THE SHIPS OF JOHN PAUL JONES also the probable designer of the Raleigh and possibly the Hancock as well, both ships whose lines have survived. A final note on Ranger of interest to the historical artist is that her crew were probably all clean shaven during this battle. A few weeks before, it is recorded, Jones had a French barber on board to shave every man jack, as he did not want his allies to think he was carrying a crew of bearded Russians or Turks . BONHOMME RICHARD After Jones's notable successes in Ranger, the decision was to give him a more powerful ship, even a squadron . However, the desirable ships that were intended for him were, for various political reasons, used otherwise, and he cooled his heels until May of 1779 in France, awaiting his next command . This was Due De Duras, an old armed merchantman given the American navy by King Louis XVI. Jones renamed her Bonhomme Richard (after his patron, Ambassador to France, Ben-Poor Richard-Franklin), outfitted her with an awkward variety of cannons (some of which burst at their first firing), and, in company with a small squadron, set out to again raid the English Channel. The cruise terminated in a ferocious and complex night conflict off Flamborough Head during which Bonhomme Richard was victorious in a battle against great odds. She was destroyed during the action, although she fortuitously did not sink until the follwing day. Commodore Jones transferred his flag to Serapis, his former opponent, a powerful British frigate which had been beaten into near wreckage but was able nonetheless to stay afloat and painfully crawl to neutral Holland with the remnants of Jones's squadron. Of all Jones's ships, Bonhomme Richard is at once the most famous and the most enigmatic. It is true that many contemporary pictures of Richard were done, but they have added more confusion than clarity to any kind of accurate
reconstruction of her, for they were all done after she was sunk. Many of the pictures that were rushed into print after the action are obviously hasty efforts and wildly inaccurate, but others came later, done by more careful artists who took some care to position the ships correctly, but who had never seen the ships they were drawing, and therefore drew types rather than the individual ships. Any serious student can find obvious flaws in these pictures. Their artists worked like the police artists of today, from descriptions by witnesses with inevitably faulty memories-witnesses who didn't stand by to edit the completed work. Under these circumstances, no real accuracy was possible in contemporary prints and paintings of Richard, whatever the integrity of the artists . Their inaccuracies have been regenerated into the present day in model after model based on their faulty information, gracing the museums of our land. It is paradoxical that the marine artist of today has better information to work with in making an accurate rendering of one of these ships than the artist who lived in that time. I have long been interested in Richard. The reconstruction of her here is not the first I have done, but it is possibly the most accurate, thanks to the work of another researcher, Norman Rubin. Mr. Rubin has painstakingly combined the plans of over a dozen East Indiamen of Richard's type and era to come up with a composite picture of her probable dimensions and hull form, and he has learned much else about her rigging and furniture from early French inventories and manifests. He has made his plans of the ship available to me, and it is upon them that the drawing here is based . This picture shows Richard as she might have looked on the afternoon before her great battle, in light airs, with stuns'ls rigged, an unweatherly ship sagging off to leeward of the rest of the squadron. This consisted on that day of Alliance (closest to Richard) a new American, Hackett-built 36 gun frigate of