Your (educated) opinions on this Navy ship afire "Bonhomme Richard"

It didn’t help that they pulled everyone off the ship after the initial fire started and let it free burn for a couple of hours. By the it had spread out of the well deck and was going through compartments. Once the fire burned through the upper deck you had a “chimney” effect going on and made it very hard to put out. Same thing happened on the USS Miami in Portsmouth.