Nicholson had his sails trimmed like a merchantman’s, and the privateer drew near to inspect, but soon saw that the Trumbull was a man-o’-war. At that, although he carried thirty-four guns to the Yankee’s twenty-eight, he made sail to escape. But Nicholson was after him with a swifter ship, and fight he had to. A right stubborn fight it was, too. It began at a range of 100 yards, and it was soon carried on with yardarms interlocked. The blazing gun-wads of the enemy were several times blown through the open parts of the Trumbull, and she was twice set on fire. But at the end of three hours, and just when the enemy’s fire had slacked away to the point of surrendering, the Trumbull’s mainmast went by the board, dragging the fore topmast and the mizzen after it, and there she lay helpless.
The privateer might have riddled her then, but he had had enough, and was glad to get away.
It was learned afterward that the enemy was the Watt, a privateer especially designed and fitted to whip any American frigate. She lost ninety in killed and wounded. The Trumbull lost thirty-nine in killed and wounded.
Perhaps the most curious fact about this fight was this, that a very large proportion of the Trumbull’s crew were suffering from the worst stage of seasickness when she opened fire. The Trumbull made port, but was unable to see service again until August of the next year.
Meantime the Saratoga, under Capt. James Young, sailed from Philadelphia in October, 1780, and on the 8th fell in with three vessels. By hoisting English colors, the largest, a heavily armed ship, was decoyed alongside, where she reported herself as a merchantman called the Charming Molly, from Jamaica. At this the Saratoga hoisted the American flag, gave her a broadside, and crashing alongside, threw grapnels over her rail and rigging and held her fast.
The first lieutenant of the Saratoga, at this time, was Joshua Barney, whose exploit in the Hyder Ali has already been described. At the head of a party of fifty boarders Barney climbed over the rail of the merchantman, and after a sharp fight cleared her deck. Then it was learned that she carried ninety men. She was manned by a prize crew under Barney, and sent in. The Saratoga then made sail after the other two, who had been fleeing down the wind to escape. It is not hard for a sailorman to picture their hopeless race as the long Yankee, with a cloud of canvas aloft and the white foam roaring away from her bows, came a-whooping after them. It was a hopeless race because they were only brigs, the one carrying fourteen and the other four guns. They were taken without resistance, and manned and sent toward port.
Nevertheless, that was a most disastrous cruise for the Saratoga. With her prizes she sailed for the Delaware, but she fell in with the Intrepid, a ship of seventy-four guns, on duty there. Ordering her prizes to scatter, she made all sail, and with success, for she got away. But she found an enemy more powerful even than a ship-of-the-line. She found, doubtless, an October hurricane, for she was never heard of after she disappeared from the view of the Intrepid’s lookouts. The prizes, too, were all recaptured.
So five warships only were left to carry the American flag. Another was building at Portsmouth, New Hampshire—the America, a seventy-four-gun ship-of-the-line. John Paul Jones was assigned to her, but before she was launched, the French ship-of-the-line Magnifique was wrecked in the Massachusetts Bay, and the Congress, to show its appreciation of what the French had done to help the United States, presented the America, while still on the ways, to the French king.
That act was crushing to John Paul Jones; but when all was ready for the launching, he hoisted the flags of both nations, and so sent her into the water. And that was the last service he rendered his adopted country. No other ship fit for the head man of the navy remained afloat, and the Congress could not build another like the America. And then came the end of the war, when Jones entered the Russian service, subject to a call at any time from the American Congress, and without sacrificing his American citizenship, and there he became a rear admiral. Leaving that service, he was appointed American consul to Algiers, a most important post, as will appear further on; but before the slow mail brought his commission he died in Paris on July 18, 1792.
To return once more to the frigate Trumbull, it must be said that if any doubt as to his courage or persistency was created in the minds of the American people when he abandoned the grounded Virginia without firing a gun in her defence, Captain Nicholson redeemed himself in his last battle in the Trumbull, even though he lost her.