Aside from his privateers, Franklin pinned his hope on a Scottish-born American seaman with a colorful past, named John Paul Jones. In 1778, Jones had captured the _Drake_, the first British warship to surrender to a Continental vessel. He had come to Brest from America in the _Ranger_, which had raided English and Scottish coasts, taking seven prizes. Red tape kept Jones idle for some months after that but at length he was given an aged and decrepit French forty-gun ship, which he renamed the _Bonhomme Richard_—the French translation of “Poor Richard.” In September 1779, the _Bonhomme Richard_ closed in on the superior British frigate, the _Serapis_, in a battle which lasted three and a half hours. When the hull of the _Bonhomme Richard_ was pierced, her decks ripped, her hold filling with water, and fires destroying her, the British captain asked if they were ready to surrender. “Sir, I have not yet begun to fight,” Jones reportedly replied. While his ship was sinking, he and his men boarded the _Serapis_ and took her captive. Exultantly, Franklin prepared his dispatch to Congress, announcing “one of the most obstinate and bloody conflicts that has happened in this war.” With even greater pleasure he reported three weeks later that John Paul Jones was safe in Texel, North Holland, with some 500 British prisoners! In Paris soon afterward the welcome given the hero of the _Bonhomme Richard_ rivaled only Franklin’s reception there. At home the war was going drearily. Combined American forces failed to win Savannah from the British. A British expedition took Charleston. The British General Cornwallis, marching inland, routed General Horatio Gates. England, now at war with Holland, captured tiny St. Eustatius, thus cutting off America’s chief West Indian source of supplies. Benedict Arnold had turned traitor, and the British had moved their army from Philadelphia to New York. The Bache family, who had been living in the country, returned to find that the officers who had occupied their house had carried off some of Franklin’s musical instruments, Temple’s school books, and some electrical apparatus. The portrait of Franklin done by Benjamin Wilson had also vanished. It turned out that it had been taken by the English spy Major John André. (It reached England but was later restored to the White House in Washington in 1906.) In the spring of 1781, Franklin received two American visitors at Passy, young Colonel John Laurens, son of the former Congress president Henry Laurens, and Thomas Paine. There was another financial crisis in Congress and they had come to request a loan of a million pounds sterling each year for the duration. Franklin had foreseen the need and could tell them he already had a promise of an outright gift of 6 million livres. Since July 1780, General Rochambeau and 6,000 fully equipped French regulars were in America, waiting for the auspicious time to join the conflict. France had its own to protect now.