The Story of Paul Jones: An Historical Romance

by Alfred Henry Lewis

It is daybreak on a day in middle August when Commodore Paul Jones, with the Richard as flagship of the little squadron of four, puts the Isle of Groaix astern, and points for the open ocean. His course is west by north, so as to weather Cape Clear, and fetch the Irish coast close aboard. With winds light and baffling, the squadron’s pace is slow; it is nine days out of France before Cape Clear is sighted. Then it creeps northward along the Irish coast, Commodore Paul Jones vigilant and alert. He takes a prize or two, and one after the other sends into French ports the British ships Mayflower and Fortune. The young commodore’s brow begins to clear; those prizes comfort him vastly. At least the cruise shall not be registered as altogether fruitless.

It is the last day of August; the Hebrides lie off the Richard’s starboard beam. A stiff gale from the northwest sets in, and the squadron is driven east by north under storm staysails. This dovetails with the desires of Commodore Paul Jones; wherefore he welcomes the gale as friendly weather. Also, it gives him a chance to try out the Richard, which shows lively with the wind abaft the beam, but dull to the confines of despair when sailing on a wind. Close-hauled, the Richard makes more lee than headway.

“Which means, Dick,” says Commodore Paul Jones judgmatically, to Lieutenant Richard Dale—“which means, Dick, that we must have the weather-gage before we lock horns with an enemy.”

Off Cape Wraith, Commodore Paul Jones is so fortunate as to take two further prizes. He turns them over to Captain Landais, with orders to send them into Brest. The Frenchman, who only receives an order for the purpose of breaking it, sends them into the port of Bergen, where the Norwegians promptly turn them over to the English, on an argument that they do not officially know of any government called the United States.

Commodore Paul Jones works slowly and cautiously southward along the east coast of Scotland. Off the Firth of Forth he decides to attack the Port of Leith, and stands in for that fell purpose. An adverse gale, seconded by off-shore currents, comes to the rescue of the threatened Scotchmen; in the teeth of his best seamanship Commodore Paul Jones and his squadron are driven out to sea. Thus the chance passes, and the sack of Leith is abandoned. It is a sore setback to the hopes of Commodore Paul Jones; but it lifts a load from the Scottish heart, to whom the Stars and Stripes have brought visions of pillage and torch and desolation. The news flies over England; beacons burn on each headland; while every semaphore is telling that the dreaded Paul Jones is hawking at the English coasts. The word causes a tremendous loss of British sleep.

Off Spurn Head our industrious young commodore sinks one collier and chases another ashore. Being full of curiosity, he takes a peep into the mouth of the Humber, and discovers a frightened fleet of British merchant vessels. The merchantmen are in a flutter at the sight of the Richard’s dread topsails; the frigate that it conveying them has its work cut out, to nurse them into anything like calmness.

Following the look into the Humber, that sets so many timid merchantmen to shivering, Commodore Paul Jones puts out to sea under doublereefs. He plans to stand off and on throughout the night, and swoop on those tremblers, like a hawk on a covey of quail, with the first gray streaks of dawn. The frigate will doubtless fight, but the optimistic young commodore reckons on making short work of that man-of-war. In the middle watch the little brig Vengeance runs under the Richard’s lee, bringing word of a nobler quarry. The Baltic timber fleet, fifty sail in all, convoyed by the Serapis and the Countess of Scarboro has just put into Bridlington Bay.

At this good news, Commodore Paul Jones gives up his designs touching the frightened covey of merchantmen in the Humber. He prefers the Baltic timber ships with the Serapis, the difference between the one and the other being the difference between deer and hare. He orders the Vengeance to stand out to sea, find the Alliance, and tell Captain Landais to join him off Scarboro’ Head.

“But do not,” says he to Captain Ricon, “give Captain Landais this notice in the guise of an order. He would make a point of disobeying, and seize on its reception as a pat occasion for insulting you.”

While the Vengeance stands eastward in search of the Alliance, Commodore Paul Jones signals the __Pallas__ to follow, and turns his bows for Scarboro’ Head, then forty miles away.