It seems like getting an accurate telling of a battle's actions is often impossible and has made many a historian quite
drowsy trying to do so. John Paul Jones' letters to Ben Franklin often brought that out. There is quite a lot of
irony in the uncertainty surrounding the words most associated with Jones may never have actually been said by him. There is an
outage of fact checkers in pretty much any battle because of the fog of war and the truth often gets
pruned and very dramatic sounding legends put in their place.
http://www.thehistorychannelclub.com...begun-to-fight
From above linked article about The Battle of Flamborough Head involving the flagships
Serapis and
the Bonhomme Richard
Quote:
“I answered him in the most determined negative,” Jones wrote to Franklin a few days after the battle.
Several contemporary accounts have Jones answering, “I may sink, but I’m damned if I’ll strike” (i.e., strike the colors). Midshipman Fanning heard him say, “Yankees do not haul down their colors until they are fairly beaten.” A deserter from his crew was quoted as describing Jones’ response in this colorful fashion: “Whenever the devil was ready to take him, he would rather obey his summons than strike to anyone.”
It is hardly surprising that there are so many differing accounts of what an officer said in the heat of battle. After all, nobody listening was in a position to write it down. What is worth noting is that virtually every eyewitness account of the battle agrees that this dramatic exchange, worthy of a Hollywood screenplay, really did take place.
Jones himself offered a version of his response in a memoir he wrote to French King Louis XVI some eight years after the battle. “I do not dream of surrendering, but I am determined to make you strike.” Similar words appear in a London Evening Post account a few weeks after the battle that offers Jones’ side of the story.
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