Paul Jones

by Hutchins Hapgood

Jones's next exploit was the famous capture of the Drake on April 23. Previous to the attack on Whitehaven, while off Carrickfergus, he had conceived the bold project of running into Belfast Loch, where the British man-of-war Drake, of twenty guns, was at anchor; where he hoped to overlay the Drake's cable, fall foul of her bow, and thus, with her decks exposed to the Ranger's musketry, to board. He did, indeed, enter the harbor at night, but failed after repeated efforts, on account of the strong wind, to get in a proper position to board. Three days later, after the Earl of Selkirk affair, Jones was again off Carrickfergus, looking for the Drake, which, having heard of his devastations from the alarmed country people, sailed out to punish the invader of the sacred soil of England. The two sloops of war were very nearly matched, though the Drake technically rated at twenty guns and the Ranger at eighteen. When they came within range of one another they hoisted their colors almost at the same time, but the Drake hailed:—

"What ship is that?"

Jones directed the sailing-master to answer:

"The American Continental ship Ranger. We are waiting for you. Come on. The sun is now near setting, and it is time to begin."

The Ranger then opened fire with a full broadside. The Drake replied with the same, and the two ships ran along together at close quarters, pouring in broadsides for more than an hour, when the enemy called for quarter. The action had been, as Jones said in his terse official report, "warm, close, and obstinate." There was little manœuvring, just straight fighting, the victory being due, according to Jones, to the superior gunnery of the Americans. At first Jones's gunners hulled the Drake, as she rolled, below the water-line, but Jones desired to take the enemy's ship as a prize, rather than to sink her, and told his men so.

"The alert fellows," he said in a letter to Joseph Hewes, "instantly took this hint and began firing as their muzzles rose, by which practice they soon crippled the Drake's spars and rigging, and made her an unmanageable log on the water. I am persuaded that if I had not advised them to this effect, my gunners would have sunk the Drake in an hour! As it was, we had to put spare sails over the side after she struck, to keep her afloat, and careen her as much as we could the next day to plug the holes they had already made between wind and water."

The Drake, indeed, was almost a wreck, while the Ranger was little injured. Jones lost only two men killed and six wounded, to the enemy's approximate loss of forty-two killed and wounded. It was the first battle of the war which resulted in the capture of a regular British man-of-war by a ship of equal if not inferior force. The Drake belonged to a regularly established navy, not accustomed to defeat. Perhaps that fact inspired her commander with overconfidence, but McKenzie's statement of the cause of the victory is no doubt correct: "The result," he said, "was eminently due to the skill and courage of Jones, and his inflexible resolution to conquer." That resolution, which was indeed a characteristic of Jones, reached on at least one occasion, that of the later battle with the Serapis, a degree of inflexibility which amounted to genius.

The effect of this bold cruise was great. Jones had not, however, been the only American captain, by any means, to render good service in destroying the commerce of the enemy and in annoying the British coast. Before the French alliance more than six hundred British vessels fell a prey to American cruisers, mainly privateers. There were, likewise, captains in the regular United States navy who had before this cruise of Jones's borne the flag to Europe. The first of these was the gallant Wickes, in the summer of 1777. Though Jones was not the first captain, therefore, to make a brilliant and destructive cruise in the English Channel, he was nevertheless the first to inspire terror among the inhabitants by incursions inshore. The cruise of the little Ranger showed that the British, when they ravaged the coast of New England, might expect effective retaliation on their own shores; and the capture of the Drake inspired France, then about to take arms in support of the American cause, by the realization of what they themselves had longed to do—to worst England on the high seas—with increased respect for their allies. It filled Great Britain with wild, exaggerated, and unjust condemnation of Paul Jones, who has been looked upon for more than a hundred years, and is even to-day in England, by sober historians, as a bloody-handed, desperate buccaneer. The persistent charge, often of late refuted, hardly needs refutation, in view of the well-authenticated fact that Jones never served on a war vessel except under a regular commission. Moreover, he was a man too ambitious and too sensible to hurt his prospects by being anything so low and undistinguished as a pirate.

After the battle with the Drake, Jones saw that he would have to bring the cruise to a close. His crew of 139 men had, through the necessity of manning the several merchant prizes and the Drake, been reduced to eighty-six men, and he consequently put into Brest, reluctantly, on the 8th of May, 1778. He was there met by the great French fleet, then actually at war with England, and he and his prize were admired by visiting French officers. From that time Jones, hated in England, was a hero in France, fêted whenever he was at the capital, and favored by fair ladies.