No such fleet actions as this ever occurred in North American waters in the time of the “old navy,” though there was plenty of cruising and fighting up and down the coast and in the West Indies. The United States had made its new flag respected before the end of the eighteenth century, but it was done mainly in European waters, where that marvelous captain, Paul Jones, had been defying enemies to the point of rashness. Paul Jones was the first man to hoist our national ensign (the rattlesnake flag) on an American ship, and again the first to hoist the stars and stripes, and was the ranking officer of the continental navy. He records that “in the Revolution he had twenty-three battles and solemn rencounters by sea; made seven descents in Britain and her colonies; took of her navy two ships of equal and two of far superior force,” and so on. It is true that he alone of his day steadfastly refused to acknowledge England’s supremacy of the seas; that the flag of the United States alone was never struck to Great Britain except under force of honorable combat; and that on the ships commanded by Paul Jones it was never struck at all! Every Yankee school-boy knows of the terrible fight of the crazy old sloop-of-war _Bon Homme Richard_ against the _Serapis_, a new English 50-gun frigate in the North Sea, in which a sinking and burning and shot-riddled vessel, able after the first broadside to bring only three or four small guns into practice, conquered and captured her twice-greater antagonist. It is not a story one can tell in a few words, but it was a deed that is regarded in naval annals as among the most extraordinary in the history of the world, and it won for the new republic a credit in Europe that was of vast benefit to it and all its wandering citizens. Great Britain, though humiliated, had not been seriously hurt by the loss of two or three ships out of her six hundred, and she still tried to enforce against the rising naval power on the west side of the Atlantic the subservience which she received along its eastern shores. It took the form of asserting her right to stop and board any American vessel, governmental or private, and seize and impress into her own service any British subject found serving in the crew. This always met with protest and resistance, and at last became so galling that in 1812 the United States declared war against Great Britain’s might rather than continue to submit to it. [Illustration: _Drawn from Life by S. DeKoster Decʳ.8 1800, Engraved by Jd. Stow._ BARON NELSON OF THE NILE.]