The failure was probably caused by sheer cowardice. And it must be admitted that it was indeed one of the most desperate of enterprises. These fifteen men, having crossed an ocean three thousand miles wide, had penetrated the heart of a British harbor, to apply the torch to seventy vessels.
The crews could not have amounted to less than ten men, on an average, to each vessel. Thus the British sailors alone in that half of the harbor, would amount to seven hundred men. The assailants, it will be remembered, amounted to but fifteen men, in a frail boat, armed only with swords and pistols. Even the bravest might recoil from such odds. But as these men had volunteered for the enterprise, and knew all its perils, it was the basest poltroonery in them to prove recreant at the crisis of the expedition.
The torches which Captain Jones’s boat party carried, had also, by some strange fatality, all burned out. Captain Jones, however, obtained a light from a neighboring house, entered a large ship, from which the crew fled, and deliberately built a fire in the steerage. This ship was closely surrounded by at least a hundred and fifty vessels lying side by side, and all aground. Captain Jones, to make the conflagration certain, found a barrel of tar, and poured it upon the kindling. The flames soon burst from all the hatchways, caught the rigging, and, in fiery wreaths, circled to the mast-head.
“The inhabitants,” writes Captain Jones, “began to appear in thousands, and individuals ran hastily toward us. I stood between them and the ship on fire, with a pistol in my hand, and ordered them to retire, which they did with precipitation. The sun was a full hour’s march above the horizon, and, as sleep no longer ruled the world, it was time to retire. We reëmbarked without opposition, having released a number of prisoners, as our boats could not carry them. After all my people had embarked, I stood upon the pier, for a considerable space, yet no person advanced. I saw all the eminences round the town covered with the amazed inhabitants.”
When the boats had been rowed some distance from the shore, the English began to run to their forts, to open fire from the great guns. To their surprise they found the garrisons locked up in the guard-houses, and the cannon all spiked. After some delay they found one or two cannon on the beach, which were dismounted, and which had not been spiked. These they hastily loaded and fired; but with such ill-directed aim that the shot all fell wide of their mark. Captain Jones’s men, in derision, fired their pistols, returning the salute.
If the boats could have entered the harbor a few hours earlier, the success would doubtless have been complete, and not a vessel would have escaped the flames. “But what was done,” writes Captain Jones, “is sufficient to show that not all their boasted navy can protect their own coasts; and that the scenes of distress, which they have occasioned in America, may be soon brought home to their own door.”
The Ranger now struck across the broad mouth of Solway Frith, to St. Mary’s Island, on the Scottish shore, in Kirkcudbright Bay. Here Lord Selkirk had his residence, in a fine mansion. It will be remembered that the father of Paul Jones had been attached to his household. The British were shutting up our most illustrious men in the hulks of prison ships, and treating them with barbarity which would have disgraced savages. Captain Jones deemed it of the utmost importance, as a measure of humanity, to seize some distinguished Englishman and hold him as a hostage, to secure the better treatment of our own noblemen who had fallen into the enemy’s hands. For this patriotic movement the English press denounced him in terms of unmeasured abuse. The motive which influenced him was an exalted one. And he merits the highest encomiums for the manner in which he conducted the enterprise. In justice to Captain Jones, I feel bound to give the narrative in his own words. It is contained in letter which he wrote to the Countess of Selkirk, with whom he was personally acquainted, immediately after the Ranger returned from its cruise to Brest.
“Ranger, Brest, May 8.
”To the Countess of Selkirk.
“Madam—It cannot be too much lamented that, in the profession of arms, the officer of fine feeling and of real sensibility should be under the necessity of winking at any action of persons under his command which his heart cannot approve. But the reflection is doubly severe, when he finds himself obliged, in appearance, to countenance such actions by his authority.