Israel Potter

Chapter 19

THEY FIGHT THE SERAPIS.

The battle between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis stands in

history as the first signal collision on the sea between the Englishman

and the American. For obstinacy, mutual hatred, and courage, it is

without precedent or subsequent in the story of ocean. The strife long

hung undetermined, but the English flag struck in the end.

There would seem to be something singularly indicatory I in this

engagement. It may involve at once a type, a parallel, and a prophecy.

Sharing the same blood with England, and yet her proved foe in two

wars--not wholly inclined at bottom to forget an old grudge--intrepid,

unprincipled, reckless, predatory, with boundless ambition, civilized in

externals but a savage at heart, America is, or may yet be, the Paul

Jones of nations.

Regarded in this indicatory light, the battle between the Bon Homme

Richard and the Serapis--in itself so curious--may well enlist our

interest.

Never was there a fight so snarled. The intricacy of those incidents

which defy the narrator's extrication, is not illy figured in that

bewildering intertanglement of all the yards and anchors of the two

ships, which confounded them for the time in one chaos of devastation.

Elsewhere than here the reader must go who seeks an elaborate version of

the fight, or, indeed, much of any regular account of it whatever. The

writer is but brought to mention the battle because he must needs

follow, in all events, the fortunes of the humble adventurer whose life

lie records. Yet this necessarily involves some general view of each

conspicuous incident in which he shares.

Several circumstances of the place and time served to invest the fight

with a certain scenic atmosphere casting a light almost poetic over the

wild gloom of its tragic results. The battle was fought between the

hours of seven and ten at night; the height of it was under a full

harvest moon, in view of thousands of distant spectators crowning the

high cliffs of Yorkshire.

From the Tees to the Humber, the eastern coast of Britain, for the most

part, wears a savage, melancholy, and Calabrian aspect. It is in course

of incessant decay. Every year the isle which repulses nearly all other

foes, succumbs to the Attila assaults of the deep. Here and there the

base of the cliffs is strewn with masses of rock, undermined by the

waves, and tumbled headlong below, where, sometimes, the water

completely surrounds them, showing in shattered confusion detached

rocks, pyramids, and obelisks, rising half-revealed from the surf--the

Tadmores of the wasteful desert of the sea. Nowhere is this desolation

more marked than for those fifty miles of coast between Flamborough Head

and the Spurm.

Weathering out the gale which had driven them from Leith, Paul's ships

for a few days were employed in giving chase to various merchantmen and

colliers; capturing some, sinking others, and putting the rest to

flight. Off the mouth of the Humber they ineffectually manoeuvred with a

view of drawing out a king's frigate, reported to be lying at anchor

within. At another time a large fleet was encountered, under convoy of

some ships of force. But their panic caused the fleet to hug the edge of

perilous shoals very nigh the land, where, by reason of his having no

competent pilot, Paul durst not approach to molest them. The same night

he saw two strangers further out at sea, and chased them until three in

the morning, when, getting pretty nigh, ho surmised that they must needs

be vessels of his own squadron, which, previous to his entering the

Firth of Forth, had separated from his command. Daylight proved this

supposition correct. Five vessels of the original squadron were now once

more in company. About noon a fleet of forty merchantmen appeared coming

round Flamborough Head, protected by two English man-of-war, the Serapis

and Countess of Scarborough. Descrying the five cruisers sailing down,

the forty sail, like forty chickens, fluttered in a panic under the wing

of the shore. Their armed protectors bravely steered from the land,

making the disposition for battle. Promptly accepting the challenge,

Paul, giving the signal to his consorts, earnestly pressed forward. But,

earnest as he was, it was seven in the evening ere the encounter began.

Meantime his comrades, heedless of his signals, sailed independently

along. Dismissing them from present consideration, we confine ourselves,

for a while, to the Richard and the Serapis, the grand duellists of the

fight.

