_Captain Jones at Nantes and at Brest._
Correspondence with Lord Selkirk.—Terrible Battle with the Ship
Drake.—Capture of the Ship.—Carnage on board the Drake.—Generosity
to Captured Fishermen.—Insubordination of Lieutenant
Simpson.—Embarrassments of Captain Jones.—Hopes and
Disappointments.—Proofs of Unselfish Patriotism.—Letter to the King
of France.—Anecdote of Poor Richard.
The letter of Paul Jones to the Countess of Selkirk was published widely
throughout England, and attracted much attention. Dr. Franklin wrote to
Captain Jones from Paris:
“It was a gallant letter, and must give her ladyship a high opinion of
your generosity and nobleness of mind.”
The plate fell into the hands of the prize agents. After much difficulty
and considerable delay, Captain Jones succeeded in purchasing it, though
at a price above its real value. He then returned it to Lord Selkirk,
himself defraying all the expenses of transportation. Lord Selkirk, in
acknowledging its receipt, from London, under date of August, 1789,
wrote:
“Notwithstanding all the precautions you took for the easy and
uninterrupted conveyance of the plate, yet it met with considerable
delays, first at Calais, next at Dover, then at London. However, it at
last arrived at Dumfries. I intended to have put an article in the
newspapers about your having returned it. But before I was informed of
its being arrived, some of your friends, I suppose, had put it into the
Dumfries newspaper, whence it was immediately copied into the Edinburgh
papers, and thence into the London ones. Since that time I have
mentioned it to many people of fashion.
“And on all occasions, both now and formerly, I have done you the
justice to tell that you made an offer of returning the plate very soon
after your return to Brest; and although you yourself was not at my
house, but remained at the shore with your boat, that you had your
officers and men in such extraordinary good discipline, that your having
given them the strictest orders to behave well, to do no injury of any
kind, to make no search, but only to bring off what plate was given
them; that in reality they did exactly as ordered, and that not one man
offered to stir from his post on the outside of the house, nor entered
the doors, nor said an uncivil word; that the two officers staid not a
quarter of an hour in the parlor and in the butler’s pantry, while the
butler got the plate together, behaved politely, and asked for nothing
but the plate, and instantly marched their men off, in regular order,
and that both officers and men behaved in all respects so well that it
would have done credit to the best disciplined troops whatever.”
The style of Captain Jones’s letter has been found fault with. But in
literary excellence it is certainly above that of the English lord. One
of the London papers said of him:
“Paul Jones is about thirty-six years of age, of a middling stature,
well proportioned, with an agreeable countenance. His conversation shows
him to be a man of talents, and that he has a liberal education. His
letters, in foreign gazettes, show that he can fight with the pen as
well as with the sword.”
In the letter which Captain Jones sent to Lord Selkirk upon the return
of the plate, he wrote:
“The long delay that has happened to the restoration of your plate, has
given me much concern, and I now feel a proportionate pleasure in
fulfilling what was my first intention. My motive for landing at your
estate in Scotland was to take _you_, as a hostage for the lives and
liberties of a number of the citizens of America, who had been taken in
war on the ocean and committed to British prisons, under an act of
Parliament, as _traitors_, _pirates_, and _felons_. You observed to Mr.
Alexander that my idea was a mistaken one, because you were not, as I
had supposed, in favor with the British ministry, who knew _that you
favored the cause of liberty_. On that account, I am glad that you were
absent from your estate when I landed there, as I bore no personal
enmity, but the contrary, toward you. I afterward had the happiness to
redeem my fellow-citizens from Britain, by means far more glorious than
through the medium of any single hostage.
“As I have endeavored to serve the cause of liberty, through every stage
of the American Revolution, and have sacrificed to it my private ease, a
part of my fortune, and some of my blood, I could have no selfish motive
in permitting my people to demand and carry off your plate. My sole
inducement was to turn their attention and stop their rage from breaking
out and retaliating on your house and effects the too wanton burnings
and desolation that had been committed against their relations and
fellow-citizens in America, by the British; of which, I assure you, you
would have felt the severe consequences, had I not fallen on an
expedient to prevent it, and hurried my people away before they had time
for further reflection.”
We must now return from this episode to the continuance of Captain
Jones’s cruise. In his letter to Lady Selkirk, he alludes to a naval
battle with the ship Drake. After the descent upon Mary’s Island,
Captain Jones again stood across the Channel from the Scottish to the
Irish shore. On the morning of the 24th, he arrived off the Bay of
Carrickfergus, and would again have entered, to make an attack upon the
Drake, had he not seen that that ship was spreading her sails to come
out. The wind was very light and the progress of the British ship slow.
