A Letter from John Paul Jones to Thomas Jefferson.
From the original at the Lenox Library.
CHAPTER XI
THE YEAR 1779 IN AMERICAN WATERS
LUCKY RAIDS ON BRITISH TRANSPORTS AND MERCHANTMEN—DISASTROUS EXPEDITION TO THE PENOBSCOT—THE TRUMBULL’S GOOD FIGHT WITH THE WATT—THE FIRST YANKEE LINE-OF-BATTLE-SHIP—WHEN NICHOLSON, WITH A WRECKED SHIP AND FIFTY MEN, FOUGHT FOR AN HOUR AGAINST TWO FRIGATES, EACH OF WHICH WAS SUPERIOR TO THE YANKEE SHIP—CAPTAIN BARRY’S EXASPERATING PREDICAMENT IN A CALM—THE LAST NAVAL BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION.
While John Paul Jones was moving heaven and earth to get away to sea with his famous Bonhomme Richard, the American naval ships in home waters were by no means idle, even though British successes, with combined land and naval forces, had seriously reduced the fleet. On March 18, 1779, a squadron consisting of the frigate Warren, thirty-two guns, Capt. John Burroughs Hopkins; the Queen of France, twenty-eight guns, Capt. Joseph Olney, and the famous old Ranger, of eighteen guns (she that whipped the Drake), under Captain Simpson, sailed from Boston. A few days later a privateer was captured. From her crew it was learned that a fleet of armed transports and storeships had sailed with supplies from New York for the British army in the South.
How the Yankee squadron crowded on sail in pursuit of this fleet; how the ships of the fleet were sighted two days later, jogging along at the ordinary pace of the slowest; and how they came to the wind or squared away or tacked or wore ship in a confused effort to escape at the sight of the Yankees would have been something worth seeing by any one interested in ocean races.
There were nine of the transports, and seven were taken. These included the Jason, twenty guns; the Maria, sixteen guns; the Hibernia, eight guns, and four unarmed transports. Captain Campbell and twenty other English army officers were in the fleet en route to join their regiments, and these were by no means an unimportant part of the capture when one recalls the treatment Americans were receiving from the British when captured.
The Captain Hopkins who had this good luck was a son of Esek Hopkins, the first American naval captain. He carried his prizes into port at once.
Then, in May the frigate Queen of France, under Capt. John P. Rathbourne; the Ranger, under Simpson, and the Providence (twenty-eight guns), under Capt. Abraham Whipple, went on a cruise. Whipple, it will be remembered, was the leader of the party disguised as Indians who, with paving stones as their chief weapons, captured and destroyed the schooner Gaspé in the first salt-water conflict of the war (1772). Captain Rathbourne was he who, in the little brig Providence, captured New Providence Island on January 27, 1778, with six vessels that were in the harbor.