The Richard carried a motley, crew, to keep whom in order one hundred

and thirty-five soldiers--themselves a hybrid band--had been put on

board, commanded by French officers of inferior rank. Her armament was

similarly heterogeneous; guns of all sorts and calibres; but about equal

on the whole to those of a thirty-two-gun frigate. The spirit of baneful

intermixture pervaded this craft throughout.

The Serapis was a frigate of fifty guns, more than half of which

individually exceeded in calibre any one gun of the Richard. She had a

crew of some three hundred and twenty trained man-of-war's men.

There is something in a naval engagement which radically distinguishes

it from one on the land. The ocean, at times, has what is called its

_sea_ and its _trough of the sea_; but it has neither rivers, woods,

banks, towns, nor mountains. In mild weather it is one hammered plain.

Stratagems, like those of disciplined armies--ambuscades, like those of

Indians, are impossible. All is clear, open, fluent. The very element

which sustains the combatants, yields at the stroke of a feather. One

wind and one tide at one time operate upon all who here engage. This

simplicity renders a battle between two men-of-war, with their huge

white wings, more akin to the Miltonic contests of archangels than to

_the comparatively squalid_ tussles of earth.

As the ships neared, a hazy darkness overspread the water. The moon was

not yet risen. Objects were perceived with difficulty. Borne by a soft

moist breeze over gentle waves, they came within pistol-shot. Owing to

the obscurity, and the known neighborhood of other vessels, the Serapis

was uncertain who the Richard was. Through the dim mist each ship loomed

forth to the other vast, but indistinct, as the ghost of Morven. Sounds

of the trampling of resolute men echoed from either hull, whose tight

decks dully resounded like drum-heads in a funeral march.

The Serapis hailed. She was answered by a broadside. For half an hour

the combatants deliberately manoeuvred, continually changing their

position, but always within shot fire. The. Serapis--the better sailer

of the two--kept critically circling the Richard, making lounging

advances now and then, and as suddenly steering off; hate causing her to

act not unlike a wheeling c**k about a hen, when stirred by the contrary

passion. Meantime, though within easy speaking distance, no further

syllable was exchanged; but an incessant cannonade was kept up.

At this point, a third party, the Scarborough, drew near, seemingly

desirous of giving assistance to her consort. But thick smoke was now

added to the night's natural obscurity. The Scarborough imperfectly

discerned two ships, and plainly saw the common fire they made; but

which was which, she could not tell. Eager to befriend the Serapis, she

durst not fire a gun, lest she might unwittingly act the part of a foe.

As when a hawk and a crow are clawing and beaking high in the air, a

second crow flying near, will seek to join the battle, but finding no

fair chance to engage, at last flies away to the woods; just so did the

Scarborough now. Prudence dictated the step; because several chance

shot--from which of the combatants could not be known--had already

struck the Scarborough. So, unwilling uselessly to expose herself, off

went for the present this baffled and ineffectual friend.

Not long after, an invisible hand came and set down a great yellow lamp

in the east. The hand reached up unseen from below the horizon, and set

the lamp down right on the rim of the horizon, as on a threshold; as

much as to say, Gentlemen warriors, permit me a little to light up this

rather gloomy looking subject. The lamp was the round harvest moon; the

one solitary foot-light of the scene. But scarcely did the rays from the

lamp pierce that languid haze. Objects before perceived with difficulty,

now glimmered ambiguously. Bedded in strange vapors, the great

foot-light cast a dubious, half demoniac glare across the waters, like

the phantasmagoric stream sent athwart a London flagging in a night-rain

from an apothecary's blue and green window. Through this sardonical

mist, the face of the Man-in-the-Moon--looking right towards the

combatants, as if he were standing in a trap-door of the sea, leaning

forward leisurely with his arms complacently folded over upon the edge

of the horizon--this queer face wore a serious, apishly self-satisfied

leer, as if the Man-in-the-Moon had somehow secretly put up the ships

to their contest, and in the depths of his malignant old soul was not

unpleased to see how well his charms worked. There stood the grinning

Man-in-the-Moon, his head just dodging into view over the rim of the

sea:--Mephistopheles prompter of the stage.

