September 23 · This Day in America
Off the coast of England, in moonlight, the American raider Bonhomme Richard is locked hull-to-hull with the British frigate Serapis. Jones's ship is on fire, taking water, masts shot away. The British captain, seeing the wreck, calls across the gap to ask if the Americans have struck their colors. Jones answers with the line that will outlive him: he has not yet begun to fight. For two more hours the lashed ships tear at each other in the dark, until it is the British who surrender. Jones steps aboard the Serapis and watches his own ship slip beneath the waves the next day. A new nation with almost no navy has just beaten a British warship in British home waters — and announced, in eight words shouted over open water, exactly what kind of country it intends to be.
Source: www.history.com
Also on this day · 1806
After two and a half years and a continent crossed both ways, the Corps of Discovery rounds the bend into St. Louis around noon, fires a salute, and is met by the whole village. Jefferson had expected them back in a year and had nearly given them up for lost. Every man but one came home. That same day Meriwether Lewis sits down and writes the president the understatement of the age — that he has the pleasure to announce their safe arrival.
Source: www.nps.gov
“It is with pleasure that I anounce to you the safe arrival of myself and party.”Meriwether Lewis, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1806