The captain of the Drake had heard of the ravages of the Ranger, for the
appalling tidings had spread far and wide, and he was coming out in
search of her. Seeing this vessel in the distance, a boat was sent out
from the Drake to reconnoitre. Captain Jones kept the ship’s stern
directly toward the approaching boat, and so succeeded in disguising his
true character that though the boat’s crew carefully scrutinized him
with a spy-glass, they were completely deceived, and, hailing the
vessel, came alongside. As soon as the officer stepped upon the
quarter-deck, he found, to his great surprise, himself a prisoner and
his boat captured.
Captain Jones learned, from his captives, that the night before an
express had reached the Drake, with tidings of the destruction of the
shipping at Whitehaven; and the Drake had immediately increased its crew
by a large number of volunteers, and was now pressing forward in pursuit
of the Ranger. Alarm fires were also seen on the eminences on both sides
of the Channel, their columns of smoke rising high into the air. It was
evident that the achievements of the bold little Ranger had created a
great commotion, rousing all England to a sense of danger, for no one
knew upon what point her next blows might fall.
The wind was light and the tide unfavorable, so that the Drake worked
out of the bay slowly. Captain Jones awaited her arrival, laying to with
courses up, and main-topsail to the mast. At length, the Drake, having
reached the mid-channel, came within hailing distance, and ran up the
flag of England. At the same instant the Stars and Stripes were unfurled
at the topmast of the Ranger. Still an officer on the quarter-deck of
the Drake shouted out:
“What ship is that?”
The reply was immediately returned:
“It is the American Continental ship Ranger. We are waiting for you. The
sun is but little more than an hour from setting. It is therefore time
to begin.”
The Drake was astern of the Ranger. Jones ordered the helm up, and as
his vessel rounded to, discharged a full broadside into the thronged
decks of the Drake. The iron storm crashed through timbers and bones and
quivering nerves with terrible destruction. But the spirit of war can
never arrest its energies to compassionate its victims. The guns of the
Drake were loaded and shotted, and the gunners stood, with lighted
torches, at their posts. Instantly the fire was returned, while the dead
were left in their blood, and the wounded were hurried to the cockpit,
to writhe beneath the cuttings of the surgeon’s knife.
Thus, for an hour and four minutes, the dreadful conflict continued. The
thunders of the exploding guns, booming over the waves, echoed along the
shores of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The British Government dreamed
not that its feeble colonies could do anything more than present a brief
and totally unavailing resistance behind frail ramparts, suddenly thrown
up, three thousand miles away, on the other side of the Atlantic. And
yet here were those colonies putting forth energies which were burning
ships in England’s home harbors, and bombarding her frigates in her own
Channel.
At the close of an hour and four minutes of as obstinate a naval battle
as could be fought, the Drake dropped her flag and cried for quarter.
Her fore and main-topsail yards were both cut away, and hung down on the
cap. The top-gallant yard and mizzen gaff were also torn from their
fastenings and were dangling against the mast. The first flag had been
shot away. They had raised a second. That also had fallen before the
incessant storm of iron hail, and was draggling in the water. Her masts
and yards were all more or less shattered, while the main-mast was so
seriously wounded as to be in danger of falling. The jib was shot away,
and, held by the cordage, was floating on the waves. The hull was
pierced in many places, shivered and splintered by the balls.
Upon entering the captured ship an appalling spectacle met the eye. A
hundred and ninety men had crowded it, in the full assurance of victory.
Of these, forty-two were either killed or wounded. A musket-ball had
pierced the brain of the captain, and he lay weltering in blood, silent
in death. The first lieutenant had also been struck by a mortal wound,
and was in death’s convulsions.
It is very remarkable that on board the Ranger there was but one man
killed and six wounded. The night succeeding this terrible storm of
human violence was severe and the ocean tranquil. As all hands were busy
in refitting the shattered vessels, an English merchant brig came along,
bound for Norway. It was captured without difficulty. As English
men-of-war were crowding St. George’s Channel, Captain Jones decided to
pass through the North Channel with his two prizes, and return to Brest
by the west coast of Ireland.