Aided now a little by the planet, one of the consorts of the Richard,

the Pallas, hovering far outside the fight, dimly discerned the

suspicious form of a lonely vessel unknown to her. She resolved to

engage it, if it proved a foe. But ere they joined, the unknown

ship--which proved to be the Scarborough--received a broadside at long

gun's distance from another consort of the Richard the Alliance. The

shot whizzed across the broad interval like shuttlecocks across a great

hall. Presently the battledores of both batteries were at work, and

rapid compliments of shuttlecocks were very promptly exchanged. The

adverse consorts of the two main belligerents fought with all the rage

of those fiery seconds who in some desperate duels make their

principal's quarrel their own. Diverted from the Richard and the Serapis

by this little by-play, the Man-in-the-Moon, all eager to see what it

was, somewhat raised himself from his trap-door with an added grin on

his face. By this time, off sneaked the Alliance, and down swept the

Pallas, at close quarters engaging the Scarborough; an encounter

destined in less than an hour to end in the latter ship's striking her

flag.

Compared to the Serapis and the Richard, the Pallas and the Scarborough

were as two pages to two knights. In their immature way they showed the

same traits as their fully developed superiors.

The Man-in-the-Moon now raised himself still higher to obtain a better

view of affairs.

But the Man-in-the-Moon was not the only spectator. From the high cliffs

of the shore, and especially from the great promontory of Flamborough

Head, the scene was witnessed by crowds of the islanders. Any rustic

might be pardoned his curiosity in view of the spectacle, presented. Far

in the indistinct distance fleets of frightened merchantmen filled the

lower air with their sails, as flakes of snow in a snow-storm by night.

Hovering undeterminedly, in another direction, were several of the

scattered consorts of Paul, taking no part in the fray. Nearer, was an

isolated mist, investing the Pallas and Scarborough--a mist slowly

adrift on the sea, like a floating isle, and at intervals irradiated

with sparkles of fire and resonant with the boom of cannon. Further

away, in the deeper water, was a lurid cloud, incessantly torn in shreds

of lightning, then fusing together again, once more to be rent. As yet

this lurid cloud was neither stationary nor slowly adrift, like the

first-mentioned one; but, instinct with chaotic vitality, shifted hither

and thither, foaming with fire, like a valiant water-spout careering off

the coast of Malabar.

To get some idea of the events enacting in that cloud, it will be

necessary to enter it; to go and possess it, as a ghost may rush into a

body, or the devils into the swine, which running down the steep place

perished in the sea; just as the Richard is yet to do.

Thus far the Serapis and the Richard had been manoeuvring and chasing

to each other like partners in a cotillion, all the time indulging in

rapid repartee.

But finding at last that the superior managableness of the enemy's ship

enabled him to get the better of the clumsy old Indiaman, the Richard,

in taking position, Paul, with his wonted resolution, at once sought to

neutralize this, by hugging him close. But the attempt to lay the

Richard right across the head of the Serapis ended quite otherwise, in

sending the enemy's jib-boom just over the Richard's great tower of

Pisa, where Israel was stationed; who, catching it eagerly, stood for an

instant holding to the slack of the sail, like one grasping a horse by

the mane prior to vaulting into the saddle.

"Aye, hold hard, lad," cried Paul, springing to his side with a coil of

rigging. With a few rapid turns he knitted himself to his foe. The wind

now acting on the sails of the Serapis forced her, heel and point, her

entire length, cheek by jowl, alongside the Richard. The projecting

cannon scraped; the yards interlocked; but the hulls did not touch. A

long lane of darkling water lay wedged between, like that narrow canal

in Venice which dozes between two shadowy piles, and high in air is

secretly crossed by the Bridge of Sighs. But where the six yard-arms

reciprocally arched overhead, three bridges of sighs were both seen and

heard, as the moon and wind kept rising.

