His arm crushed the Tory and mutinous crew
That strove to have freemen inhumanly butchered;
Remember his valor at proud Flamborough,
When he made the bold Serapis strike to the Richard;
Oh! he robbed of their store
The vessels sent o'er
To feed all the Tories and foes on our shore,
He gave freemen the spoils and long may they revere
The name of fair Liberty's bold Buccaneer.
In 1778 he was sent with the 18-gun ship Ranger to prowl about the British coasts. He entered the Irish Channel, seized the Lord Chatham, set fire to the shipping at Whitehaven, and captured the British 20-gun sloop Drake, after a fierce fight. With the Drake and several merchant prizes, he made his way to Brest, and prepared for a more important expedition which was fitting out for the following year.
[1778]
'Tis of a gallant Yankee ship that flew the stripes and stars,
And the whistling wind from the west-nor'-west blew through the pitch-pine spars,—
With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys, she hung upon the gale,
On an autumn night we raised the light on the old head of Kinsale.
It was a clear and cloudless night, and the wind blew steady and strong,
As gayly over the sparkling deep our good ship bowled along;
With the foaming seas beneath her bow the fiery waves she spread,
And bending low her bosom of snow, she buried her lee cat-head.
There was no talk of short'ning sail by him who walked the poop,
And under the press of her pond'ring jib, the boom bent like a hoop!
And the groaning water-ways told the strain that held her stout main-tack,
But he only laughed as he glanced aloft at a white and silv'ry track.
The mid-tide meets in the channel waves that flow from shore to shore,
And the mist hung heavy upon the land from Featherstone to Dunmore,
And that sterling light in Tusker Rock where the old bell tolls each hour,
And the beacon light that shone so bright was quench'd on Waterford Tower.
The nightly robes our good ship wore were her own top-sails three,
Her spanker and her standing jib—the courses being free;
"Now, lay aloft! my heroes bold, let not a moment pass!"
And royals and top-gallant sails were quickly on each mast.
What looms upon our starboard bow? What hangs upon the breeze?
'Tis time our good ship hauled her wind abreast the old Saltee's,
For by her ponderous press of sail and by her consorts four
We saw our morning visitor was a British man-of-war.