When Captain Jones first made his appearance off Carrickfergus Bay, he
captured a fishing-boat to make inquiries respecting the shipping within
the bay. As secrecy was essential to his plan of operation, it was
necessary to detain those fishermen with their boat. Otherwise they
would communicate intelligence of his movements, and abundant
preparations would be made to repel him. It was no longer necessary to
detain them. Captain Jones writes:
“It was now time to release the honest fishermen, whom I took up here on
the 21st. And, as the poor fellows had lost their boat, she having sunk
in the late stormy weather, I was happy in having it in my power to give
them the necessary sum to purchase everything new which they had lost. I
gave them also a good boat, to transport themselves ashore; and sent
with them two infirm men, on whom I bestowed the last guinea in my
possession, to defray their travelling expenses to their proper home in
Dublin. They took with them one of the Drake’s sails, which would
sufficiently explain what had happened to the volunteers. The grateful
fishermen were in raptures; and expressed their joy in their huzzas as
they passed the Ranger’s quarter.”
This was indeed extraordinary magnanimity when we contrast it with the
conduct of England, bombarding and burning our defenceless villages,
immuring our most illustrious men in the dungeons of hulks, worse than
the oubliettes of the Bastile, and robbing poor fishermen of everything,
burning their boats, and often impressing them into her navy, and
compelling them to serve the guns against their own countrymen.
Contrary winds so impeded the progress of Captain Jones that it was not
until the 5th of May that he had skirted the western coast of Ireland,
and reached Ushant, a French island a few miles distant from the extreme
northwestern coast of France. The Ranger was accompanied by the two
vessels she had taken, having the torn and battered Drake in tow. A ship
hove in sight to the leeward, steering for the Channel. Captain Jones
cast off the Drake, by cutting the hawser, and gave chase to the
stranger. His swift-sailing vessel overtook the chase in little more
than an hour, and hailing her, found that she was a Swede. He therefore
immediately hauled by the wind and returned to the southward to rejoin
the Drake, which was then scarcely perceptible in the distant horizon.
The evolutions of the Drake surprised him. She seemed to be trying to
put as much distance as possible between herself and the Ranger. Several
large ships appeared steering into the Channel. But Jones was prevented
from pursuing them in consequence of the extraordinary evolutions of the
Drake. He made signals. They were totally disregarded. It was not until
the next day he succeeded in overtaking the runaway Drake. Her
commanding officer, Lieutenant Simpson, was immediately placed under
arrest for disobedience of orders.
It would seem that the lieutenant left America with the impression, and
doubtless a correct one, that, upon arriving in France, Captain Jones
was to be transferred to another and much finer ship, while he was to be
left in command of the Drake. He consequently seemed to feel that the
Drake and her crew belonged to him, and the temporary captain was rather
a passenger whom he was conveying to his destination. He therefore
assumed airs, and was guilty of petty acts of insubordination, which
were very annoying to Captain Jones, who was a strict disciplinarian.
Moreover, Lieutenant Simpson allowed his republican principles to carry
him so far as to advocate a republican form of government even upon the
decks of a war-ship. He declared to the sailors, that they, being free
and enlightened American citizens, were entitled to decide, by the voice
of the majority, respecting all questions of importance on ship-board;
that the captain was to be their agent to perform their will. Simpson
was daily growing more discontented with the position he occupied, and
was probably intending to run away with the Drake, one of the best
finished of England’s war-ships, to repair her in some French harbor,
and to sail forth on a cruise upon his own responsibility, perhaps as a
French privateersman.
But for this insubordination on the part of Lieutenant Simpson, Captain
Jones would doubtless have taken several other important prizes. The
Ranger, with her two prizes, returned to the harbor of Brest, and cast
anchor there on the 9th of May, having been absent but one month. In the
mean time the French squadron, under Count d’Estaing, had been made
ready for sea. The news of the brilliant achievements of Paul Jones
electrified France and appalled England. The alarm infused along the
coasts of Great Britain and Ireland amounted almost to a panic. Lookout
vessels were constantly cruising along the shores. The militia were
called out. New fortifications were constructed. The whole population of
the seacoast was kept in a state of constant alarm.
But Captain Jones was now in great pecuniary embarrassment. The Colonial
Government was so poor that it could not honor his drafts. He was not
only unable to refit his ship, but was in want of the means of providing
the daily food for his crew. When he left America he had advanced, from
his own means, seven thousand dollars for the public service. He had, in
a foreign land, two hundred prisoners of war to be provided for, a
number of his own sick and wounded, and his ship to be repaired,
shattered by a terrible engagement, and destitute of provisions and
stores. And he was not allowed to dispose of his prizes until he
received further orders from the home Government.
After a vast amount of mental suffering he succeeded, by his personal
credit with distinguished French noblemen, Count d’Orvilliers and the
Duke de Chartres, in raising money to meet his immediate and most
pressing wants, and in refitting both the Ranger and the Drake for sea.
The British seamen who were prisoners, if released, would be immediately
forced on board the British men-of-war to man their guns. It was also
necessary to retain them to effect exchanges for our own captive
countrymen, whom the British were treating with such great barbarity. In
his letters to the Government he urged the imperious necessity of
supplying the seamen with the little necessaries and comforts of life.
