As for the ships, that commanded by Paul in person will be a good example of the fleet. She was an old Indiaman, clumsy and crank, smelling strongly of the savor of tea, cloves, and arrack, the cargoes of former voyages. Even at that day she was, from her venerable grotesqueness, what a cocked hat is, at the present age, among ordinary beavers. Her elephantine bulk was houdahed with a castellated poop like the leaning tower of Pisa. Poor Israel, standing on the top of this poop, spy-glass at his eye, looked more an astronomer than a mariner, having to do, not with the mountains of the billows, but the mountains in the moon. Galileo on Fiesole. She was originally a single-decked ship, that is, carried her armament on one gun-deck; but cutting ports below, in her after part, Paul rammed out there six old eighteen-pounders, whose rusty muzzles peered just above the water-line, like a parcel of dirty mulattoes from a cellar-way. Her name was the Duras, but, ere sailing, it was changed to that other appellation, whereby this sad old hulk became afterwards immortal. Though it is not unknown, that a compliment to Doctor Franklin was involved in this change of titles, yet the secret history of the affair will now for the first time be disclosed. It was evening in the road of Groix. After a fagging day’s work, trying to conciliate the hostile jealousy of his officers, and provide, in the face of endless obstacles (for he had to dance attendance on scores of intriguing factors and brokers ashore), the requisite stores for the fleet, Paul sat in his cabin in a half-despondent reverie, while Israel, cross-legged at his commander’s feet, was patching up some old signals. “Captain Paul, I don’t like our ship’s name.—Duras? What’s that mean?—Duras? Being cribbed up in a ship named Duras! a sort of makes one feel as if he were in durance vile.” “Gad, I never thought of that before, my lion. Duras—Durance vile. I suppose it’s superstition, but I’ll change Come, Yellow-mane, what shall we call her?” “Well, Captain Paul, don’t you like Doctor Franklin? Hasn’t he been the prime man to get this fleet together? Let’s call her the Doctor Franklin.” “Oh, no, that will too publicly declare him just at present; and Poor Richard wants to be a little shady in this business.” “Poor Richard!—call her Poor Richard, then,” cried Israel, suddenly struck by the idea. “’Gad, you have it,” answered Paul, springing to his feet, as all trace of his former despondency left him;—“Poor Richard shall be the name, in honor to the saying, that ‘God helps them that help themselves,’ as Poor Richard says.” Now this was the way the craft came to be called the _Bon Homme Richard_; for it being deemed advisable to have a French rendering of the new title, it assumed the above form.