It was upon the 10th of April, 1778, that Paul Jones sailed from Brest
upon the first of his two immortal cruises.
The respect with which he had been treated, and the dignity he
maintained, had had great effect upon the officers and men under him.
They knew neither the time nor the place of the enterprise they were
entering upon; but that it was bold and venturesome they were well
assured. The seas were swarming with British cruisers, and alone among
this multitude of enemies the little Ranger sailed gallantly. As she
passed out of the harbor of Brest the sailors on the French ships gave
her a ringing cheer, to which the Americans responded.
Paul Jones then called his officers around him, and his daring words
were plainly audible to many of the men.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I propose to steer straight for the Irish Sea.
What my plans are I shall tell you when we are in sight of the three
kingdoms. I know every foot of the narrow seas, and every bay, inlet,
and headland on the shores of Scotland and Ireland. Give me your full
support, and we shall return covered with glory.”
A shout of applause greeted these brave words.
As soon as the Ranger was out of sight of land every effort was made to
disguise her as a merchantman. Her guns were hid, and her white sails
were daubed with lamp-black, to give the idea of being old and patched.
The crew was kept below as much as possible, to be out of sight, and in
this guise she made boldly for St. George’s Channel.
On the night of the 14th of April, while standing in between Cape Clear
and the Scilly Isles, the lookout on the quarter sang out, “Sail, ho!”
The sail was a fine, large brigantine, which allowed the strange ship,
which she took for a merchantman, to approach quite near her, as if to
pass on the opposite tack. Suddenly the strange ship doubled on her
quarter and came bearing down upon her, and at the same moment a blank
cartridge was fired across her bows. The brigantine hove to in obedience
to this peremptory command, and hailed the approaching Ranger. To this
hail the sailing master of the Ranger replied:
“This is the United States ship Ranger, and you are her prize.”
Resistance was useless. The ship contained a valuable cargo, but no
attempt was made to take anything except what could be easily
transferred to the Ranger. Paul Jones had determined not to fire the
ship, lest her burning should attract other vessels that swarmed the
narrow seas, and thereby raise an alarm on land. Therefore he sent the
carpenter and all his mates on board to scuttle her. The captain and
crew of the brigantine were brought off, and the carpenters went to work
with a will. In two hours from the time that she had been sailing
confidently along, unsuspicious of an enemy, the brigantine had
disappeared from the face of the ocean.
Three days now passed in cruising about St. George’s Channel. So great
was the number of ships, both men-of-war and merchantmen, in sight and
passing at all times, that Captain Jones did not consider it prudent to
attack, because no man excelled Paul Jones in the prudence of the
valiant. Several times during those three days and nights vessels that
would have been valuable prizes were close under the guns of the little
Ranger, but the presence of a frigate or two or other ship of war in the
distance made an attack impracticable. Back and forth for three days and
nights Paul Jones sailed dauntlessly among a multitude of enemies, thus
venturing boldly into the very nest of the hornets. On the evening of
the third day, the 17th of April, a large merchant vessel was seen off
the coast of Ireland. No ship of war was in sight, and the Ranger
therefore gave chase. Within an hour or two the vessel was overhauled,
almost at the mouth of the Liffey. A blank cartridge fired across her
bows and the Ranger’s hoisting the American ensign brought her to. She
proved to be the Lord Chatham, fast and new, bound for Dublin.
“We can not sink so good a ship as this,” said Paul Jones to his first
lieutenant. “And, besides, the scheme I have in view does not permit us
to encumber ourselves with prisoners. She will answer excellently to
carry our prisoners back to Brest.”
A prize crew and an officer were therefore thrown on board the Lord
Chatham, the prisoners transferred, and she was carried off when almost
within sight of her port. Paul Jones then put out to the open sea again,
and steered straight for the coast of Scotland.
On the 18th of April, a beautiful, mild evening, he entered the Frith of
Solway. It was the first time his eyes had rested on it, except for one
brief and unhappy visit, since his childhood. He was now an American
officer, of the highest rank possible to give him in the infant navy of
the colonies, and it was his plain duty to use the knowledge he had of
the Scotch coast in the service of his country.