He also, while entreating that the English prisoners should be treated
with kindness, and all their needful wants supplied, urged that they
should by no means be released without an exchange. He now, during
several months, passed through a series of trials, mortifications, and
disappointments, a detail of which would but weary the reader. In
carefully examining his voluminous correspondence, during this season of
trial, when his whole soul was glowing with the desire for active
service, and when the inactivity to which he was doomed was, to him,
almost insupportable, I cannot find a single expression unworthy of his
noble character, as a self-denying patriot, a gallant officer, and a
humane gentleman.
Humanity required that England should feel the horrors of war which she
was so mercilessly inflicting upon her infant colonies. In no other way
could she be induced to sheathe the sword. He proposed to the
Commissioners in Paris another expedition, of three fast-sailing
frigates, to destroy three hundred vessels in the harbor at Whitehaven,
to burn the town, and to destroy the important coal-works there.
As time would be requisite to prepare for so important an expedition, he
proposed that a smaller force should immediately be fitted out, to
harass the northern coasts of Great Britain, and to lay contributions
upon the important towns. On the 10th of July, 1778, Dr. Franklin wrote
him, saying:
“In consequence of the high opinion which the Minister of Marine has of
your conduct and bravery, it is now settled that you are to have the
frigate from Holland, which will be furnished with as many good French
seamen as you may require. As you may like to have a number of
Americans, and your own crew are homesick, it is proposed to give you as
many as you can engage, out of two hundred prisoners which the ministry
of Britain have, at length, agreed to give in exchange for those you
have in your hands. They propose to make the exchange at Calais, where
they are to bring the Americans. The project of giving you the command
of this ship pleases me the more, as it is a probable opening to the
higher preferment you so justly merit.”
The conduct of Lieutenant Simpson had been exasperating in the highest
degree, and yet Captain Jones wrote to the Commissioners, on the 4th of
July:
“Lieutenant Simpson has certainly behaved amiss. Yet I can forgive as
well as resent. Upon his making a proper concession, I will, with your
approbation, not only forgive the past, but leave him the command of the
Ranger.”
In anticipation of a speedy command, Captain Jones was anxious to secure
the services of a chaplain. In a communication to a friend whom he
desired to assist him in obtaining such an officer, he wrote:
“I should wish the chaplain to be a man of reading and of letters, who
understands, speaks, and writes the French and English with elegance and
propriety. For political reasons it would be well if he were a clergyman
of the Protestant profession, whose sanctity of manners, and happy,
natural principles would diffuse unanimity and cheerfulness through the
ship. Such a man would be worthy of the highest confidence.”
On the 10th of August, Captain Jones repaired to Brest, expecting to be
put in command of the splendid ship which had been promised. This ship
belonged to the Government. To his bitter disappointment he found that
it had been assigned to another man. Lieutenant Simpson sailed to
America in the Ranger. The Drake was a shattered prize as yet unsold.
Captain Jones was left in the humiliating position of an adventurer out
of employment. He wrote to the Prince of Nassau, with the approval of
Dr. Franklin, earnestly imploring a commission under the French flag. In
his letter he wrote:
“Suffer me not, I beseech, you to continue longer in this shameful
inactivity. Such dishonor is worse to me than a thousand deaths. I have
already lost the golden season, the summer, which, in war, is of more
value than all the rest of the year. I appear here as a person cast off
and useless. When any one asks me what I purpose to do, I am unable to
answer.”
Dr. Franklin transmitted this letter, and wrote to Captain Jones: “Your
letter was sent to the Prince of Nassau. I am confident that something
will be done for you, though I do not yet know what. I sympathize with
you in what I know you must suffer from your present inactivity; but
have patience.”
It was proposed that he should take command of a prize-ship taken from
the English. Examining the ship, and finding that she sailed slow, and
had but a feeble armament, he unqualifiedly rejected her. Writing to M.
Chaumont, a wealthy French gentleman, who had great influence with the
Government, he said:
“I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast. For
I intend to go in harm’s way. You know, I believe, that this is not
every one’s intention. Therefore buy a frigate that sails fast and that
is sufficiently large to carry twenty-six or twenty-eight guns, not less
than twelve-pounders, on one deck. I would rather be shot ashore than
sent to sea in such things as the armed prizes I have described.”
