“I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike!”

— John Paul Jones

His much less famous response, in the late phase of the Battle of Flamborough Head, 23 September 1779, to an inquiry by his opponent (Captain Richard Pearson of the Royal Navy ship HMS Serapis) as to whether he was surrendering his ship, the USS Bonhomme Richard, which was by this time very seriously damaged.
:This was what some of his sailors, reported in British newspapers at the time, claimed he had said; Jones's official report merely stated that he had answered "in the most determined negative".

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John Paul Jones 7

American naval officer 1747–1792

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