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U.K. Firm Claims it Found Famed U.S. Warship Bonhomme
Richard; Experts Aren’t So Sure
By: Ben Werner
A British raconteur says he found
the wreckage of Capt. John Paul Jones’ flagship, USS Bonhomme
Richard, but across the Atlantic historians and Navy officials
aren’t as certain.
In November, a five-person team at
Merlin Burrows, an English satellite imagery firm, announced they had
pinpointed the wreck of Bonhomme Richard close to the Yorkshire
shore.
Combining data from historical
accounts of Bonhomme Richard’s Sept. 23, 1779, battle with
HMS Serapis with publicly available satellite imagery and
X-ray data, the Merlin Burrows team located a wreck in 2017 that they’re
confident is Jones’ famed ship, said Bruce Blackburn, chief executive of Merlin
Burrows.
“We go find stuff. We don’t look for
it,” Blackburn told USNI News in a telephone interview earlier this year. “If
there’s a myth and legend and historical principals, we’ll fire up the
satellite.”
Scans of the wreck near Flamborough
Head, where Bonhomme Richard battled Serapis nearly 240 years
ago, show the location of what Blackburn believes is a ship’s bell and a
figurehead. He’s convinced these are from Bonhomme Richard. The
British press, including the BBC, ran stories of
the find with posted photos of burnt timbers said to be from Bonhomme
Richard.
The British tend to take a less
sentimental view of John Paul Jones – he’s considered more of a pirate – than
how he’s revered in the U.S., Blackburn said. Still, he is thrilled about the
find, because the Jones story is compelling. The battle against Serapis
is where Jones issued his famous response to the suggestion he surrender,
saying “I have not yet begun to fight.”
Jones’ words have served as the
model of grit and determination for generations of sailors in the Navy he’s
said to have fathered. Definitively finding his flagship’s wreck, Blackburn
said, could be a boon to the local tourist industry and a great bit of
marketing for his firm.
Across the Atlantic, though,
U.S.-based researchers who have for decades searched for Bonhomme
Richard say not so fast.
The same historical documents
Blackburn used, such as eyewitness accounts, ship logs and sea drift modeling,
suggest Bonhomme Richard sank further away from shore, nearly
at the horizon, researcher Melissa Ryan told USNI News.
Ryan, vice president of the Mystic,
Conn., Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration and the foundation’s lead Bonhomme
Richard researcher, has worked with U.S., British and French navy
officials since 2006 to find the wreck. Wooden shipwrecks, such as the one
Blackburn found, litter the seafloor close to shore along the eastern coast of
Great Britain, Ryan said. Some probably date as far back to Viking
times.
Perhaps 1,500 wrecks line the
British coast, many relatively close to shore, Robert Neyland, head of the U.S.
Naval History and Heritage Command’s underwater archeology branch, told USNI
News. Neyland has worked with Ryan in searching for Bonhomme Richard and
shares her view the wreck is likely farther offshore.
Finding timbers dating from the
1700s provides circumstantial evidence that the wreck might be the right age
but doesn’t prove its identity, Neyland said. Otherwise, from what he’s seen in
media reports, Neyland thinks Blackburn’s proof is thin.
“We’ve been in contact with Historic
England and they didn’t think it was worth a survey to verify,” Neyland said.
However, as searches move further
away from the coast, Ryan said shipwrecks tend to be found further apart
and tend to be modern in design – made of steel and with engine components.
Ryan said this part of the coast is called torpedo alley because of the
abundance of shipping sunk by German submarines during both World Wars.
In the middle of torpedo alley,
Ryan’s team found in 2012 what she says is definitively a wooden shipwreck. They’ve
found an anchor that corresponds in size to one believed to have been on Bonhomme
Richard and rigging material including a spar and a deadeye with a
lanyard still preserved that suggest the wreck is from an appropriate era to
be Bonhomme Richard.
“We know we have a wooden sailing
ship. We haven’t found any evidence of anything modern,” Ryan said.
