CHAPTER VI

JOHN PAUL JONES AND THE _RANGER_

THE FIRST SHIP THAT CARRIED THE STARS AND STRIPES--DASH AT A CONVOY THAT FAILED--WHEN THE DUTCH WERE BROWBEATEN--THE _RANGER_ SENT ON A CRUISE IN ENGLISH WATERS--A SHIP TAKEN OFF DUBLIN--THE RAID ON WHITEHAVEN--WHEN ONE BRAVE MAN COWED MORE THAN A THOUSAND--THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT LORD SELKIRK’S SILVERWARE, WITH THE NOBLE LORD’S EXPRESSION OF GRATITUDE WHEN HE GOT IT BACK--HOW CAPTAIN JONES MISSED THE _DRAKE_ AT FIRST, BUT GOT HER LATER ON IN A FAIR AND WELL-FOUGHT BATTLE.

A most important date in the history of the United States is June 14, 1777, for on that day it was in Congress “_Resolved_, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white, in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” In the annals of the navy it is also important, from the fact that on that day Capt. John Paul Jones was appointed to the eighteen-gun ship _Ranger_, which had been built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Repairing at once to his post, Captain Jones, in placing his ship in commission, hoisted with his own hand the new-made flag of the Union, and that was the first occasion on which “old glory” was spread to the breeze on an American naval ship. Thereafter every effort was made to get away to sea, but the difficulties which the struggling Americans had to overcome in obtaining supplies were so great that the _Ranger_ did not sail until November 1st.

The destination of the _Ranger_ was Nantes, France, and her mission in European waters was to carry on the work begun in such famous fashion by the _Reprisal_, the _Lexington_, the _Surprise_, and the _Revenge_.

On the way over Captain Jones, when not far from the Azores, sighted a fleet of ten well-guarded merchantmen. The warships were too heavy for the _Ranger_, and the merchant ships kept so close to their protectors that it was impossible to cut one of them out of the fleet. The _Ranger_ was not swift enough for such a purpose. The Yankee ship-builder had not yet learned the art of building men-of-war.

After leaving the convoy nothing happened save the capture of two small English brigs in the fruit trade, and on December 2d the _Ranger_ was at anchor in the harbor of Nantes, then one of the most flourishing of French ports.

[Illustration: _From the Original in possession of Col. John H. Sherburne, Author of “The Life and Character of John Paul Jones.”_]

At that time the American commissioners in France were Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee. The commissioners had been secretly building a fine frigate in Holland--the finest afloat it was to be--but the able British minister at Amsterdam discovered the ownership of the new vessel and made such a vigorous protest that the Dutch were obliged to refuse to let the Americans have her.

That was a great disappointment to Captain Jones, but he cheerfully obeyed the orders of the commissioners, who decided that “after equipping the _Ranger_ in the best manner for the cruise you shall proceed with her in the manner you shall judge best for distressing the enemies of the United States, by sea or otherwise, consistent with the laws of war.”

Accordingly on February 10, 1778, the _Ranger_ sailed from Nantes, having in convoy several American merchant ships that were bound home, and that were to be placed in charge of a French squadron then lying in Quiberon Bay (Brest) and bound eventually for America; for France had by this time acknowledged the United States as an independent nation, and had decided to openly aid the Americans in their fight for liberty.

On reaching Quiberon Bay he had the great satisfaction of seeing the French admiral salute the American flag after the _Ranger_ had, under the custom of such occasions, saluted the French flag. It was an honor especially gratifying for the reason that this was the first occasion on which a foreign power saluted the Stars and Stripes.

Having overhauled his rigging and taken on additional supplies, Captain Jones sailed from Brest on April 10, 1778, and steered across to the coast of England. Passing between the Scilly Islands and Cape Clear, he overhauled a brig loaded with flax bound from Ireland to Ostend. As she was of small value he scuttled her, and to save himself the bother of prisoners, sent her crew ashore in their boat, for the capture was made in plain view of the land. This was done on April 14th. Three days later he was off Dublin, where he seized the ship _Lord Chatham_ and sent her to Brest.

Thereafter he headed away to Whitehaven, that is found a short distance south of the Clyde. It was a port with which Jones was entirely familiar, for there he had passed his childhood. It was his intention to burn the shipping which, as he knew, thronged the harbor. He arrived off the harbor at ten o’clock at night of the same day he captured the _Lord Chatham_, but a gale of wind prevented his landing, so he cruised on to the north. The next day (April 18th) the _Ranger_ chased a revenue cutter that escaped him, but on the 19th he sank a coasting schooner loaded with barley.

