He was still poor and still obscure when on December 7, 1775, he was appointed a lieutenant in the new Continental Navy, In that capacity he was ordered to the Alfred, a small converted merchantman, the flagship of Commodore Hopkins. He joined the ship immediately, and in the latter part of December he had the honor of hoisting with his own hands the first naval flag of an American squadron. This was the famous yellow silk banner with a rattlesnake and perhaps a pine tree emblazoned upon it, and with the significant legend, "Don't tread on me!"
Hopkins made an abortive expedition to New Providence, in which Jones had but one opportunity to distinguish himself. At the peril of his commission, when the regular pilots refused to do so, he volunteered to take the Alfred through a difficult and dangerous channel. Needless to say, he succeeded—he always succeeded!
His first independent command was the little schooner Providence, of seventy men and twelve four-pound guns. In the Fall of 1775 he made a notable cruise in this schooner; he skirmished with, and escaped from, by seamanship and daring, two heavy frigates, the Solebay and the Milford; in four months he captured sixteen vessels, eight of which were sent in as prizes, five burned, three returned to certain poor fishermen; and he destroyed property aggregating a million dollars.
Later, in command of the Alfred, with a short crew of one hundred and fifty, when he should have had three hundred, he made another brilliant cruise in which he burned several British transports, captured one store-ship, laden to the gunwales with priceless munitions of war and supplies, cut out three of the supply fleet from under the guns of the Flora frigate, and had another smart brush with the Milford.
II. Jones First Hoists the Stars and Stripes
Commissioned captain on the 14th of June, 1777, in the same resolution which established an American flag, he was ordered to the Ranger, a little ship-rigged corvette of three hundred tons. In her, on the 4th of July of the same year, he hoisted the first stars and stripes that had ever waved over a ship-of-war. In Quiberon Bay—famous as one of the battle-grounds of the world—on the evening of the 14th of February, 1778, in the Ranger, he received the first formal recognition ever given by a foreign fleet to the United States in a salute to the American flag. As it was after sunset when the salutes were exchanged, and in order that there should be no mistake about it, the next morning, the 15th of February, Jones transferred his flag to the Independence, a small privateer, and deliberately sailed through La Motte Picquet's great fleet of towering line-of-battle-ships, saluting and receiving salutes again.
Still on the Ranger, on the 24th of April, he fought the British sloop-of-war Drake, of equal force and larger crew, to a standstill in an hour and five minutes. When the Drake struck her flag, her rigging, sails and spars were cut to pieces. She had forty-two killed and wounded—more than one-fifth of her crew—and was completely helpless. The Ranger lost two killed and six wounded.
In 1779 Jones hoisted his flag on the Duc de Duras, a condemned East Indiaman, which would have been broken up had he not turned her into a makeshift frigate by mounting forty guns in her batteries—fourteen twelve-pounders, twenty nines and six eighteens. This, in honor of Franklin, he named the Bonhomme Richard. Accompanied by the fine little American-built frigate Alliance and the French ship Pallas, with the brig Vengeance, and the cutter Cerf, he cruised around England, taking several prizes, and striking terror all along the shore.