The port of Whitehaven, on the opposite side of the Solway, was the
point Paul Jones meant to attack. Here was collected a great company of
shipping, estimated at between two and three hundred sail. The Ranger
was, as usual, closely disguised, and excited no suspicion as she
entered the Solway. The evening was beautiful and bright, but as the sun
went down the indications of a hard squall became evident. The furious
tides rushed in, driven by a rising gale from the Irish Sea, and the
wind blew directly on shore.
Paul Jones determined to wait for night to complete his design, and when
it grew too dark for the Ranger to be distinguished from another ship he
ordered the men mustered on deck. Then, in a few decisive words, he
announced his plan to them.
“We shall have a chance,” he said, “to avenge some of the dreadful
burnings practiced uselessly upon our own coasts; but this will not be
useless. The fleet now collected at Whitehaven is the coal fleet for
Ireland. To destroy it would be to embarrass the enemy greatly. I call
for thirty volunteers to assist me in this patriotic work. No man need
go unless he wants to. But those who share with me the danger of this
enterprise will also share with me the glory.”
It seemed as if every man on the deck shouted “I, sir,” and “I!” and
“I!” and “I!” and loud among the voices sounded the piping treble of
little Danny Dixon. Paul Jones raised his hand to command silence.
“I shall have to choose thirty men, because I can not take you all. I
shall take the strongest and most active men.”
At that he told off thirty men, including Bill Green, the quartermaster.
But when the number was selected, and the men had gone forward, Paul
Jones noticed that Danny, the cabin boy, lingered.
“If you please, sir,” said Danny, diffidently, “you surely ain’t a-goin’
to leave me behind, sir?”
“Why, you are nothing but a lad,” answered Paul Jones. “This is an
enterprise for men, not boys.”
“I know it, sir. But I ain’t afraid o’ nothin’.”
Paul Jones was about to reply, but at that moment Mr. Stacy, the sailing
master, came up hurriedly, to say that at the rate the wind was rising
and shifting it was necessary to claw off the land, and he thought a
landing would be impossible that night. A few minutes convinced Paul
Jones that his sailing master was right, and that the enterprise would
have to be postponed. The Ranger was driving furiously before the wind,
and at every lurch she buried her nose deep in the foaming waves. The
gale shrieked angrily, and a bank of coppery clouds in the west darkened
ominously. The ship was therefore brought about, and under straining
canvas she beat her way back to the mouth of the Solway.
No man slept on the Ranger that night. The weather was thick, and Paul
Jones was averse to running into the open sea for safety. The next
morning dawned clear, but windy. The ship was close enough to the shores
of Scotland to be seen from a hundred hamlets, and her situation became
too risky to let anything escape that could tell on her. A revenue
wherry was seen, chased and cannonaded, but escaped. A coasting vessel
was overhauled, her crew taken out of her, and she was then scuttled and
sunk; so was a Dublin schooner, while a cutter seen off the lee bow was
chased into the Clyde, and up as far as the Rock of Ailsa. The weather
still prevented a descent upon the coast, but Paul Jones boldly awaited
his chance to make it, in spite of the enemies that swarmed around him.
Boldness meant prudence in the affair Paul Jones had undertaken, and
therefore, not wishing to remain too long in any locality, he again
stood across the Irish Sea, and entered the Lough of Belfast, off which
lay the town of Carrickfergus.
It was on the afternoon of the 21st of April. The Ranger, sailing with a
long leg and a short one, cautiously approached the roadstead. Never was
there a lovelier scene. The harbor was of a deep ultramarine blue, and a
faint golden haze enveloped sky and sea and castle and ships. Upon a
grandly projecting cliff stood the stern gray castle, with its
twenty-two great guns, frowning upon the rippling water. Out in the
soft, yet dazzling, afternoon light lay a sloop of war, about the size
of the Ranger. A gentle breeze fanned the Union Jack that floated from
her mizzen peak. Over the whole scene was the still beauty of “a painted
ship upon a painted ocean.”
The officers of the Ranger were all on deck, for in that perilous cruise
neither officers nor men went below except for necessary food and sleep.
Paul Jones, with his glass, carefully examined the ship, and then,
turning to his officers, said quietly:
“Gentlemen, here is the chance we have all longed for. Yonder is a ship
of war of a rate that we can give battle to. We will fight that ship,
and we will take her.”
