In March, 1776, Congress began to issue letters of marque, or licenses to citizens to engage in war against the enemy; and then the sea fairly swarmed with privateers.
In 1777 the American flag was seen for the first time in European waters, when a little squadron of three ships set sail from Nantes in France, and after cruising on the Bay of Biscay went twice around Ireland and came back to France with fifteen prizes. As France had not then acknowledged our independence, they were ordered to depart. Two did so; but one of them, the Lexington, was captured by the British, and the other, the Reprisal, was wrecked at sea.
%159. Paul Jones.%—Meanwhile our commissioners in France, Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, fitted out a cruiser called the Surprise. She sailed from Dunkirk on May 1, 1777, and the next week was back with a British packet as a prize. For this violation of French neutrality she was seized. But another ship, the Revenge, was quickly secured, which scoured the British waters, and actually entered two British ports before she sailed for America. The exploits of these and a score of other ships are cast into the shade, however, by the fights of John Paul Jones, the great naval hero of the Revolution. He sailed from Portsmouth, N.H., November 1, 1777, refitted his ship in the harbor of Brest, and in 1778 began one of the most memorable cruises in our naval history. In the short space of twenty-eight days he sailed into the Irish Channel, destroyed four vessels, set fire to the shipping in the port of Whitehaven, fought and captured the British armed schooner Drake, sailed around Ireland with his prize, and reached France in safety.
For a year he was forced to be idle. But at last, in 1779, he was given command of a squadron of five vessels, and in August sailed from France. Passing along the west coast of Ireland, the fleet went around the north end of Scotland and down the east coast, capturing and destroying vessel after vessel on the way. On the night of September 23, 1779, Jones (in his ship, named Bonhomme Richard in honor of Franklin's famous Poor Richard's Almanac) fell in with the Serapis, a British frigate. The two ships grappled, and, lashed side by side in the moonlight, fought one of the most desperate battles in naval annals. At the end of three hours the Serapis surrendered, but the Bonhomme Richard was a wreck, and next morning, giving a sudden roll, she filled and plunged bow first to the bottom of the North Sea. Jones sailed away in the Serapis.
[Illustration: Benjamin Franklin]
In the Revolution the British lost 102 vessels of war, while the
Americans lost 24—most of their navy.
%160. Revolutionary Heroes.%—It is not possible to mention all the revolutionary heroes entitled to our grateful remembrance. We should, however, remember Lafayette, Steuben, Pulaski, and DeKalb, foreigners who fought for us; Samuel Adams and James Otis of Massachusetts, and Patrick Henry of Virginia, who spoke for freedom; Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution; Putnam who fought and Warren who died at Bunker Hill; Mercer who fell at Princeton; Nathan Hale, the martyr spy; Herkimer, Knox, Moultrie, and that long list of noble patriots whose names have already been mentioned.
%161. The Treaty of Peace.%—The story is told that when Lord North, the Prime Minister of England, heard of the surrender of Yorktown, he threw up his hands and said, "It is all over." He was right; it was all over, and on September 3, 1783, a treaty of peace (negotiated by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay) was signed at Paris.
Meantime the British, in accordance with a preliminary treaty of peace signed in November, 1782, were slowly leaving the country, till on November 25, 1783, the last of them sailed from New York.[1] Washington now resigned his commission, and in December went home to Mt. Vernon.
[Footnote 1: They did not leave Staten Island in New York Bay till a week later. For an account of the evacuation of New York see McMaster's With the Fathers, pp. 271-280.]