The Story of John Paul Jones

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Story of John Paul Jones, by Chelsea Curtis Fraser
BARSE & HOPKINS NEW YORK NEWARK N.Y. N.J.
Copyright, 1922 BY BARSE & HOPKINS
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

For a corking tale of the sea it would be hard to find in all fiction a story to equal that of John Paul Jones, a figure of sober history. Yet history was not so sober after all, in those days when piracy was an actual fact, and even nations at times winked at privateering on the high seas. Jones was born with a love of the salt spray in his nostrils. He came to this country as a mere lad, but already a skilled sailor. When the Revolution broke out, he obtained command of a ship, and was the first to fly the Stars-and-Stripes in foreign waters. Then came his deeds of daring against the British Navy, and his repeated victories over tremendous odds. The fight between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis is a classic. Surrender? he cried with most of his rigging shot away, and his vessel sinking, Why, I have just begun to fight!
Belated honors were done to his memory, a few years ago, when his body was brought home from a neglected grave in France, and reinterred at Annapolis with all the honors in the gift of the nation. When the readers young and old lay aside this thrilling story, they also will understand why America honors his memory. He may be regarded as the founder of the United States Navy. His flag, whether flying at the masthead of some saucy little sloop-of-war or on a more formidable ship of the line, never knew what it was to be hauled down in defeat. His name has become a tradition among all sea fighters.
In the summer of 1759, James Younger, a prosperous shipowning merchant of Whitehaven, England, found himself short of sailors to man a new vessel he had just secured. Said he to himself, I know just where I shall be likely to pick up such fellows as I need. To-morrow I shall go to Arbigland.
Arbigland was a small fishing-village directly across the Solway Firth, a sort of big bay which cuts a wedge into the borderline of Scotland and England and reaches out into the blueness of the Irish Sea. From this port fishing-boats in great numbers were wont to go forth in the early morning of the day and return at sunset with their catch. Practically every home was the hearth of a fisherman and his family—sturdy, weather-beaten men who knew the whims of a boat and the tricks of the sea better than they knew how to read and write; sturdy, hard-working mothers who knew more about baking bread and rearing good children than they did about social functions and social etiquette; sturdy lads and lassies who lived in the open and knew more about entertaining themselves with the rugged and wholesome interests of nature than they did about ball-rooms, wine suppers, and movies. From Arbigland Mr. Younger had more than once before obtained excellent sailors, as had indeed many another ship-merchant and short-handed captain.