The Life and Adventures of Rear-Admiral John Paul Jones, Commonly Called Paul Jones

by John S. C. Abbott

“It was now time to release the honest fishermen, whom I took up here on the 21st. And, as the poor fellows had lost their boat, she having sunk in the late stormy weather, I was happy in having it in my power to give them the necessary sum to purchase everything new which they had lost. I gave them also a good boat, to transport themselves ashore; and sent with them two infirm men, on whom I bestowed the last guinea in my possession, to defray their travelling expenses to their proper home in Dublin. They took with them one of the Drake’s sails, which would sufficiently explain what had happened to the volunteers. The grateful fishermen were in raptures; and expressed their joy in their huzzas as they passed the Ranger’s quarter.”

This was indeed extraordinary magnanimity when we contrast it with the conduct of England, bombarding and burning our defenceless villages, immuring our most illustrious men in the dungeons of hulks, worse than the oubliettes of the Bastile, and robbing poor fishermen of everything, burning their boats, and often impressing them into her navy, and compelling them to serve the guns against their own countrymen.

Contrary winds so impeded the progress of Captain Jones that it was not until the 5th of May that he had skirted the western coast of Ireland, and reached Ushant, a French island a few miles distant from the extreme northwestern coast of France. The Ranger was accompanied by the two vessels she had taken, having the torn and battered Drake in tow. A ship hove in sight to the leeward, steering for the Channel. Captain Jones cast off the Drake, by cutting the hawser, and gave chase to the stranger. His swift-sailing vessel overtook the chase in little more than an hour, and hailing her, found that she was a Swede. He therefore immediately hauled by the wind and returned to the southward to rejoin the Drake, which was then scarcely perceptible in the distant horizon.

The evolutions of the Drake surprised him. She seemed to be trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the Ranger. Several large ships appeared steering into the Channel. But Jones was prevented from pursuing them in consequence of the extraordinary evolutions of the Drake. He made signals. They were totally disregarded. It was not until the next day he succeeded in overtaking the runaway Drake. Her commanding officer, Lieutenant Simpson, was immediately placed under arrest for disobedience of orders.

It would seem that the lieutenant left America with the impression, and doubtless a correct one, that, upon arriving in France, Captain Jones was to be transferred to another and much finer ship, while he was to be left in command of the Drake. He consequently seemed to feel that the Drake and her crew belonged to him, and the temporary captain was rather a passenger whom he was conveying to his destination. He therefore assumed airs, and was guilty of petty acts of insubordination, which were very annoying to Captain Jones, who was a strict disciplinarian.

Moreover, Lieutenant Simpson allowed his republican principles to carry him so far as to advocate a republican form of government even upon the decks of a war-ship. He declared to the sailors, that they, being free and enlightened American citizens, were entitled to decide, by the voice of the majority, respecting all questions of importance on ship-board; that the captain was to be their agent to perform their will. Simpson was daily growing more discontented with the position he occupied, and was probably intending to run away with the Drake, one of the best finished of England’s war-ships, to repair her in some French harbor, and to sail forth on a cruise upon his own responsibility, perhaps as a French privateersman.

But for this insubordination on the part of Lieutenant Simpson, Captain Jones would doubtless have taken several other important prizes. The Ranger, with her two prizes, returned to the harbor of Brest, and cast anchor there on the 9th of May, having been absent but one month. In the mean time the French squadron, under Count d’Estaing, had been made ready for sea. The news of the brilliant achievements of Paul Jones electrified France and appalled England. The alarm infused along the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland amounted almost to a panic. Lookout vessels were constantly cruising along the shores. The militia were called out. New fortifications were constructed. The whole population of the seacoast was kept in a state of constant alarm.

But Captain Jones was now in great pecuniary embarrassment. The Colonial Government was so poor that it could not honor his drafts. He was not only unable to refit his ship, but was in want of the means of providing the daily food for his crew. When he left America he had advanced, from his own means, seven thousand dollars for the public service. He had, in a foreign land, two hundred prisoners of war to be provided for, a number of his own sick and wounded, and his ship to be repaired, shattered by a terrible engagement, and destitute of provisions and stores. And he was not allowed to dispose of his prizes until he received further orders from the home Government.

After a vast amount of mental suffering he succeeded, by his personal credit with distinguished French noblemen, Count d’Orvilliers and the Duke de Chartres, in raising money to meet his immediate and most pressing wants, and in refitting both the Ranger and the Drake for sea. The British seamen who were prisoners, if released, would be immediately forced on board the British men-of-war to man their guns. It was also necessary to retain them to effect exchanges for our own captive countrymen, whom the British were treating with such great barbarity. In his letters to the Government he urged the imperious necessity of supplying the seamen with the little necessaries and comforts of life. He also, while entreating that the English prisoners should be treated with kindness, and all their needful wants supplied, urged that they should by no means be released without an exchange. He now, during several months, passed through a series of trials, mortifications, and disappointments, a detail of which would but weary the reader. In carefully examining his voluminous correspondence, during this season of trial, when his whole soul was glowing with the desire for active service, and when the inactivity to which he was doomed was, to him, almost insupportable, I cannot find a single expression unworthy of his noble character, as a self-denying patriot, a gallant officer, and a humane gentleman.

Humanity required that England should feel the horrors of war which she was so mercilessly inflicting upon her infant colonies. In no other way could she be induced to sheathe the sword. He proposed to the Commissioners in Paris another expedition, of three fast-sailing frigates, to destroy three hundred vessels in the harbor at Whitehaven, to burn the town, and to destroy the important coal-works there.