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.