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a two hours conflict in the first watch of the night,
the ‘
Serapis’ struck its flag.
Jones raised his pendant on the captured frigate, and the next day had but time to transfer to it his wounded men and his crew before the ‘Poor Richard’ went down.
The French frigate engaged and captured the ‘
Countess of
Scarborough.’
The ‘Alliance,’ which from a distance had raked the ‘
Serapis’ during the action, not without injuring the ‘Poor Richard’ as well, had not a man injured.
On the fourth of October, the squadron entered the Texel with its
prizes.
On hearing of their arrival, the
British ambassador, of himself and again under instructions, reclaimed the captured British ships and their crews, ‘who had been taken by the pirate,
Paul Jones, of
Scotland, a rebel and a traitor.’
‘They,’ he insisted, ‘are to be treated as pirates whose letters of marque have
not emanated from a sovereign power.’
The grand pensionary would not have the name of pirate applied to officers bearing the commissions of congress.
In spite of the stadholder, the squadron enjoyed the protection of a neutral port.
Under an antedated commission from the
French king, the flag of
France was raised over the two prizes and every ship but the ‘Alliance;’ and four days before the end of the year
Paul Jones, with his Eng-
lish captures, left the Texel.
An American frigate, near the end of September, had entered the port of
Bergen with two rich prizes.
Yielding to the
British envoy at
Copenhagen,
Bernstorff, the
Danish minister, seized the occasion to publish an ordinance forbidding the sale of prizes,
