It is Indian summer in the north of England. A full moon has ushered in a warm, windless night, and the North Sea stretches out in front of the awestruck audience on the clifftops. For these onlookers, it is as though they are witnessing a tragedy of ancient design: a valiant underdog locked in mortal struggle with a monstrous adversary. Now, as the final act unfolds, the crowd is hushed, transfixed by the spectacle of a hero’s last agony. The American ship is ablaze. Little more than a funeral pyre adrift on the sea, the remains of her torn canvas are being devoured by flames, one of her three masts has been demolished, and cannon fire has torn a huge gash in her side. She is sinking.

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     Captain John Paul Jones is standing on the quarterdeck of his doomed ship, his face black with soot and his white jacket spattered with blood and tar. He estimates it will be less than an hour before she goes down. The aging merchant ship - hastily converted for war - has been no match for the British frigate, fast, purpose-built, and with cannon power vastly superior to his own. His surgeon’s grim report nags at his conscience; more than a hundred and fifty men are either dead or mortally wounded. A gruesome mixture of seawater, severed limbs, and bilge water swirls around his boots. The First Officer is standing beside him, and has to shout to make himself heard above the roar of cannon fire and the howls of dying men, “Captain Jones, Sir, our fate is decided. I request permission to yield.” Jones looks at him, as if considering the question. He does not reply.

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     The suggestion lingers in the smoke-laden air. A few moments pass, and the officer asks again, “Sir, may I have your permission to strike our colors?” - Lowering the flag would signify surrender.

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     A familiar calm settles over him. Surrender has not even entered Jones’s mind. Time pauses, as if death itself is granting him one last opportunity to survey the scene. He thinks of the lives lost over his thirty-three years; ten-year-old cabin boys, thousands of miles from home; countless sailors, and the families who will never see them again. How will history judge him, if it remembers him at all? There is so much left undone. He turns toward the officer, puts one arm on each of his shoulders and glares into his face. “No, sir, I will do no such thing. Return to your post.”

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     As the officer turns to leave, Jones seizes his elbow, spinning him back around. Their faces nearly touch, Jones’s hat knocking the officer’s to the blood-soaked deck. Amidst the cacophony of cannon fire and musket shot, Jones’s voice is low but unwavering. “If you so much as breathe that suggestion to a single man, you will not live to see our victory.”