Paul Jones was to carry a letter from Congress to the American commissioners in Paris.
This letter told the commissioners to buy a new fast-sailing frigate for Captain Jones, and to have it fitted up as he desired. They were then to advise him as to what he should do with it.
VII.—The Cruise of the Ranger.
When the Ranger sailed out of Boston harbor, the stars and stripes of the American republic waved from the mast head.
Paul Jones was the first naval officer to raise this flag. You remember that two years before, on the Alfred, he had first hoisted the pine tree emblem.
When Jones with his ship entered Quiberon Bay, in France, the French admiral there saluted the American flag. This was the first time that a foreign country had recognized America as an independent nation.
Paul Jones anchored the Ranger at Brest and went to Paris to deliver his letter, and lay his plans before the commissioners. He told them two important things:
First, that our navy was too small to win in open battle with the fleets of the English.
Second, that the way to keep the English vessels from burning, destroying, and carrying away property on the American coasts, was to send vessels to the English coasts to annoy the English in the same way.
The commissioners thought that these plans should be carried out at once; and since a new frigate could not be purchased for some time, they refitted the Ranger for his use.