The next morning, April 19th, when near the extreme southern cape of Scotland, called the Mull of Galloway, he overtook one of the merchant schooners of the enemy, from which he took what he wanted, sent the crew ashore, and sunk the vessel. By a just retribution he was thus chastising England for the crimes she was committing on the American coast. Hudibras writes:
“No man e’er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law.”
England was astonished and enraged in finding the laws of naval warfare which she had enacted, and had so long practised with impunity upon all other nations all around the globe, now brought home to herself. She called Paul Jones all manner of hard names. He was a beggar, a thief, a traitor, a highway robber, a pirate. He was thus denounced for doing that, in the English and Irish Channel, which England’s fleet was doing all along the coast of America. And yet it was heroic in Jones thus to brave all the terrors of the British navy, while it was ignoble and mean for that proud navy to plunder and burn the few unprotected vessels of the feeble colonies struggling for existence in the New World.
England had long made her banqueting-halls resound with the song,
“Britannia needs no bulwarks
To frown along the steep;
Her march is on the mountain wave,
Her home is on the deep.”
It was the noble mission of Paul Jones to teach Britannia that the arm of the avenger could reach her even in her own Channel, and in her own harbors. Thus England was compelled to drink of the poisoned cup which she was forcing to the lips of others.