Commodore Paul Jones

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

As a commander we may consider his achievements from three points of view: as a strategist, as a tactician, and as a fighter. Strategic operations tend to bring you where sound policy dictates you should be, while tactical maneuvers refer to the manipulation of your force at the point of contact. A man may be a brilliant strategist and a poor tactician, or the reverse; or he may be both, and yet not be a hard, determined fighter. Jones was all three in large measure. His strategic conceptions were excellent. His successful destruction of the fishery industry at Canso, and his attempt upon the coal fleet in the Alfred; the brilliant plan which would have resulted in the capture of Lord Howe by d'Estaing if it had been carried out in time; the project he conceived for taking the homeward-bound East Indiamen by capturing St. Helena as a base of attack, and the other enterprises he urged upon the French Government indicate these things; but the conception which lifted him above the ordinary sea officer was his acute realization of the great principle that should regulate commerce destroying, which is one of the legitimate objects of warfare, and merciful in that it tends to end the conflict, and is aimed at property rather than life.

His idea was that, to be successfully accomplished, it could not be committed to the cruiser or commerce destroyer, but that attacks on centers of trade must be made by forces sufficiently mobile to enable them to cover great distances rapidly, and sufficiently strong to defeat any reasonable force, and then crush the enemy's commerce at vital points. A single ship may catch a single ship upon the high seas, or from a fleet in convoy perhaps cut out two or three; but a descent upon a great body of shipping in a harbor--unprotected as were the harbors of those days--would result in an infinitely greater loss to the enemy. Mahan has demonstrated that the necessary preliminary to the destruction of the enemy's commerce is to batter his navy to pieces--then it is at one's mercy. So far as I know, Jones is the only sailor of his day, or of many subsequent days in any navy, who had a glimmer of an idea in this direction; and, without detracting from Mahan's originality, in a limited sense Jones forestalled him. Mahan, indeed, gives him full credit for his genius on this very point.

The beginning of strategy is to determine the vital point at which to aim, and Jones began well. He tried to carry out his idea of commerce destroying with the Ranger in the Irish Channel, and he came near enough to success to demonstrate the absolute feasibility and value of his conception, given adequate force to carry it out. He had a greater force, of course, under his partial command in his famous cruise in the Bon Homme Richard, but the peculiar constitution of that squadron, which was an assemblage of co-operative ships rather than a compact body responsive and obedient to one will, also prevented him from carrying out his plans. Suppose, for instance, that the Alliance had obeyed his orders, and that the Vengeance, the Cerf, and the privateers had remained with the Pallas under his command, and that all had been well officered and manned! He would have taken the Serapis in half an hour or less, and the great Baltic fleet, worth millions of dollars, would have been at his mercy. What he attempted at Leith he could have carried out at Newcastle and Hull.

The largest force under his command was the Russian squadron in the Liman. He chose his admirable position there with an eye to its strategic possibilities, and it was due to him, and not to the trained and veteran soldier Suvorof, that the fort was placed on Kinburn Point, which practically determined the fate of Otchakoff, since it prevented the Turks from re-enforcing their fleet, and kept them from escaping after Jones had defeated them. Fortune never gave him an opportunity, but it can not be doubted from what he did accomplish with an inferior force that if he had been given a chance he would have made a name for himself as a sea strategist not inferior to that of Nelson or Sampson.

As a tactician he was even more able--perhaps because he enjoyed better opportunities. It was seamanship and tactics which enabled him to escape from the Solebay, and it was seamanship and tactics by which he diverted the Milford from the pursuit of his prizes and insured their safety. His tactics when he fought the Drake were admirable. In his famous battle with the Serapis they were even more striking. One never ceases to wonder how he succeeded in maneuvering his slow, unwieldy ship so as to nullify the greater speed and gun power of the Serapis. His action in laying the Bon Homme Richard aboard the English frigate was the one chance that he had of success, and he made that chance himself.

His tactics in the Liman were even higher than elsewhere. It was he who so maneuvered the boats of the flotilla on June 17th as to precipitate the flight of the Turks; it was he who again, on June 28th and 29th, so placed his ships that he drove the Turks from their stranded flagships. It was he who dispatched the flotilla to clear the right flank, which would have enabled the Russians to take possession of the two frigates if Nassau had not foolishly burned them. It was he who, by his splendid disposition of his ships and the battery on the point, forced the Turkish ships to take ground upon the shoals, in their attempt to escape, where Nassau destroyed them. On the other hand, he was never reckless. He coolly calculated chances and judiciously chose the right course, and he was happy in that the right course was usually the bold and daring one.

In the third capacity of an officer, there is no question as to his willingness and ability to fight. No one ever called him a coward. He certainly exhibited the very highest reach of physical bravery. It was not the courage of the braggart, for he was not continually thrusting it in the face of people on all occasions. Having established his reputation, he was content to rest upon it, and did not seek opportunity--which he did not need--for further demonstration. Nothing could surpass the personal courage and determination with which he fought his ships. Unlike most commanders, who confine their efforts to direction, he labored and fought with his own hands.

We find him heading the boarders on the forecastle of the Richard, and, pike in hand, repelling those from the Serapis; he assists in lashing the two ships together; he takes personal command of the quarter-deck guns, one of which, with the assistance of a few resolute souls, he dragged across the deck from the unengaged side. When the Ariel was drifting in deadly peril upon the Penmarques, with his own hand he heaves the lead. At Kinburn, after repeated efforts to get the galley fleet to move, he leads it forward himself. To ascertain the depth of water, he goes in a small boat under the walls of Otchakoff, within easy range of the cannon. He takes his barge on the Liman in the midst of the hottest engagement, and rows about through the contestants. When the assault is made on the flotilla under the walls of that town, he leads in person, and captures two gunboats by boarding. At Whitehaven, alone he confronts a mob and keeps them in check until the fire which he started himself has gained sufficient headway. The bullying of the Dutch admiral in the Texel can not move him a single foot.

While he did not always exhibit the same amount of moral courage, yet in some very interesting situations he showed that he possessed it in large measure. His physical courage was, of course, natural. His moral courage seems to have arisen in part from an absolute confidence in his own ability and an habitual reliance upon the accuracy of his own judgment. He showed this moral courage when, at the peril of his commission, he assumed the responsibility of piloting the Alfred to her anchorage in the Bahama expedition. He showed it particularly when, after assuming the proper position demanded by good strategy in the opening of the Liman campaign, he refused to be moved from it by the representations of such fire eaters as Nassau and Alexiano. His declining to hoist the French flag, or to sail under a French letter of marque, were evidences of this quality, and he showed it again by sending a present to Louis XVI in the dark days of the Revolution, when respect to the king in his hours of humiliation marked a man immediately.

On the other hand, he showed a sad lack of moral courage if de Ségur's statement be true that he found him, pistol in hand, in his apartments in St. Petersburg, apparently contemplating suicide. Moral courage is perhaps a more universal requisite for true greatness of character than any other virtue, and he did not rise in this sphere quite to the height he attained in the others. In other words, he was greater as a commander and as an officer than as a man.