Into that Lethean canal--pond-like in its smoothness as compared with

the sea without--fell many a poor soul that night; fell, forever

forgotten.

As some heaving rent coinciding with a disputed frontier on a volcanic

plain, that boundary abyss was the jaws of death to both sides. So

contracted was it, that in many cases the gun-rammers had to be thrust

into the opposite ports, in order to enter to muzzles of their own

cannon. It seemed more an intestine feud, than a fight between

strangers. Or, rather, it was as if the Siamese Twins, oblivious of

their fraternal bond, should rage in unnatural fight.

Ere long, a horrible explosion was heard, drowning for the instant the

cannonade. Two of the old eighteen-pounders--before spoken of, as having

been hurriedly set up below the main deck of the Richard--burst all to

pieces, killing the sailors who worked them, and shattering all that

part of the hull, as if two exploded steam-boilers had shot out of its

opposite sides. The effect was like the fall of the walls of a house.

Little now upheld the great tower of Pisa but a few naked crow

stanchions. Thenceforth, not a few balls from the Serapis must have

passed straight through the Richard without grazing her. It was like

firing buck-shot through the ribs of a skeleton.

But, further forward, so deadly was the broadside from the heavy

batteries of the Serapis--levelled point-blank, and right down the

throat and bowels, as it were, of the Richard--that it cleared

everything before it. The men on the Richard's covered gun-deck ran

above, like miners from the fire-damp. Collecting on the forecastle,

they continued to fight with grenades and muskets. The soldiers also

were in the lofty tops, whence they kept up incessant volleys, cascading

their fire down as pouring lava from cliffs.

The position of the men in the two ships was now exactly reversed. For

while the Serapis was tearing the Richard all to pieces below deck, and

had swept that covered part almost of the last man, the Richard's crowd

of musketry had complete control of the upper deck of the Serapis, where

it was almost impossible for man to remain unless as a corpse. Though in

the beginning, the tops of the Serapis had not been unsupplied with

marksmen, yet they had long since been cleared by the overmastering

musketry of the Richard. Several, with leg or arm broken by a ball, had

been seen going dimly downward from their giddy perch, like falling

pigeons shot on the wing.

As busy swallows about barn-eaves and ridge-poles, some of the Richard's

marksmen, quitting their tops, now went far out on their yard-arms,

where they overhung the Serapis. From thence they dropped hand-grenades

upon her decks, like apples, which growing in one field fall over the

fence into another. Others of their band flung the same sour fruit into

the open ports of the Serapis. A hail-storm of aerial combustion

descended and slanted on the Serapis, while horizontal thunderbolts

rolled crosswise through the subterranean vaults of the Richard. The

belligerents were no longer, in the ordinary sense of things, an English

ship and an American ship. It was a co-partnership and joint-stock

combustion-company of both ships; yet divided, even in participation.

The two vessels were as two houses, through whose party-wall doors have

been cut; one family (the Guelphs) occupying the whole lower story;

another family (the Ghibelines) the whole upper story.

Meanwhile, determined Paul flew hither and thither like the meteoric

corposant-ball, which shiftingly dances on the tips and verges of ships'

rigging in storms. Wherever he went, he seemed to cast a pale light on

all faces. Blacked and burnt, his Scotch bonnet was compressed to a

gun-wad on his head. His Parisian coat, with its gold-laced sleeve laid

aside, disclosed to the full the blue tattooing on his arm, which

sometimes in fierce gestures streamed in the haze of the cannonade,

cabalistically terrific as the charmed standard of Satan. Yet his

frenzied manner was less a testimony of his internal commotion than

intended to inspirit and madden his men, some of whom seeing him, in

transports of intrepidity stripped themselves to their trowsers,

exposing their naked bodies to the as naked shot The same was done on

the Serapis, where several guns were seen surrounded by their buff crews

as by fauns and satyrs.

At the beginning of the fray, before the ships interlocked, in the

intervals of smoke which swept over the ships as mist over

mountain-tops, affording open rents here and there--the gun-deck of the

Serapis, at certain points, showed, congealed for the instant in all

attitudes of dauntlessness, a gallery of marble statues--fighting

gladiators.

