While on shore Jones gave Congress valuable advice about fitting out a navy. He recommended that “1. Every officer should be examined before he receives his commission. 2. The ranks in a navy should correspond to those in an army. 3. As England has the best navy in the world, we should copy hers.” In June, 1777, he was put in command of the Ranger and over this he hoisted, for the first time on the seas, the American flag, the Stars and Stripes, lately adopted by Congress. He thought that the most effective way to wage war was to “carry it into the enemy’s country.” Accordingly he went to Whitehaven on the English coast, where nearly three hundred vessels were in harbor. He took his men ashore in two boats and ordered them to set fire to the ships, while he surprised the two batteries and the fort and spiked their cannon. When he returned to the harbor, he found that his orders had been disobeyed,--not one ship had been fired. It was now day and the people were aroused, but Paul Jones was unwilling to go without carrying out a part of his plan and with his own hand he set fire to the largest ship. The English made many attempts to seize the doer of this daring deed, and at one time there were forty-two British ships on the waters seeking to capture the bold rover. One of the ships which set out to capture the Ranger was the Drake. Jones met it in battle and defeated and captured the English vessel which had more guns and better-trained and better-equipped men than his. The Ranger was recalled to defend the coast of America, and for months Paul Jones was in France without a ship. At last he was given an old trading-vessel fitted out as a war-ship. He called it Bon Homme Richard, the French name for Poor Richard in honor of his friend Franklin’s Poor Richard of the almanac. In September, 1779, Commodore Jones sailed toward the English coast with four small vessels. There he met two large English war-ships that were convoying, or accompanying, a fleet of forty merchant-vessels. The merchant-vessels took refuge on the English coast, and the war-ships advanced to fight. The shots of the English ship, the Serapis, inflicted so much injury on the Richard that Captain Pearson of the Serapis thought it was sinking and asked the American commander, “Has your ship struck?” “I have not yet begun to fight,” was Jones’s stern reply. He had the two vessels lashed together. Then, with his own hands helping to work the guns, he directed the fight with dauntless resolution. His ship was riddled with shot and on fire; still he refused to yield; when the vessel seemed sinking, he drove his prisoners to the pumps and made them work for life itself. One of his ships, instead of coming to his aid, fired on him. His situation seemed desperate. Captain Pearson called again to know if he had struck and he answered, “No,--that if he could do no better he would sink with his colors flying.”