WELL BEGUN IS HALF DONE...:

John Paul Jones: The Scot who saw off the Sassenachs: John Paul Jones has a unique place in history. Born in Scotland, he fled to America and, in 1779, commanded a vessel which won an unlikely victory over a British frigate. The US ship was itself sunk in the battle. Now the race is on to find it. (Ian Herbert, 07 August 2007, Independent)

The prospect of watching the British Navy handing out a drubbing to the Americans was too good to miss for the Yorkshire gentry on the night of 23 September, 1779. The great and the good processed in their carriages under a harvest moon to Flamborough Head where, for a time, they were not disappointed by the spectacle of a 50-gun British frigate, Serapis, inflicting terrible damage on Bonhomme Richard, a rebel US vessel intent on distracting Britain from the War of Independence.

But no one had reckoned on the commodore at the helm of the US vessel that night; nor on his rallying cry, which is inscribed indelibly in US naval history and remembered to this day in schoolrooms across America.

John Paul Jones, a Scottish-born gardener's son who had fled to America to escape British justice, was down to his last reserves of ammunition when, with his vessel ablaze and beginning to sink, the British inquired if he was ready to surrender to them. "I have not yet begun to fight," he retorted, before proceeding to trounce Serapis and record one of the US Navy's most improbable victories.

Jones took care to board the Serapis and make prisoners of her crew before watching the Richard - irreparably damaged with "a hole the size of a coach and six" punched through her side by cannon fire, according to one contemporary report - sink to the bottom of the North Sea.

Though he made off in the moonlight and into legend as the man considered, to this day, to be the Father of the American Navy, Jones' trusty 42-gun craft has been marooned at the bottom of the North Sea ever since her hour of glory and her elusiveness has turned the search into the Holy Grail of American marine historians.

The search may soon be over.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 6, 2007 10:26 PM