Qualla: HMS Serapis (1779)

HMS Serapis (1779): Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A single candle ended her. Not the broadsides off the coast of England, not the three hours of point-blank fire that made her name in the history books - but a candle, lifted carelessly from its fireproof lantern in a tropical harbour off Madagascar. HMS Serapis had survived the most celebrated frigate duel of the American Revolution. She survived being captured, renamed, handed to one navy and then loaned to another. What she could not survive was a moment of carelessness below decks on 31 July 1781, when alcohol fumes met an open flame and the powder magazine did the rest. Her bones still lie in the warm water off Ile Sainte-Marie, the old pirate island, found again only at the very end of the 20th century.

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HMS Serapis (1779): I Have Not Yet Begun to Fight

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Serapis was barely six months old when she met her destiny. Built by Randall and Company at Deptford on the Thames and launched in March 1779, she was a two-decked fifth-rate carrying 44 guns - a fresh, well-armed ship under Captain Richard Pearson. On 23 September 1779, off Flam...

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HMS Serapis (1779): The Prize That Changed Flags

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The fight ended in a strange reversal. Bonhomme Richard was sinking beneath Jones even as he won; a ship from his own squadron had been firing wildly into both vessels, and Pearson, tied fast to his enemy and unable to aim at the real threat, finally struck his colours and handed...

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HMS Serapis (1779): Spirits, Arak, and a Spark

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Her last chapter was not a battle but a trade run gone wrong. The French navy commissioned the captured ship as Serapis and loaned her to a civilian master named Roche, who meant to harry the British in the Indian Ocean. On 31 July 1781 she lay at anchor off Madagascar, trading s...

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HMS Serapis (1779): Found Among the Pirates

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ile Sainte-Marie - Nosy Boraha to the Malagasy - was a fitting grave. The long, narrow island off Madagascar's east coast had been one of the great pirate havens of the Indian Ocean, a refuge in the late 17th and early 18th centuries for the likes of William Kidd and Olivier Leva...

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