Carnage, Wreck and Ruin... and What Two Men Did Next (John Paul Jones & Lawrence Brooke, USA)
Quick answer: What happened after the Bonhomme Richard defeated HMS Serapis?
Serapis struck her colors around 10:30 p.m. on September 23, 1779, but Jones's Bonhomme Richard sank two days later. Roughly half of both crews were killed or badly wounded. Jones and 21-year-old surgeon Lawrence Brooke then faced choices about the dead and wounded on both sides that John says revealed their character.
Lawrence Brooke was twenty-one, working by lantern below the waterline of the Bonhomme Richard, a ship on fire, flooding, and losing the battle above him. He couldn't see the fight. He learned its course from the men carried down the ladders. Above, John Paul Jones was helping man a cannon aimed at the Serapis's mainmast. His officers reported the ship was sinking. A gunner's mate, thinking Jones was dead, shouted for surrender. Jones kept firing. Serapis struck her colors at half past ten. The Richard sank two days later. Roughly half of both crews were killed or seriously wounded. John focuses on the hours between victory and sinking, when the decisions about the dead and the wounded on both sides revealed character more clearly than combat. Then he tells the rest: how Jones was lost in Paris for a century, found in 1905 in a lead coffin, carried home by a fleet, and laid in the crypt at Annapolis in 1913. John tells it to every group he brings through.
Why it matters for leaders: Honor shows most clearly in the choices made after the fighting stops, when no one is forcing your hand.
Q: What did Jones call the scene?
A: In his official report: “carnage, wreck and ruin.”
Q: How did John Paul Jones come home?
A: In 1905 his body was found in Paris, escorted across the Atlantic by warships on July 6, his birthday; he was laid in the Naval Academy crypt in 1913.
Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/carnage-wreck-and-ruin-and-what-two
By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation