1. It was in the spring of 1778 that the name of John Paul Jones became so terrible along the western coasts of Britain—his native coasts, as familiar to him as to a Solway fisherman.
2. And what a tough, valiant, intractable, audacious hero he was, with his foppish ways and costume, his romantic, fantastic courtesy and enthusiasm! He had been a Nelson, if he had had Nelson's opportunities. He was a little man, too, like Nelson, though compactly built, and his voice was "soft and still, and small, and his eye had keenness and softness in it, and, full as he was of the spirit of mastery, he was all gentleness, consideration, generosity, to men who obeyed him." Like all the greatest fighters, he performed his immortal exploits while he was young; he was but thirty-two when he did his greatest day's work.
3. On the southwestern coast of Scotland John Paul Jones was born. Nothing could keep him from the sea. At twelve he was apprenticed to a merchant in the American trade, in whose ships he served seven years, as cabin-boy, and sailor before the mast. At the age of twenty-four we find him settled in Tobago, engaged in commerce, and possessing considerable property. In 1774 he came to the colonies. The Revolution breaking out, he obtained a lieutenant's commission in the forming navy of the United States. He acquired sudden and very great distinction. In one short cruise he took sixteen prizes, of which he burned eight and sent in eight. He had some sharp actions with king's ships, and captured one, which had on board a company of British troops, and ten thousand suits of clothes—a most precious acquisition in 1776.
4. It was Paul Jones who first hoisted the Stars and Stripes. On the very day, June 14, 1777, on which Congress resolved that "the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation," they also resolved that "Captain Paul Jones be appointed to command the ship Ranger." As he had been the first to hoist the flag of the United States on a ship-of-war, so, on entering the harbor of Brest in February, 1778, seven days after the signing of the treaty of alliance, he was the first naval officer who had the pleasure of acknowledging a salute to that flag from a foreign power.
5. Soon after, Captain Jones sailed in the Ranger for the Scottish coast, on his first cruise in British waters. On the seventh day he was between the Isle of Man and Whitehaven waters, which he knew as familiarly as New-Yorkers do the Narrows. Whitehaven was the town at which he had been apprenticed, and from which he had sailed for ten years. It was a town of several thousand inhabitants, and its harbor contained three or four hundred vessels closely moored together. Jones had formed the daring scheme of running in near the port, landing two parties, burning all these ships, and retiring before an armed force could be raised to repel him.
6. At midnight, with two boats and thirty-one men, provided with combustibles and dark-lanterns, he left his ship and made for Whitehaven pier. Day was dawning when he reached it, for the light wind had made him hours too late in starting. He would not abandon the enterprise, however, unpromising as it seemed. Sending one boat to the north side of the harbor to fire the vessels collected there, he went himself to do the same office to the stranded fleet on the south side.
7. Familiar with every foot of the ground he had to traverse, he boldly landed under the guns of the two forts that protected the harbor, and he himself climbed the wall of one of them, and spiked every gun, without giving alarm. All the sentinels, he found, had gone to the guard-house, and there he secured and disarmed every one of them without giving or receiving a scratch. Then, accompanied by one man, he scaled the other fort and spiked its guns. Returning to the pier to begin the conflagration, he found there the other boat, which had come back for a light, the candles in the lanterns having burned out. Jones now discovered that all his own candles were consumed, and there was not in either boat a spark of fire, or the means of kindling one. The day, too, had dawned, and every second was precious. Nevertheless, he sent one of his men to a house near by for a light, who soon returned successful, and the boats again separated for the work of destruction.
8. Ten minutes later a barrel of fat, ignited in the steerage of a ship that lay surrounded by a hundred and fifty others, all left high and dry by the receded tide, shot a bolt of roaring flame through the hatchway. The people of the town, in hundreds, were soon running to the pier. Captain Jones stood by the side of the burning vessel, pistol in hand, and ordered the crowd to keep their distance, which they did. Not till the flames had caught the rigging and wreathed about the mainmast, not till the sun was an hour high, not till the whole town was rushing amazed to the scene, did Jones give the order to embark.
9. His men entered the boats without opposition, the captain releasing, at the last moment, all his prisoners but three, who were all he had room for. He stood on the pier till his men were seated in the boats, and for some little time after; then, stepping gracefully into his place, he gave the word, the oars splashed into the water, and they moved toward the ship, while from every eminence in the vicinity hundreds and thousands of silent, astonished spectators gazed upon the unearthly scene.
10. "To the forts!" was the cry on shore, as soon as the spell of the enemy's presence was removed. "Their disappointment," says Jones, "may easily be imagined, when they found at least thirty heavy cannon, the instruments of their vengeance, rendered useless! At length, however, they began to fire, having, as I apprehend, either brought down ship-guns, or used one or two cannon which lay on the beach dismounted, and had not been spiked. They fired with no direction, and the shot falling short of the boats, instead of doing us any damage, afforded some diversion, which my people could not help showing, by discharging their pistols in return for the salute." The people of the town succeeded in confining the ravages of the fire to a few ships. Had it been possible, he remarks, to have landed a few hours sooner, he could have burned three hundred vessels.