THE QUEER CONDUCT OF CAPTAIN LANDAIS
The next morning Captain Paul Jones woke up to find himself famous—almost overwhelmed with the praise and attentions of the naval officers of Brest as well as of all France. The Duc De Chartres was the first to come aboard, brimming with congratulations, and for the two days the Ranger lay in the harbor her decks thronged with officers of the French fleet and citizens who were eager to rejoice with the conqueror.
Then the other side of the picture began to show; the stern realities of France's disturbed political condition had to be faced. The Ranger, with her splendid prize, had gone to the deckyard for repairs, and the problem of feeding and clothing the three hundred men constituting his own crew and that of the Drake had to be met by Paul Jones. The Congress still owed him £1500 which he had advanced out of his own pocket for paying the crews of his former ships, the Providence and the Alfred, and this outlay had depleted his funds to such an extent that he had very little money left, so little that he now saw he would have to draw upon the commissioners a draft for 24,000 livres, which Congress had given him. To his annoyance the three commissioners promptly dishonored his draft. As a result, the merchant with whom he had contracted to refit the Ranger and the Drake, as well as to supply his crew and prisoners with provisions, declined to extend further credit.
This state of affairs put our hero in a very embarrassing position, and nettled him intensely. Had it not been for the fine friendship of such Frenchmen as the Duc De Chartres, Comte D'Orvillers, and M. Chaumont, through whose benevolence he was for a time able to feed and clothe his people, heal his wounded, and continue the refitting of his vessels, it is hard to tell what he would have done.
In the crude, undisciplined condition of the United States Navy in that day the crews could not seem to comprehend the idea that it was necessary to obey every order of the commander of a ship without raising a question. Almost at the instant of the engagement between the Ranger and the Drake, Lieutenant Simpson, the trouble-maker of the past, had used his influence in stirring up some of the crew to a state bordering on insubordination, telling them that being Americans fighting for liberty they had a right to fight the enemy in any way they chose, regardless of a commander's program. Paul Jones had stopped this threatened uprising by confining Simpson below. On reaching port he had transferred him to the Admiral, a ship where the French put men of his type.
After Simpson had been imprisoned, an American agent named Hezekiah Ford, who disliked the Scotch captain, got up a petition condemning Paul Jones and praising the conduct of Simpson in the sea fight. By smooth arguments to the effect that they would never get their prize money unless Lieutenant Simpson were made captain in place of Paul Jones, Ford induced seventy-eight of the Ranger's crew to sign this petition. The result was, that the rascally lieutenant was freed at his court-martial, and sailed away a little later for America, as master of the refitted Ranger.
When Paul Jones heard of the doings of Hezekiah Ford, he was terribly incensed. Tucking three pistols in his belt, he betook himself to the inn where Ford stopped. Without pausing long enough to draw even one of his pistols, he knocked Ford down with a lightning-like blow of his fist, seized the coachman's whip and thrashed the scoundrel until he cried for mercy. Big, long-limbed, weighing half as much again as Paul Jones, he offered no resistance—just curled up and blubbered like the coward he was, while the onlookers cheered the Scotchman with keen delight. Six months later, following other discoveries of his duplicity, Ford was denounced as a spy and traitor by the governor of Virginia, and Congress dishonorably dismissed him from the service after he had fled to London with valuable papers.
Before the Ranger sailed under the captaincy of Mr. Simpson, Paul Jones had met the expenses of her crew with the utmost difficulty. The credit obtained from his French friends did not meet all the heavy obligations, and after a while, in order to keep his men from starving, he was forced to sell the Drake at auction to a French ship-broker. This act was strictly against the rules and regulations of his country, but in the dire need of his crew and prisoners he felt that extreme measures must be adopted to raise the funds which he could get in no other manner. With this money he managed to pay off all indebtedness, and so it was with a clear conscience, if a bitter heart, that he saw the sly Simpson finally make off with his own ship, and many of his crew, leaving him alone in a foreign land.
War had now broken out between England and France, and Paul Jones was detained in Europe at the request of the French Minister of Marine. This official, De Sartine, wished an important command to be assigned to the famous conqueror of the Drake. The difficulties in the way, however, were great. The American commissioners had few resources, in addition to which one of them—Lee—was hostile to the Scotchman; and the French had more native officers clamoring for the better ships than they had such vessels.
Thus, about all that could be offered was the command of small warships or privateers, offers which the proud Jones promptly rejected. To M. Chaumont he wrote, in this connection, a letter containing the following extracts: "I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm's way. Therefore buy a frigate with sails fast, and that is sufficiently large to carry twenty-six or twenty-eight guns on her deck. I would rather be shot ashore than go to sea in the armed prizes I have described."
