USS Bonhomme Richard (1765) - Origin

Origin

Little is known about the early career of Bonhomme Richard other than she was originally an East Indiaman named Duc de Duras; a merchant ship built in France for the French East India Company in 1765. In that capacity she sailed between France and the Orient until purchased by King Louis XVI of France in early 1779 and placed under the command John Paul Jones on 4 February. The size and armament of Duc de Duras made her a rough equivalent of half of a 64-gun ship of the line

Jones renamed her Bon Homme Richard - usually rendered in more correct French as Bonhomme Richard, to honor Benjamin Franklin, the American Commissioner at Paris whose Poor Richard's Almanac was published in France under the title of Les Maximes du Bonhomme Richard.

Read more about this topic:  USS Bonhomme Richard (1765)

Famous quotes containing the word origin:

    All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
    William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

    In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)