[Illustration: Map of the BRITISH ISLES AND THE COAST OF FRANCE.

Showing first and second voyages of Capt. John Paul Jones, and the route of the Reprisal. ]

Thereafter he continued his cruise to the north. The weather prevented an attack on a fleet of merchantmen with a man-of-war at Lochryan, so the _Ranger_ was headed across to the Bay of Carrickfergus, Ireland, at the head of which lies the city of Belfast. A fisherman picked up outside told Captain Jones that the man-of-war _Drake_, a ship that mounted twenty guns and was a larger ship and carried more men than the _Ranger_, lay at anchor inside.

All this was learned on April 21st. That night Captain Jones undertook capturing the _Drake_ as she lay at anchor. Waiting until night had fully come, he stood up the bay, in spite of a freshening gale, until he saw the _Drake_ lying at anchor and rolling gently to the swell. At that the _Ranger_ was brought up into the wind almost beneath the jibboom of the _Drake_, and then Captain Jones ordered his anchor let go.

Had his order been obeyed instantly, the _Ranger_ would have swung to her cable down across the cable of the enemy and then yardarm to yardarm fair alongside.

Knowing nothing of the presence of an American man-of-war in those waters, the crew of the _Drake_ would have been found in their hammocks and the _Ranger_ would have carried her by boarding, with little if any loss of life.

Unfortunately, the _Ranger’s_ anchor was not dropped at the word, and when, at last, it did catch in the mud, Captain Jones found himself between the _Drake_ and a lee shore and too far astern for effective firing. The _Ranger_ was, in fact, in almost as bad a situation as that in which Jones had intended to place the _Drake_. To remain was to invite destruction, so the _Ranger’s_ cable was cut the instant she brought a strain upon it, and she was headed out into the bay for another attempt at the same manœuvre, leaving the anchor watch of the _Drake_ to wonder what possessed the crew of what they supposed was an especially ill-managed merchantman.

However, the second attempt was not made. The weather came on fierce and cold, and the next morning, from his deck in the North Channel, Captain Jones saw the hills on both shores white with snow. So he headed away for another attempt on the shipping at Whitehaven.

Because the attempt on Whitehaven has been more persistently misrepresented by British writers than any other act of the Revolutionary war it is necessary to give not only the exact facts, but the reasons which influenced Jones as an American naval officer in making the descent. To fully appreciate his motives, it is only necessary to recall but a few incidents of the British onslaught upon the Americans--to recall the burning of Portland, Maine, by Captain Mowatt, who “dispersed at a late season of the year, hundreds of helpless women and children, with a savage hope that those may perish under the approaching rigours of the season, who may chance to escape destruction from fire and sword”--to recall that among the accounts which Sir Guy Carleton turned in for audit to the British Parliament was one item of “five gross of scalping knives,” which he distributed to the savages under his command for use on the unfortunate Americans that they might fall upon, and which were used for scalping women and children as well as prisoners of war.

John Paul Jones went ashore on the British coast to burn the British shipping and no more. He was determined to “put an end, by one good fire of shipping, to all the burnings in America.” He was also determined to capture an earl to hold as a hostage, and compel a brutal enemy to treat captured Americans as civilized nations have always treated prisoners of war. He missed the earl, and his men took the earl’s silver plate to the value of £500, which plate Jones purchased afterwards with his own money, and returned to the earl with a manly letter.

[Illustration: An English Caricature of John Paul Jones.

(“From an original drawing taken from the Life on board the Serapis.”)

_Published in London, October 22, 1779._]

In view of the barbarities of which the English had been guilty in America, and of the retaliation which self-defence as well as justice demanded, John Paul Jones, after his cruise along the coast, might well and righteously have used the words which a titled British robber of the helpless used when brought before Parliament to answer for his crimes: “By God, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.”

After one hundred years have passed away it is safe to say that every American who reads of the events of the American Revolution stands astonished at the moderation of the fathers.

As to the facts of the descent on Whitehaven, they may be soon told. Lowering two boats after the _Ranger_ had arrived, Captain Jones ordered fifteen men, armed with cutlasses and pistols, into each. Then he placed Lieutenant Wallingsford in charge of one, and took the other himself. Unfortunately, one of the crew, a man named David Freeman, had shipped with the express purpose of serving the English whenever opportunity offered.