He continued his heckling correspondence with the greatest energy, alternately cajoling, proposing, complaining, begging to be sent on some important enterprise. He wrote innumerable letters to De Sartine, Franklin, De Chartres, De Chaumont, and many others, and finally to the king himself, who granted him an interview. More as a result of this conference with Louis XV than from other sources, he was finally rewarded by being put in command of a small squadron.
At first he was highly delighted with the appointment, but as time wore on and he saw what a poor assortment of ships and crews he had, he was vastly disappointed. But having accepted the command, with true heroic purpose he made up his mind to carry it through to the best of his ability.
The expense of fitting out the expedition was the king's, while the flag and the commissions of the officers were American. The object of the French government was to get Paul Jones to operate against the coasts and shipping of England under the American flag, as the courtesy of warfare forbade France, as an ally, to ravage the coasts of Great Britain before the enemy herself had struck a blow at French interests.
As stated, Paul Jones had a motley array of ships—those which were left over after the French officers had had their pick. The flag-ship, the Bon Homme Richard, was a worn-out old East Indiaman, which he refitted and armed with six 18-pounders, twenty-eight 12-pounders, and eight 9-pounders—a battery of forty-two guns. The crew consisted of 375 men of many nationalities, among which were not more than one hundred and fifty Americans, including Wannashego, who had faithfully stuck to his leader during all his trials in Brest. The Alliance, the only American ship, was a good frigate rating as a large thirty-two or medium thirty-six. She was commanded by a jealous-minded, half-mad Frenchman named Landais, who was in the American service. The Pallas, thirty-two guns; the Vengeance, twelve guns; and the little Cerf, of eight guns, were all officered and manned by Frenchmen.
Bad as were conditions of ship and crew, however, there was one other feature of the organization which proved a greater handicap to the Scotch commodore. This was the famous concordat, an agreement between the various commanders of the ships which Paul Jones was compelled to sign before his commission would be approved by the French minister of the navy. While its terms related largely to the distribution of prize money, it also contained clauses which weakened his authority, and gave his captains a chance to wink at it if they chose.
The little squadron, accompanied by two French privateers, sailed finally from L'Orient on August 14, 1779, on what was planned to be a fifty-days' cruise. Thanks to the Duchesse De Chartres's gift of ten thousand louis d'or, Paul Jones had been able to fit out his flag-ship in a much better condition than the king's fund would have permitted.
On the 18th the privateer Monsieur, which was not bound by the concordat, took a prize which the captain of that vessel proceeded to relieve of all valuables and then ordered into port. The commodore opposed this, and sent the prize to L'Orient. This so angered the Monsieur's captain that he parted company with the squadron.
But the episode was only the beginning of Paul Jones's troubles with insubordination of officers. While attempting to capture a brigantine, some of his English sailors deserted in two of his small boats. These could not be overhauled, and Landais insolently upbraided the commodore for their loss, declaring that thereafter he would act entirely upon his own responsibility (which indeed he had been doing right along!). The Cerf and the other privateer then pretended to go off to look for the escaped former English prisoners, and they too failed to appear again.
Paul Jones was now left with only the Bon Homme Richard, the Pallas, the Vengeance, and the Alliance. It would have been better, as later events showed, if the latter ship had decamped with the Cerf and the privateers; for Captain Landais impudently ignored all of Paul Jones's signals. He even had the audacity to leave the squadron for several days at a time, as the cruise continued, returning when the whim seized him. When other prizes were taken he was bold enough to send two of these into Bergen, Norway, where they were sold to the English, a procedure entirely against the wishes of the commodore, and one which was a source of trouble between Denmark and the United States for many years after the war.
Paul Jones was also compelled to humor the other French captains. Several times he changed his course or modified his operations in compliance with their demands. Had he enjoyed an absolute command he would have carried out his pet scheme of laying Leith and Edinburgh under contribution, but he was so afraid that such a venture would miscarry, owing to the uncertain behavior of his men, that he gave it up.
With his old flag-ship, his ragged squadron, and his unruly officers, Paul Jones then cruised along the Yorkshire coast, and succeeded in capturing a number of vessels. Finally, as he was preparing to end his disappointing voyage at The Texel, Holland, in accordance with Dr. Franklin's orders, chance threw in his way the opportunity for making the cruise a brilliant success.
And, Jones-like, this opportunity he seized eagerly. He saw in a flash that it was his one moment for restoring his waning power to its former pinnacle.