When Jones was well out in the bay the people found a couple of cannon which Jones had overlooked. These they loaded and fired. And Jones, recalling the time when a frigate had chased his brig in the Canadian waters, fired a pistol in return.

From Whitehaven Jones sailed over to the Isle of St. Mary, landed with a force of men, and surrounded the house of the Earl of Selkirk. It was the avowed object of this landing to carry away the earl, “and to have detained him until, through his means, a general and fair exchange of prisoners, as well in Europe as in America, had been effected.” It was to ameliorate the condition of the Americans, held in jail and deliberately starved, that Captain Jones landed.

Pub. by A. PARK, 47 Leonard St.

Tabernacle Walk, London.

“Paul Jones the Pirate.”

From an old engraving in the collection of Mr. W. C. Crane.

Finding that the earl was not at home, the men in the landing party called on their commander to take the silverware from the castle as fair plunder and but a just revenge for the acts of British sailors in America, who had not only looted the homes of the rich, but had driven off the one cow and the one pig of the laborer. Captain Jones permitted them to do so. The following is the British account of the affair, taken from Dodsley’s “Annual Register” (London) for 1778. On page 177 it says:

“Edinburgh, April 27. The following are the particulars of the plundering of Lord Selkirk’s house by the crew of the Ranger, American privateer.

“On the 23d of April, about ten o’clock in the morning, 30 armed men came in a boat from a privateer of 20 guns, and pretending at first to be a press gang, the men surrounded the house, and the officers entered and desired to see the heads of the family. As Lord Selkirk was then at London, Lady Selkirk made her appearance. They soon made known to her who they really were; said they meant to have seized Lord Selkirk’s person had he been at home, and to have carried him off, but all they now asked was to have the plate of the house. As there could be no thought of resistance, this was at once complied with; and having taken possession of it they walked off and reimbarked. They behaved civily, and only the officers presumed to enter the house, and happily her ladyship did not suffer from the alarm.”