Qualla: Battle of Flamborough Head

Battle of Flamborough Head: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kalki, CC0. Just after seven in the evening on 23 September 1779, an obscure American captain named John Paul Jones brought his battered French-built warship within pistol shot of HMS Serapis, a brand-new Royal Navy frigate guarding a convoy of Baltic merchantmen off the Yorkshire coast. The two ships exchanged broadsides. Two of Jones's heaviest guns burst on the first salvo, killing most of the men around them. Serapis - newer, better armed, more manoeuvrable - was clearly going to win. Jones did the only thing left to do: he closed in and lashed his ship to Serapis, hull to hull, so that the British could not use their superior gunnery without blowing themselves up too. He fought the next three hours that way, with thousands of people watching from the cliffs of Flamborough Head in the bright moonlight.

Image: Kalki | CC0

Battle of Flamborough Head: Jones's Squadron

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Strickland, William, Artist (NARA record: 1473212), Public domain. Jones had sailed from Groix off L'Orient in France on 14 August with a seven-ship squadron, most of the vessels loaned or donated by the French government to the American cause. His flagship, the Bonhomme Richard, was a converted French East India Company merchantman that he had ...

Image: Strickland, William, Artist (NARA record: 1473212) | Public domain

Battle of Flamborough Head: Pearson's Mission

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Dodd / After Richard Paton, Public domain. Captain Richard Pearson of HMS Serapis had only two ships under his command: his own forty-four-gun frigate and the smaller hired armed ship Countess of Scarborough, twenty guns, under Captain Thomas Piercy. Their job was to escort the convoy safely south. When Pearson saw the st...

Image: Robert Dodd / After Richard Paton | Public domain

Battle of Flamborough Head: Lashed Together in the Moonlight

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Paton, derivative version by User:David Trochos, Public domain. By the time Bonhomme Richard's heavy guns blew themselves apart, Jones had perhaps an hour to live as a captain unless he changed the game. He drove his ship alongside Serapis and ordered her grappled fast - the anchors hooked, the rigging fouled, the two hulls grinding against e...

Image: Richard Paton, derivative version by User:David Trochos | Public domain

Battle of Flamborough Head: The Decision on Serapis

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Hamilton, Public domain. The end came when a grenade, dropped or thrown from Bonhomme Richard's tops, fell through a hatch into Serapis's lower gun deck and ignited loose powder cartridges. The explosion ran the length of the deck, killing many gunners and disabling most of Serapis's heaviest guns. Pears...

Image: James Hamilton | Public domain