All this was learned on April 21st. That night Captain Jones undertook capturing the Drake as she lay at anchor. Waiting until night had fully come, he stood up the bay, in spite of a freshening gale, until he saw the Drake lying at anchor and rolling gently to the swell. At that the Ranger was brought up into the wind almost beneath the jibboom of the Drake, and then Captain Jones ordered his anchor let go.
Had his order been obeyed instantly, the Ranger would have swung to her cable down across the cable of the enemy and then yardarm to yardarm fair alongside.
Knowing nothing of the presence of an American man-of-war in those waters, the crew of the Drake would have been found in their hammocks and the Ranger would have carried her by boarding, with little if any loss of life.
Unfortunately, the Ranger’s anchor was not dropped at the word, and when, at last, it did catch in the mud, Captain Jones found himself between the Drake and a lee shore and too far astern for effective firing. The Ranger was, in fact, in almost as bad a situation as that in which Jones had intended to place the Drake. To remain was to invite destruction, so the Ranger’s cable was cut the instant she brought a strain upon it, and she was headed out into the bay for another attempt at the same manœuvre, leaving the anchor watch of the Drake to wonder what possessed the crew of what they supposed was an especially ill-managed merchantman.
However, the second attempt was not made. The weather came on fierce and cold, and the next morning, from his deck in the North Channel, Captain Jones saw the hills on both shores white with snow. So he headed away for another attempt on the shipping at Whitehaven.
Because the attempt on Whitehaven has been more persistently misrepresented by British writers than any other act of the Revolutionary war it is necessary to give not only the exact facts, but the reasons which influenced Jones as an American naval officer in making the descent. To fully appreciate his motives, it is only necessary to recall but a few incidents of the British onslaught upon the Americans—to recall the burning of Portland, Maine, by Captain Mowatt, who “dispersed at a late season of the year, hundreds of helpless women and children, with a savage hope that those may perish under the approaching rigours of the season, who may chance to escape destruction from fire and sword”—to recall that among the accounts which Sir Guy Carleton turned in for audit to the British Parliament was one item of “five gross of scalping knives,” which he distributed to the savages under his command for use on the unfortunate Americans that they might fall upon, and which were used for scalping women and children as well as prisoners of war.
John Paul Jones went ashore on the British coast to burn the British shipping and no more. He was determined to “put an end, by one good fire of shipping, to all the burnings in America.” He was also determined to capture an earl to hold as a hostage, and compel a brutal enemy to treat captured Americans as civilized nations have always treated prisoners of war. He missed the earl, and his men took the earl’s silver plate to the value of £500, which plate Jones purchased afterwards with his own money, and returned to the earl with a manly letter.
An English Caricature of John Paul Jones.
(“From an original drawing taken from the Life on board the Serapis.”)