Stooping low and intent, with one braced leg thrust behind, and one arm

thrust forward, curling round towards the muzzle of the gun, there was

seen the _loader_, performing his allotted part; on the other side of

the carriage, in the same stooping posture, but with both hands holding

his long black pole, pike-wise, ready for instant use--stood the eager

_rammer and sponger_; while at the breech, crouched the wary _captain of

the gun_, his keen eye, like the watching leopard's, burning along the

range; and behind all, tall and erect, the Egyptian symbol of death,

stood the _matchman_, immovable for the moment, his long-handled match

reversed. Up to their two long death-dealing batteries, the trained men

of the Serapis stood and toiled in mechanical magic of discipline. They

tended those rows of guns, as Lowell girls the rows of looms in a cotton

factory. The Parcae were not more methodical; Atropos not more fatal;

the automaton chess-player not more irresponsible.

"Look, lad; I want a grenade, now, thrown down their main hatchway. I

saw long piles of cartridges there. The powder monkeys have brought them

up faster than they can be used. Take a bucket of combustibles, and

let's hear from you presently."

These words were spoken by Paul to Israel. Israel did as ordered. In a

few minutes, bucket in hand, begrimed with powder, sixty feet in air, he

hung like Apollyon from the extreme tip of the yard over the fated abyss

of the hatchway. As he looked down between the eddies of smoke into that

slaughterous pit, it was like looking from the verge of a cataract down

into the yeasty pool at its base. Watching, his chance, he dropped one

grenade with such faultless precision, that, striking its mark, an

explosion rent the Serapis like a volcano. The long row of heaped

cartridges was ignited. The fire ran horizontally, like an express on a

railway. More than twenty men were instantly killed: nearly forty

wounded. This blow restored the chances of battle, before in favor of

the Serapis.

But the drooping spirits of the English were suddenly revived, by an

event which crowned the scene by an act on the part of one of the

consorts of the Richard, the incredible atrocity of which has induced

all humane minds to impute it rather to some incomprehensible mistake

than to the malignant madness of the perpetrator.

The cautious approach and retreat of a consort of the Serapis, the

Scarborough, before the moon rose, has already been mentioned. It is now

to be related how that, when the moon was more than an hour high, a

consort of the Richard, the Alliance, likewise approached and retreated.

This ship, commanded by a Frenchman, infamous in his own navy, and

obnoxious in the service to which he at present belonged; this ship,

foremost in insurgency to Paul hitherto, and which, for the most part,

had crept like a poltroon from the fray; the Alliance now was at hand.

Seeing her, Paul deemed the battle at an end. But to his horror, the

Alliance threw a broadside full into the stern of the Richard, without

touching the Serapis. Paul called to her, for God's sake to forbear

destroying the Richard. The reply was, a second, a third, a fourth

broadside, striking the Richard ahead, astern, and amidships. One of the

volleys killed several men and one officer. Meantime, like carpenters'

augers, and the sea-worm called Remora, the guns of the Serapis were

drilling away at the same doomed hull. After performing her nameless

exploit, the Alliance sailed away, and did no more. She was like the

great fire of London, breaking out on the heel of the great Plague. By

this time, the Richard had so many shot-holes low down in her hull, that

like a sieve she began to settle.

"Do you strike?" cried the English captain.

"I have not yet begun to fight," howled sinking Paul.

This summons and response were whirled on eddies of smoke and flame.

Both vessels were now on fire. The men of either knew hardly which to

do; strive to destroy the enemy, or save themselves. In the midst of

this, one hundred human beings, hitherto invisible strangers, were

suddenly added to the rest. Five score English prisoners, till now

confined in the Richard's hold, liberated in his consternation by the

master at arms, burst up the hatchways. One of them, the captain of a

letter of marque, captured by Paul, off the Scottish coast, crawled

through a port, as a burglar through a window, from the one ship to the

other, and reported affairs to the English captain.