It is said that 220 vessels, great and small, lay in Whitehaven harbor, of which 150 were on the south side, where the town stood, and the remainder were on the north. Nearly if not quite all had been left aground by the ebb tide--the tide that prevented Jones reaching the shipping until daylight. Wallingsford was sent to fire the shipping at the north, while Jones landed at the town.

Whitehaven was guarded at that time by two forts of fifteen guns each. With his single boat’s crew Jones ran to the nearest one. The sentinels, greatly alarmed, fled into the guard-house, where Jones locked them in. Then he spiked the guns. At the other fort, a quarter of a mile away, he was equally successful.

Turning, then, to see the flames rising from the ships across the harbor, he found that nothing had been done to them. Lieutenant Wallingsford’s failure to obey orders has been variously accounted for, but whatever his error may have been, he wiped it out by fighting for the flag till he died in the battle of two days later.

Seeing his plan partly frustrated, Captain Jones hastened back to the water-front, and with his own hands built a fire on a large vessel in the midst of the fleet, using a brand which he had snatched from the breakfast fire in the kitchen of a nearby house. To increase the flames, he broke open and spilled a barrel of tar over the light-wood he was firing.

Meantime the deserter had been alarming the town. “The inhabitants began to appear in thousands.” There must have been not less than 1,200 sailors alone among the 150 ships lying there. As the flames mounted in air above the burning ship the men of the town came down _en masse_, but Jones stood between them and the fire, and, with pistol in hand, “ordered them to retire, which they did with precipitation.” Men in a crowd numbering hundreds fell over each other to get out of range. A more amusing instance of the power of a resolute man over a mob will rarely be found in history.

For fifteen minutes John Paul Jones, single-handed, held at bay more than a thousand men. Then he entered his boat and rowed away, leaving the townsmen to fight the fire and shed tears of gratitude over the deserter who had saved them from destruction at the hands of fifteen men armed with cutlasses and flint-locked, single-barrelled, shoot-if-you-are-lucky pistols!

When Jones was well out in the bay the people found a couple of cannon which Jones had overlooked. These they loaded and fired. And Jones, recalling the time when a frigate had chased his brig in the Canadian waters, fired a pistol in return.

From Whitehaven Jones sailed over to the Isle of St. Mary, landed with a force of men, and surrounded the house of the Earl of Selkirk. It was the avowed object of this landing to carry away the earl, “and to have detained him until, through his means, a general and fair exchange of prisoners, as well in Europe as in America, had been effected.” It was to ameliorate the condition of the Americans, held in jail and deliberately starved, that Captain Jones landed.

[Illustration:

_Pub. by_ A. PARK, _47 Leonard S^t._ _Tabernacle Walk, London._

“Paul Jones the Pirate.”

_From an old engraving in the collection of Mr. W. C. Crane._]

Finding that the earl was not at home, the men in the landing party called on their commander to take the silverware from the castle as fair plunder and but a just revenge for the acts of British sailors in America, who had not only looted the homes of the rich, but had driven off the one cow and the one pig of the laborer. Captain Jones permitted them to do so. The following is the British account of the affair, taken from Dodsley’s “Annual Register” (London) for 1778. On page 177 it says:

“Edinburgh, April 27. The following are the particulars of the plundering of Lord Selkirk’s house by the crew of the _Ranger_, American privateer.

“On the 23d of April, about ten o’clock in the morning, 30 armed men came in a boat from a privateer of 20 guns, and pretending at first to be a press gang, the men surrounded the house, and the officers entered and desired to see the heads of the family. As Lord Selkirk was then at London, Lady Selkirk made her appearance. They soon made known to her who they really were; said they meant to have seized Lord Selkirk’s person had he been at home, and to have carried him off, but all they now asked was to have the plate of the house. As there could be no thought of resistance, this was at once complied with; and having taken possession of it they walked off and reimbarked. They behaved civily, and only the officers presumed to enter the house, and happily her ladyship did not suffer from the alarm.”

With this British account of this affair in mind, let the reader turn back and read the British account of the burning of Portland (then Falmouth), Maine, and so compare the American deed with that of the British.

The silver taken was of the real value of £500, but when it was sold for the benefit of the crew Jones bought it and returned it at his own expense--at a cost of £1,000, all told--to the noble Lord. In August, 1789, years after the plate was returned, the earl was constrained to write Jones that, “notwithstanding all the precautions you took for the easy and uninterrupted conveyance of the plate,” there were considerable delays; nevertheless, it arrived safely. “I intended to have put an article in the newspapers about your having returned it,” he adds, but his good intentions miscarried. However, if he did not publicly acknowledge the honor of the American naval captain who had spent $5,000 to return the plate, he privately “mentioned it to many people of fashion,” so reads his letter. The British historians deliberately omit mentioning that Jones returned the silver.