An offer was made by a wealthy merchant of Nantes, M. Montieu, to place
Captain Jones in a first-class ship, thoroughly armed, to proceed on a
privateering expedition. He replied:
“Were I in pursuit of profit, I should accept the offer without
hesitation. But I am under such obligations to Congress that I cannot
think myself my own master. And as a servant of the imperial republic of
America, honored with the public approbation of my past services, I
cannot, from my own authority or inclination, serve either myself or my
best friends in any private line whatsoever, unless where the honor and
interest of America is the premier object.”
War was now openly declared between France and England. The colonies
could not furnish Captain Jones with a suitable frigate, and there were
many French naval officers eager to take command of such ships as the
king could furnish. Consequently the prospects of Captain Jones,
notwithstanding his high reputation for both bravery and ability, were
very dark. In this emergence, and consumed with the desire for active
service, he wrote a letter to the king. In this letter, after a very
truthful and very modest narrative of his past experience, he says:
“Thus have I been chained down to shameful inactivity for five months. I
have lost the best season of the year, and such opportunities of serving
my country and acquiring honor as I cannot again expect during this war.
And, to my infinite mortification, having no command, I am considered
everywhere as an officer cast off, and in disgrace for secret reasons.
“Having written to Congress to reserve no command for me in America, my
sensibility is the more affected by this unworthy situation in the sight
of your majesty’s fleet. Although I wish not to become my own
panegyrist, I must beg your majesty’s permission to observe that I am
not an adventurer in search of fortune, of which, thank God, I have a
sufficiency.
“When the American banners were first displayed, I drew my sword in
support of the violated dignity and rights of human nature. And both
honor and duty prompt me steadfastly to continue the righteous pursuit,
and to sacrifice to it not only my private enjoyments, but even life, if
necessary. I must acknowledge that the generous praise which I have
received from Congress and others, exceeds the merit of my past
services, and therefore I the more ardently wish for future
opportunities of testifying my gratitude by my activity.
“As your majesty, by espousing the cause of America, has become the
protector of the rights of human nature, I am persuaded that you will
not disregard my situation, nor suffer me to remain any longer in this
insupportable disgrace.”
This letter was enclosed in one to the Duchess of Chartres, with whom he
was personally acquainted, and from whom he had received kind
attentions. He besought her to present the letter to his majesty the
king; which she did.
One day, chance threw into Captain Jones’s hands an old almanac,
containing _Poor Richard’s Maxims_, by Doctor Franklin. In that curious
medley of wit and wisdom, poor Richard is represented as saying:
“If you wish to have any business done faithfully and expeditiously, go
and do it yourself. Otherwise, send some one.”
The maxim impressed Jones deeply. He pondered it, and decided that he
had acted very unwisely in writing so many letters, instead of going
directly to court, and making personal solicitations. Immediately he set
out for Versailles, in whose gorgeous palace the royal family and court
were then residing. Such was the potency of his presence that in a few
days, on the 4th of February, 1779, he received from M. De Sartine, the
French Minister of Marine, the following exhilarating letter:
“TO JOHN PAUL JONES, ESQ.,
“Commander of the American Navy in Europe.
“SIR—I announce to you that, in consequence of the exposition I
have laid before the king, of the distinguished manner in which you
have served the United States, and of the entire confidence which your
conduct has merited from Congress, his majesty has thought proper to
place you in command of the ship Duras, of forty guns, at present at
L’Orient. I am about, in consequence, to issue the necessary orders
for the complete armament of that ship.
“The commission which was given you, at your departure from America,
will authorize you to hoist the flag of the United States, and you
will likewise make use of the authority which has been vested in you,
to procure a crew of Americans. But as you may find difficulty in
raising a sufficient number, the king permits you to levy volunteers,
until you obtain men enough, in addition to those who will be
necessary to sail the ship. It shall be my care to procure the
necessary officers, and you may be assured that I shall contribute
every aid in my power to promote the success of your enterprise.
“As soon as you are prepared for sea, you will set sail without
waiting for any ulterior orders; and you will yourself select your own
cruising ground, either in the European or American seas, observing
always to render me an exact account of each event, that may take
place during your cruise, as often as you may enter any port under the
dominion of the king.”
No one can describe the satisfaction with which Captain Jones read this
communication. Feeling that his success was due to the good advice which
he had received from Poor Richard, he asked leave to give his ship that
name, or as translated into French, the name of _Bon Homme Richard_.
Captain Jones, in his grateful reply to the Minister of Marine, writes:
“I take the earliest opportunity to offer you my sincere and grateful
thanks, for so singular and honorable a mark of your confidence and
approbation. Your having permitted me to alter the name of the ship, has
given me a pleasing opportunity of paying a well-merited compliment to a
great and good man, to whom I am under obligations, and who honors me
with his friendship.”