The Story of John Paul Jones

by Chelsea Curtis Fraser

XII

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.