The next day a violent snow-storm darkened the air, with a severe gale blowing from the northwest. Captain Hacker, in command of the Providence, either frightened by the inclement weather or treasonably disposed, took advantage of the darkness of the ensuing night to bear away south, and return to Newport. The Alfred was thus left alone to prosecute the now impossible enterprise.
Captain Jones sent his two prizes, the brig Mellish and the fishing-vessel, to steer for any American port which could be reached. The fishing-vessel was recaptured by the English. But the Mellish was successfully carried into the harbor of Dartmouth, Massachusetts. The clothing, with which she was laden, proved to be of incalculable use to the army of Washington. The Continental troops, thinly clad, had been suffering severely from the freezing blasts of winter.
In the midst of smothering snow-storms and fierce gales, Captain Jones again entered the harbor of Canso. A large English transport, laden with provisions, was aground, near the entrance to the harbor. He sent his boats to apply the torch. The whole fabric, with all its contents, soon vanished in flame and smoke. A large oil warehouse, containing a large quantity of material for the whale and cod fishery, was also consigned to consuming fire. He then continued his voyage along the eastern coast of Cape Breton.
In a dense fog, not far from Louisbourg, he fell in with quite a fleet of coal vessels, from the crown mines in Sydney, under convoy of the English frigate Flora. Favored by the fog, and unseen by the frigate, he captured three of the largest of these vessels. Two days after this he encountered a British privateer from Liverpool, which he took, after but a slight conflict. Thick masses of ice filled the harbor adjacent to the coal mines. He had one hundred and fifty prisoners on board the Alfred. His water-casks were nearly empty, and his provisions mostly consumed. Five prize vessels were in his train. It was clearly his duty to convoy them, as soon as possible, into some safe port. He therefore commenced his return.
The little fleet kept together, guarded by the Alfred, and the Liverpool privateer, which, being armed for battle, Captain Jones had manned and given into the charge of Lieutenant Saunders. Just on the edge of St. George’s Bank, the British frigate Milford was again encountered. It was late in the afternoon when her topsails first appeared above the horizon. All the vessels of Captain Jones’s fleet were on the starboard tack. It was evident that, as the wind was then, the Milford could not overtake them before night, which was close at hand. He signalled his vessels to crowd with all sail, on the same tack, through the night, without paying any regard to the lights which he might show.
After dark both he and the captured privateer tacked, and thus entered upon a different course from that of the rest of the fleet. To decoy the frigate to follow him, and thus draw it away from the prizes, he carried toplights until the morning.[morning.] The Milford gave him hot chase. When the morning light dawned upon the ocean the prizes were nowhere to be seen. The stratagem had thus far proved eminently successful. All that now remained for Captain Jones was to make his own escape with the Alfred, and the privateer under Lieutenant Saunders. The privateer, through mismanagement, was overtaken and captured. A terrible storm, which had been for some time brewing, in the afternoon lashed the ocean, and amid clouds and darkness and foaming surges the Alfred made her escape.
On the 15th of December, 1776, Captain Jones entered the harbor of Boston. He had then, on board the Alfred, provisions and water barely sufficient for two days. To his great gratification he found that his prizes had all safely reached port. The welcome news of the capture of the cargo of clothing, in the Mellish, reached Washington just before he recrossed the Delaware and captured the British garrison at Trenton. Captain Jones, in his letter to the Marine Committee, writes:
“This prize is, I believe, the most valuable which has been taken by the American arms. She made some defence, but it was trifling. The loss will distress the enemy more than can be easily imagined, as the clothing on board of her is the last intended to be sent out for Canada this season, and what has preceded it is already taken. The situation of Burgoyne’s army must soon become insupportable.”
Captain Jones was so impressed with the importance of this capture that he had resolved, at every hazard, to sink the vessel rather than permit it again to fall into the hands of the enemy. He was delayed some time in Boston in disposing of his prizes and in getting rid of his prisoners, or, as he phrases it, of being delivered of the “honorable office of a jail-keeper.”
He passed the winter in Boston, consecrating all his energies to the creation of a navy worthy of the rising republic. Though his feelings were deeply wounded, and his sense of justice greatly outraged, by being, for political reasons, superseded in command by men who were totally unqualified for naval office, and who had never yet served, he did not allow these considerations, though he remonstrated indignantly against the unjust acts, to abate, in the slightest degree, his patriotic zeal. The suggestions he made the Marine Committee have so commended themselves to the judgment of those in command that nearly all of them have been gradually adopted. A few extracts from these long communications will reflect much light upon the character of this remarkable man.