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Bonhomme Richard will be the target for retiring research sub

By Jennifer Grogan , Published on 5/30/2008

The Day

Groton

THE U.S. NAVY PLANS TO USE ITS only research submarine to help a local foundation find the wreck of John Paul Jones’ Revolutionary War ship the Bonhomme Richard.

It was Sept. 23, 1779, and cannonballs from the HMS Serapis had shredded the hull of the Bonhomme Richard.

Jones was in command of a burning, sinking ship. Half of his crew members were dead or wounded.

His adversary shouted to him, asking if he would surrender.

It was then that Jones is said to have uttered one of the most famous lines in U.S. history.

”I have not yet begun to fight!” he yelled back to the British captain.

The crew of the Bonhomme Richard eventually captured the Serapis, but the American ship later sank off of Flamborough Head, England.

Researchers at the nonprofit Ocean Technology Foundation, based at the University of Connecticut Avery Point campus, believe they know the area where the ship sank in the North Sea.

Researchers from the foundation, a historian, an archaeologist and the Groton-based Naval Research Vessel (NR-1) plan to search a 50-square-mile area about 20 miles off Flamborough Head for two weeks in June.

The team hopes to find artifacts, perhaps a cannon or a mug, to positively identify the location of the

ship. The foundation has a description of the weapons on board and a crew list. Mugs or personal belongings were often engraved with the owner’s name.

This was one of the NR-1’s planned missions for its last deployment, said Lt. James Stockman, public affairs officer for Submarine Group Two in Groton. The submarine is scheduled to be inactivated this fall after almost 40 years in service.

”John Paul Jones is often considered the father of the U.S. Navy, and the Bonhomme Richard was his flagship,” Stockman said.

The NR-1 is the Navy’s only nuclear-powered, deep-diving ocean engineering and research submarine, and there currently are no plans to build another. The reactor core would last until 2012, but the Navy has not budgeted for the normal maintenance to run the ship until the end of its life.

”That was like manna from heaven,” Jack Ringelberg, a retired Navy captain and foundation president, said about hearing that the NR-1 and its sophisticated electronics and crew would be available. “We had been raising funds, and we didn’t have enough resources to charter a ship.”

Ringelberg had asked French officials about possibly using one of their mine hunters for the expedition. The French originally loaned the Americans the Bonhomme Richard, a debt that was never paid back.

”The French still have an interest; they still think they own it,” Ringelberg said, which could complicate the situation if any artifacts are recovered.

The foundation’s limited financial resources would make it hard to continue searching if efforts are unsuccessful this time, Ringelberg said. The team looked for Jones’ ship using a charter vessel in 2006, and in 2007 the Navy provided a vessel for a week.

Ringelberg said he tries to emulate the man whose ship he is seeking.

”He just wouldn’t give up,” he said of Jones.

The foundation revised the search area after last year’s expedition using historical information from the logs of ships that spotted Jones and the British and the location of a 4-foot-long cannon that could be from the Bonhomme Richard that washed ashore.

The researchers knew from their previous searches the direction Jones did not sail in, so they deduced that he most likely sailed due east instead of northeast as they originally had thought.

”I’m more encouraged than the previous two searches,” Ringelberg said. “The NR-1 is a fantastic platform. In a perfect world, I would have had the NR-1 from day one, and we would be collecting artifacts now.”

j.grogan@theday.com