While Paul and his lieutenants were confronting these prisoners, the

gunner, running up from below, and not perceiving his official

superiors, and deeming them dead, believing himself now left sole

surviving officer, ran to the tower of Pisa to haul down the colors. But

they were already shot down and trailing in the water astern, like a

sailor's towing shirt. Seeing the gunner there, groping about in the

smoke, Israel asked what he wanted.

At this moment the gunner, rushing to the rail, shouted "Quarter!

quarter!" to the Serapis.

"I'll quarter ye," yelled Israel, smiting the gunner with the flat of

his cutlass.

"Do you strike?" now came from the Serapis.

"Aye, aye, aye!" involuntarily cried Israel, fetching the gunner a

shower of blows.

"Do you strike?" again was repeated from the Serapis; whose captain,

judging from the augmented confusion on board the Richard, owing to the

escape of the prisoners, and also influenced by the report made to him

by his late guest of the port-hole, doubted not that the enemy must

needs be about surrendering.

"Do you strike?"

"Aye!--I strike _back_" roared Paul, for the first time now hearing the

summons.

But judging this frantic response to come, like the others, from some

unauthorized source, the English captain directed his boarders to be

called, some of whom presently leaped on the Richard's rail, but,

throwing out his tattooed arm at them, with a sabre at the end of it,

Paul showed them how boarders repelled boarders. The English retreated,

but not before they had been thinned out again, like spring radishes, by

the unfaltering fire from the Richard's tops.

An officer of the Richard, seeing the mass of prisoners delirious with

sudden liberty and fright, pricked them with his sword to the pumps,

thus keeping the ship afloat by the very blunder which had promised to

have been fatal. The vessels now blazed so in the rigging that both

parties desisted from hostilities to subdue the common foe.

When some faint order was again restored upon the Richard her chances of

victory increased, while those of the English, driven under cover,

proportionably waned. Early in the contest, Paul, with his own hand, had

brought one of his largest guns to bear against the enemy's mainmast.

That shot had hit. The mast now plainly tottered. Nevertheless, it

seemed as if, in this fight, neither party could be victor. Mutual

obliteration from the face of the waters seemed the only natural sequel

to hostilities like these. It is, therefore, honor to him as a man, and

not reproach to him as an officer, that, to stay such c*****e, Captain

Pearson, of the Serapis, with his own hands hauled down his colors. But

just as an officer from the Richard swung himself on board the Serapis,

and accosted the English captain, the first lieutenant of the Serapis

came up from below inquiring whether the Richard had struck, since her

fire had ceased.

So equal was the conflict that, even after the surrender, it could be,

and was, a question to one of the warriors engaged (who had not happened

to see the English flag hauled down) whether the Serapis had struck to

the Richard, or the Richard to the Serapis. Nay, while the Richard's

officer was still amicably conversing with the English captain, a

midshipman of the Richard, in act of following his superior on board the

surrendered vessel, was run through the thigh by a pike in the hand of

an ignorant boarder of the Serapis. While, equally ignorant, the

cannons below deck were still thundering away at the nominal conqueror

from the batteries of the nominally conquered ship.

But though the Serapis had submitted, there were two misanthropical foes

on board the Richard which would not so easily succumb--fire and water.

All night the victors were engaged in suppressing the flames. Not until

daylight were the flames got under; but though the pumps were kept

continually going, the water in the hold still gained. A few hours after

sunrise the Richard was deserted for the Serapis and the other vessels

of the squadron of Paul. About ten o'clock the Richard, gorged with

slaughter, wallowed heavily, gave a long roll, and blasted by tornadoes

of sulphur, slowly sunk, like Gomorrah, out of sight.

The loss of life in the two ships was about equal; one-half of the total

number of those engaged being either killed or wounded.

In view of this battle one may ask--What separates the enlightened man

from the savage? Is civilization a thing distinct, or is it an advanced

stage of barbarism?