Survey teams return for fifth yearin hunt for elusive sea battle wreck

US and French navies are combining forces in the search for one of the most famous wrecks in US naval history.

For the fifth year running a team led by Ocean Technology Foundation is heading to the North Sea to look for the Bonhomme Richard, lost in a swashbuckling sea battle off Flamborough Head in 1779.

Famously the Bonhomme Richard’s commander, the Scottish fugitive John Paul Jones declared “I have not yet begun to fight!” during the encounter with the British ship Serapis.

Jones won even though his vessel sank – and the wreck has since proved elusive to teams of divers over the years.

The US Navy is providing an oceanographic survey ship, along with oceanographers from the Naval Oceanographic Office. A French Navy minehunter will join the search.

The expedition’s project manager Melissa Ryan said: “The Bonhomme Richard is like the proverbial needle in the haystack. But the good news is that the haystack is considerably smaller than it was five years ago when our surveying began.”

The survey team has worked out its search area with the help of the US Naval Academy faculty which designed a computer programme integrating all the data on weather, wind speeds, tides, ship speed and heading up until the time she sank.