Around 7 pm Bonhomme Richard closed with Serapis; their rigging entangled, and Jones's crew lashed the ships together, locked side by side by Serapis' spare anchor.

Around 7 pm Bonhomme Richard was within pistol-shot of the battle-ready Serapis. Serapis' jib-boom caught in the rigging of Bonhomme Richard's mizzen mast, and Jones immediately led his crew in attaching the two ships together. Because both ships were under sail, when Serapis came to an abrupt halt Bonhomme Richard kept going and nearly tore free; instead her motion became a rotation, leaving the ships side by side facing opposite directions with their great guns touching hull planks. Serapis' spare anchor then caught in Bonhomme Richard's stern woodwork, locking them in that position. Earlier, when the ships' bow and stern met, Pearson had asked "Has your ship struck?", to which Dale recalled Jones replying, "I have not yet begun to fight!"

Sources

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.