Nor should the daring cruises of Captain Gustavus Conyngham in the Surprise be overlooked. One year before Captain Jones appeared on the other side of the Atlantic as commander of an American warship, Conyngham scoured the coast of England and picked up prizes in the very chops of the English Channel. Our commissioner in Europe, Silas Deane, wrote:
“Conyngham, by his first and second bold expeditions, is become the terror of all the eastern coast of England and Scotland, and is more dreaded than Thurot was in the late war.”
Then there were Captains Thomas Thompson and Elisha Hinman, who one year before Captain Jones’ appearance in English waters, executed a dash against a British fleet which is second in audacity only to Jones’ attack on the British fleet off Spurn Head. On the night of September 2, 1777, the thirty-two-gun frigate Raleigh, and the twenty-four-gun ship Alfred, commanded by Captains Thompson and Hinman, while on their way across the ocean, discovered a fleet of merchantmen, escorted by four British warships, among them the Druid. Availing himself of the cover of night, Thompson worked his way into the fleet undetected, and getting alongside the Druid opened a terrific fire on her so that in a short time she was reduced to a sinking condition. Realizing the folly of fighting the combined escort, Thompson then made good his escape, and arrived safely in France with the Raleigh and Alfred.
Nor should the daring of an American privateer be overlooked, which, very much after the manner of Jones at Whitehaven, sent a force of men ashore on English soil and made prisoners of a lieutenant and an adjutant of a British regiment, as the following extract from the private letter of an English gentleman will show:
“An American privateer of twelve guns came into this road [Guernsey] yesterday morning, tacked about on the firing of guns from the castle, and, just off the island, took a large brig bound for this port, which they have since carried into Cherbourg. She had the impudence to send her boat in the dusk of the evening to a little island off here called Jetto, and unluckily carried off the lieutenant of Northley’s Independent Company with the adjutant, who were shooting rabbits for their diversion.”
Not only in English home waters were American naval efforts being expended with conspicuous advantage to the cause before Jones appeared on the scene, but in British colonial possessions our hardy mariners created unprecedented havoc in the enemy’s commerce, which did much to bring the mother country to terms. An English correspondent writing from Jamaica under date of May 2, 1777, said that in one week upward of fourteen English ships were carried into Martinique by American warships. Another Englishman, writing from Grenada, April 18, 1777, said:
“Everything continues excessively dear here, and we are happy if we can get anything for money by reason of the quantity of vessels that are taken by American privateers. A fleet of vessels came from Ireland a few days ago. From sixty vessels that departed from Ireland, not above twenty-five arrived in this and neighboring islands, the others (it is thought) being all taken by the American privateers. God knows, if this American war continues much longer, we shall all die of hunger. There was a Guineaman that came from Africa with 450 negroes, some thousand-weight of gold dust, and a great many elephant teeth; the whole cargo being computed to be worth twenty thousand pounds sterling, taken by an American privateer a few days ago.”
Captain Jones’ brilliant career does not suffer by a comparison with these extraordinary achievements on the high seas. On the contrary, his record is the more resplendent by the contrast. These incidents are mentioned only to show that while Jones was the brightest star in the galaxy of our naval heroes, “there were others” who contributed to the lustre of American naval renown in the Revolution.
Having shown, briefly, the work done by other distinguished sea fighters in our struggle for independence, we can better estimate the worth of the truly great achievements of Captain John Paul Jones while in the service of the United States. They suffer no diminution by having Captain Jones shorn of the false title of “Admiral.” There have been only three “Admirals” in the United States navy: Farragut, Porter, and Dewey. The nearest approach to an admiral in our navy of the Revolution was the title conferred upon Esek Hopkins, who was made “commander-in-chief” of our sea forces, a rank intended to correspond to that held by Washington on land. On the escape of the British warship Glasgow, in Long Island Sound, 1776, Hopkins was unjustly blamed for the mishap, and the title of “commander-in-chief of the navy” was dropped.
Neither is it necessary to call Jones the “father of the American navy.” If such a title could be properly applied to any one, that person is John Adams, who, from the beginning, strenuously advocated the need of a navy, and worked harder than any one man of his time for its establishment on a permanent basis. The fame of Captain Jones needs none of these artificial bolsters for its support. It stands on the solid foundation of personal merit and nothing can add to or detract from it. We have ample evidence of this in the extraordinary manifestation of popular interest in the removal of his remains from a foreign soil to a final resting place in America.