Scarcely were the words out of the captain’s mouth when “Ahoy!” sounded
from the port side of the Ranger. A fishing boat had come alongside,
with three fishermen in it. One of them held up a string of beautiful
fish.
“Yes, we want your fish, and you, too,” cried Stacy, the sailing master,
at Captain Jones’s orders; and in a few moments, to the astonishment of
the fishermen, they were on the Ranger’s deck, and their boat was
hanging astern.
[Illustration: _The Ranger and the Drake._]
“What is that vessel yonder?” asked Captain Jones of the elder man, for
they proved to be a father and two sons.
The man looked about him dazed for a moment. He did not recognize
Captain Jones’s uniform, nor did he understand the character of the
vessel that looked so peaceable, but which a close inspection proved was
well able to take care of herself in a fight. He hesitated a moment, but
one commanding look from Paul Jones brought the truth out.
“It is the Drake, sir; sloop of war.”
“Of how many guns?”
The man looked helplessly at Captain Jones, but one of the sons
answered, in a low voice:
“Some says twenty, sir, but I counted twenty-two on ’em when I went
aboard to carry my fish.”
“And who commands her?”
“Burden, sir; Cap’n Burden they calls him.”
Paul Jones’s eyes gleamed. No better news could be brought him.
“Very well,” he said, “I shall have to keep you from your families for a
few days, but you shall not lose by being my guests.”
Paul Jones’s plans were made rapidly. He was alone, on a hostile coast,
with enemies before him, behind him, and around him. None the less did
he intend to give battle. Moreover, he knew that he was fighting with a
halter around his neck, for there was but little doubt that if he were
captured he would be hanged as a pirate, so little were the British then
disposed to recognize the navy of the colonies. But this could not
appall his dauntless soul. He had the warm support of the best among his
officers, and among the men there was an instinctive belief that he was
always ready to fight, and nothing so inspires a crew as the knowledge
that they have a fighting captain. Bill Green, passing back and forth,
remarked, with a wink, to a group of his messmates forward:
“The Cap’n’s goin’ to fight that ’ere Johnny Bull, sure; and I tell you
what, them Britishers will have to coil up some o’ their nonsense about
there ain’t no sailors except Britishers, and take in their slack about
Britannia rulin’ the waves. Something’s goin’ to happen soon, that
reminds me of a old song I heard once:
“‘Heave the topmast from the board,
And our ship for action clear;
By the cannon and the sword
We will die or conquer here.
To your posts, my faithful tars!
Mind your rigging, guns, and spars!’
Ay, ay, sir! coming, sir!”—this to Mr. Stacy, the sailing master, who
called out sharply, “Quartermaster!”
Just as Bill had foreseen, the order was passed to clear for action
without the drumbeat. The guns were made ready to run out, but kept
covered, and the portlids were not raised. The breeze was fresh, and the
Ranger was enabled to carry all her canvas. She kept warily outside the
harbor, on and off the wind, until about ten o’clock at night, when she
stood boldly in, to bring up athwart hawse the Drake, intending to
grapple and fight it out.
Everything was in readiness, as the ship stole silently in through the
misty darkness of a moonless night. Stacy, the sailing master, brought
her safely within a cable’s length of the Drake’s quarter. But the
anchor was let go too soon, and, instead of laying aboard the Drake, she
drifted about half a cable’s length off. In an instant the mistake was
realized. Without a moment’s hesitation Captain Jones gave orders to cut
the cable, and the Ranger passed directly astern of the Drake, under her
stern chasers. No alarm was given on the war-ship; a muttered growl from
the lookout on the after quarter informed them that they had better
“keep off” with their lubberly craft, which Paul Jones promptly did,
intending to return on the next tack. But the wind, which had been
squally for several days, now suddenly rose in a fierce gust, and he was
compelled to beat out of the harbor. The gust increased to a furious
gale, and it took all of Captain Jones’s skill to get sea room enough
for safety. The night grew pitch dark, and it was midnight before they
weathered the lighthouse point, where the warning light shone dimly over
the tempestuous sea and upon the laboring ship. The gale continued all
the next day, but the Ranger had found a lee on the south coast, where
she awaited the abatement.
“Never mind, my brave boys,” said Paul Jones to his men when they were
driving out of the harbor. “That ship shall yet be ours. We can cut and
come again.”
The men fully believed him.