Based on the history of Bonhomme
Richard’s engagement with Serapis, Ryan said both ships
moved toward the horizon. Jones, in victory, took over Serapis and
salvaged what he could from Bonhomme Richard, which was severely
damaged and drifting with the current.
“Why would a wooden ship sink that
far offshore when it hadn’t run up against a rock or reef?” Ryan asks.
The answer is simple, Ryan said. The
wreck her team found suffered damage in battle, such as the one recorded
between Bonhomme Richard and Serapis.
 |
| Cliffs at Flamborough Head |
"Common sense tells you if the ship
sunk close to shore it would’ve been found,” Neyland said.
Blackburn knows other researchers
are skeptical of his findings. Their hesitation, he says, is caused by a
belief that Merlin Burrows is a disrupter to the heritage industry – those
looking for sea wrecks or land-based archaeological sites.
“It’s obviously a bitter pill to
swallow. Their ladder is up against the wrong wall,” Blackburn said about the
skeptics. “We don’t expect them to be jumping for joy, but our discovery of
the Bonhomme Richard is 100-percent absolutely true.”
Other researchers, Blackburn says,
rely on fundraising to bankroll expeditions that may or may not yield results.
The firm follows what Blackburn described as a transactional business model.
Using satellite and X-ray data, Blackburn says he can provide historians and
treasure hunters precise coordinates of where to search – but for a price.
“The etiquette is, whoever owns or
has title of the wreck would reimburse the finder,” Blackburn said.
It’s not clear how much revenue
Merlin Burrows is bringing in. Blackburn owns a minority 20-percent stake in
the company, and another investor owns the remaining 80 percent, according to
incorporation documents filed with the British government. Blackburn told USNI
News the financial backing from the other shareholder is not enough to fund
Merlin Burrows’ operations.
Blackburn offered to sell his data
to the U.S. Navy, considered the owner of Bonhomme Richard.
“We were going to charge money,”
Blackburn said. “We are a business.”
Paul Taylor, a spokesman for the
Naval History and Heritage Command, provided USNI News with a statement about
Blackburn’s offer.
“We are interested in hearing
further details, look forward to examining data collected from the site, and,
if Bonhomme Richard is located, would be very interested in ensuring the
wreck is protected,” the statement said.
For Blackburn, more than recouping
money for the search, he sees locating Bonhomme Richard as a
potential boon to tourism in his home of North Yorkshire, where Blackburn
has a stake in a variety of small businesses in the area, according to
incorporation documents filed with the British government.
For Ryan, finding Bonhomme
Richard offers the potential to get a first-hand glimpse at what life
was like for sailors at the birth of the U.S. Navy. The wreck her team found is
mostly buried by compacted sediment, which hopefully kept the ship’s remnants
well preserved.
Ryan hopes the find will improve the
understanding of what ships during the period were like, especially the
technology to retrofit what was originally a merchant ship into the
warship Bonhomme Richard. For example, Ryan said Jones insisted on
using used iron knees to brace the ship and iron ballast, a rarity for the time
because of the expense. Finding iron knees or ballast would be a distinctive
clue because of their rarity, Ryan said.
Finding cannon would offer more
definitive clues to the ship’s true identity because cannon typically carry
markings from the foundry that made and sold them. Also, Jones’ personal
belongings went down with the ship, which, if found, would help identify the
wreck and add to what is known about Jones.
“The ship’s bell is the holy grail
because it would have Duc de Duras, the ship’s original name,” Ryan
said.
As for Blackburn’s find, Ryan isn’t
ready to believe his wreck is Bonhomme Richard without more
proof. But she thinks his wreck has the potential to be a
significant find for historians.
“I think he found an incredible
wreck,” Ryan said. “It’s an old wreck and it will tell us something. It’s going
to be very interesting.”
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There is sure to be more on this controversy and Maritime Maunder looks forward to following up with it as we find further information.
Until next time,
Fair Winds,
Old Salt
