be repelled by lead and sword. The fighting was gory, the decks covered with bodies and limbs and blood as flames licked at the timbers. The Americans won the battle of the upper masts, with Fanning and others firing muskets and blunderbusses directly across at the men aloft above the deck of the
Serapis.
When the last of those British sailors fell, the Americans moved across and turned their weapons to the deck, peppering it like snipers. 20
    The
Alliance
had stayed out of the engagement (as had the
Vengeance).
In an act of treachery, its captain, Landais, now sailed around the bound ships and poured cannon fire to try to sink the
Bonhomme Richard,
hoping to claim the
Serapis
for himself. Cannon blasts did significant damage to the ship, disabled several of the
Richard
’s cannons, and killed a number of crew members. Then Landais sailed off to watch the end of the death struggle between the
Serapis
and the
Bonhomme Richard.
    The wind had died down, turning the sea to glass, and a current was carrying the two ships closer to shore. Pearson ordered an anchor dropped, hoping that if the grappling lines could be severed, the
Richard
would float free of his ship and give the
Serapis
enough space to finish her off with cannon fire. The effort failed and the ships remained tethered, a bond made faster after the Americans strapped their yardarms to those on the
Serapis.
The gunfire from above by Fanning and his men kept the British on thelower gun decks, where they continued to blast holes in the
Bonhomme Richard
’s hull—above the water line and on levels in which no American sailors remained—with eighteen-pound and twelve-pound cannons. More than a dozen fires broke out on the
Serapis
alone, from below deck to the sails and rigging, which meant sailors had to fight both fires and the enemy seamen. Pearson again ordered some of his men to cut the binds that held the two ships together, but they couldn’t get past Fanning and his men in the rigging. Lashed together, Jones stood a chance; if the ships separated, and the
Serapis
could again use her cannons, the
Bonhomme Richard
would be lost.
    As it was, the American ship was grievously damaged. The
Serapis
was holding together better, but around 9:30 PM one of Jones’s men inched along a yardarm over the deck of the
Serapis
and began dropping grenades, one of which plummeted through an open hatch to the lower gun deck strewn with gunpowder cartridges. The grenade did its work; the blast and flash fire killed about twenty British fighters and badly burned many others.
    A short time