For a year he was forced to be idle.  But at last, in 1779, he was given command of a squadron of five vessels, and in August sailed from France.  Passing along the west coast of Ireland, the fleet went around the north end of Scotland and down the east coast, capturing and destroying vessel after vessel on the way.  On the night of September 23, 1779, Jones (in his ship, named Bonhomme Richard in honor of Franklin’s famous Poor Richard’s Almanac) fell in with the Serapis, a British frigate.  The two ships grappled, and, lashed side by side in the moonlight, fought one of the most desperate battles in naval annals.  At the end of three hours the Serapis surrendered, but the Bonhomme Richard was a wreck, and next morning, giving a sudden roll, she filled and plunged bow first to the bottom of the North Sea.  Jones sailed away in the Serapis.

[Illustration:  Benjamin Franklin]

In the Revolution the British lost 102 vessels of war, while the
Americans lost 24—­most of their navy.

%160.  Revolutionary Heroes.%—­It is not possible to mention all the revolutionary heroes entitled to our grateful remembrance.  We should, however, remember Lafayette, Steuben, Pulaski, and DeKalb, foreigners who fought for us; Samuel Adams and James Otis of Massachusetts, and Patrick Henry of Virginia, who spoke for freedom; Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution; Putnam who fought and Warren who died at Bunker Hill; Mercer who fell at Princeton; Nathan Hale, the martyr spy; Herkimer, Knox, Moultrie, and that long list of noble patriots whose names have already been mentioned.

%161.  The Treaty of Peace.%—­The story is told that when Lord North, the Prime Minister of England, heard of the surrender of Yorktown, he threw up his hands and said, “It is all over.”  He was right; it was all over, and on September 3, 1783, a treaty of peace (negotiated by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay) was signed at Paris.

Meantime the British, in accordance with a preliminary treaty of peace signed in November, 1782, were slowly leaving the country, till on November 25, 1783, the last of them sailed from New York.[1] Washington now resigned his commission, and in December went home to Mt.  Vernon.

[Footnote 1:  They did not leave Staten Island in New York Bay till a week later.  For an account of the evacuation of New York see McMaster’s With the Fathers, pp. 271-280.]

%162.  Bounds of the United States.%—­By the treaty of 1783 the boundary of the United States was declared to be about what is the present northern boundary from the mouth of the St. Croix River in Maine to the Lake of the Woods, and then due west to the Mississippi (which was, of course, an impossible line, for that river does not rise in Canada); then down the Mississippi to 31 deg. north latitude; then eastward along that parallel of latitude to the Apalachicola River, and then by what is the present north boundary of Florida to the Atlantic.