After the descent upon the Isle of St. Mary’s the _Ranger_ still lingered on that coast. Captain Jones knew very well that many cruisers were already under orders to seek him; but they were still far away, and he must needs try conclusions with the _Drake_ that he had tried to take over in the bay near Belfast.

On the morning of April 24, 1778, he hove to off the bay, and then filled and backed until well along in the afternoon. The commander of the _Drake_, seeing a stranger outside, sent a young officer in a small boat to see what she was. Captain Jones handled his ship so skilfully that her stern was kept toward the coming boat until she was directly under the _Ranger’s_ counter. Then the officer was induced to come on board, and not until he had climbed up the ladder and reached the deck did he know that he was on a Yankee cruiser.

Finding his officer did not return, the commander of the _Drake_ got under way. Meantime signal fires had been built on every hilltop along both coasts, and the black columns of smoke were rising high in air. Moreover, a fleet of five excursion boats crowded with curious spectators was seen following the British man-of-war. But the wind was light and the tide against him, and it was not until an hour before sunset that the _Drake’s_ captain was able to bring his ship within fighting range of the Yankee. Finally he found himself under the lee quarter of the _Ranger_ and but a pistol-shot away. There he hoisted his colors. Captain Jones at once ran up the Stars and Stripes.

“What ship is that?” said a voice on the _Drake_.

“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,” replied Captain Jones. Then turning to the man at the wheel, Captain Jones ordered the helm hard up. The _Ranger_ wore slowly around, and the _Drake_ followed her motion until they were drifting broadside to broadside and yardarm to yardarm fair before the wind.

And then Captain Jones opened the battle with a broadside. The enemy replied in kind, and as fair a fight as naval annals record was begun. But after a little the fore and main topsail-yards of the _Drake_ were cut in two at the masts and hung useless. The mizzen-gaff was shot away and dropped. The jib fell and dragged overboard in the water. The rigging and sails were in tatters. Worse yet, blood was trickling from her scuppers because of the dead and wounded on her deck. Among the dead at the last was her commander, Captain Burden, who was killed by a musket-ball through his brain. Among the wounded was the first lieutenant, and he was mortally hurt.

The flag first spread on the _Drake_ was shot away, but they raised another. This, too, was shot away, and falling overboard, it dragged in the water. A little later, and just as the sun was going down behind the Irish hills, a cry for quarter was raised on the _Drake_, and the battle came to an end.

The _Ranger_ in this fight had eighteen guns. The _Drake_ carried twenty. The _Ranger’s_ crew numbered 123. The _Drake_ had 151 men on her books, and, in addition to these, had taken on a number of volunteers from the shore, who had been anxious to help whip the Yankees. These raised the number of her crew to 160 by the lowest account and 190 by the highest. The _Ranger_ lost two killed, including Lieutenant Wallingsford, and six wounded. The _Drake_ lost forty-two killed and wounded. It is fair to say that the British account of the battle in Allen’s history says the loss was but twenty-four. But Allen probably counted only those killed and wounded among the ship’s regular crew and ignored the volunteers, while the Americans counted the corpses and men under the surgeon’s care.

The odds had been against him, but the honors remained with John Paul Jones.

After the battle a merchant brig happened along, and a prize crew was put on board of her. Then the fishermen who had been captured when the _Ranger_ first arrived on the coast were not only released, but enough gold was given them to pay for all their losses, together with a sail from the _Drake’s_ outfit as a notice to the shore people that the Yankee had won. They went away cheering the generosity of John Paul Jones.

And while speaking of the generosity of this American naval captain, it should be told that, in fitting out the _Ranger_ on the American side, he advanced to the American government several thousand dollars (continental currency) of his own money, and that he bore all the expense of fitting and refitting her on the French coasts before her cruise. In all, he spent some £1,500 sterling of his own money, and because of the poverty of the American government he had to wait a long time to get it back again.

It was very well written of this cruise that “the news of the brilliant achievements of Paul Jones electrified France and appalled England.”

Just how much England was appalled by the American demonstrations on her coast may be inferred from a statement of the number of men “raised” (_i.e._, gathered in by press gangs) for her navy. In 1774 she “raised” 345 men. In 1777 she “raised” 37,458, and in 1778 the number was 41,847.

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