John Paul Jones

“ Nothing but the piercing black eyes which burned and gleamed out of his face in the darkness bespoke the high humanity of the man.
"Is it--" "Captain John Paul Jones, at your service, gentlemen."
"My sword," said Pearson, tendering it to him formally. "I regret," he added ungraciously, "at being compelled to strike to a man who has fought with a halter around his neck."
"Sir," said Jones, with a magnanimity as great as his valor, "you have fought like a hero, and I make no doubt that your sovereign will reward you in the most ample manner. Mr. Brooks, escort these gentlemen to my cabin." ”

“ John Paul Jones performs Daring Deeds on the English Coast.—Afterwards Paul Jones went to France, and sailing from Brest in his ship the Ranger, he swept the seas all around England, taking or destroying every hostile ship he met. He was so audacious as to sail into British ports, wrecking and pillaging everywhere. He entered the harbor of Whitehaven, England, surprised the forts, spiked the guns, and burned some ships at the docks. English commerce was crippled, insurance rates rose to a fabulous price, and merchants met with enormous losses. ”

“ Ethan descended after him, and when once they were within the cabin and the door closed, the commander of the Ranger continued:
[51] “I was expecting the packet which you bring, but hardly expected so youthful a messenger.”
Ethan smiled. John Paul Jones was a gentleman who possessed the knack of manner that causes strangers to feel at their ease; and the boy replied:
“And I hardly expected to find the captain of this ship so young a man.”
“Age on the sea,” said John Paul Jones, humorously, “comes with experience and not with years.” ”

“ When Ethan had finished he drew out the packet of papers sealed with the big splotches of red wax, and John Paul Jones locked it carefully away in a heavy, oaken chest.
“Mr. Hancock was right,” said he to Ethan. “Everything depends upon an alliance with France. With the help that her heavy fleets would render us, the troops that she could send now and then, and above all the embarrassment that a war between her and England would cause the latter country, we could gain a peace with perfect freedom and honor.” ”

“ John Paul Jones went ashore on the British coast to burn the British shipping and no more. He was determined to “put an end, by one good fire of shipping, to all the burnings in America.” He was also determined to capture an earl to hold as a hostage, and compel a brutal enemy to treat captured Americans as civilized nations have always treated prisoners of war. He missed the earl, and his men took the earl’s silver plate to the value of £500, which plate Jones purchased afterwards with his own money, and returned to the earl with a manly letter. ”

“ As Ethan and Dale regained the main deck, the ammunition once more began to come through the hatches; but the guns were still silent.
All this time the Serapis had been pouring death into the huge, helpless hulk of the American. The Richard was a wreck—shattered, reeling and all but sinking. Her crew had deserted her main deck, her dead lay about in heaps. The moonlight, streaming down upon the scene showed the slight figure of John Paul Jones as he worked desperately at a dismounted gun, almost alone, but with a determination to win that only death could destroy. ”

“ Castle had put off in a boat and informed him that John Paul Jones was operating on the coast.
The Englishman trusted to the guns of Scarborough Castle to protect the merchantmen while they stood out to sea and prepared for action.
It was night before the Richard came up with them, as the breeze was very light; about eight bells both British ships tacked and stood in for shore; Jones at once altered his course with a view of cutting them off. At sight of this manœuvre the skipper of the Pallas thought the crew of the Richard had mutinied in the face of the foe ”

“ With simple ceremony but eloquent suggestion the splendid banner, under the impulse of Paul Jones's own hands, went up to the Ranger's peak. As it spread out to the breeze under the star-lit sky, the Scotch captain said, with a deep feeling none could help noticing: "That flag and I are twins. Born the same hour from the same womb of destiny, we cannot be parted in life or in death. So long as we can float we shall float together. If we must sink, we shall go down as one!"
To the courier who had brought the dispatches, Paul Jones now turned. ”

“ Shortly after daybreak next morning John Paul Jones left the Ranger in charge of his first officer, who had come on board; and then he and Ethan and Longsword took horse and started upon the road to Paris.
“The French seem hungry for news,” said Captain Jones, as they rode along.
“I suppose the British ministry has received tidings of Burgoyne’s disaster before this,” said Ethan. “It will set them in a panic when it does come, anyway, and they’ll be ready to grant some concessions, I dare say.”
“Nothing succeeds like success,” remarked the captain of the Ranger. ”

“ I have had many enemies, my lad, and few friends; it is comforting to think that I have gained a new one.”
“I should think,” said Ethan, after a pause, “that one like you would have no lack of friends. There is not an American worthy of the title but what pronounces the name of [75] John Paul Jones with admiration. You are known in every hamlet and town throughout the colonies; your deeds upon the sea in the cause of liberty are upon every lip.”
The moody captain smiled and patted his young companion upon the shoulder kindly. ”

“ Commodore John Paul Jones, the first of the great American fighters, and not the least splendid in the long line, was born of humble origin in a southern county of Scotland. His family was obscure, his circumstances narrow, his advantages meagre, his opportunities limited. At the age of twelve he became a sailor. Genius rose, superior to adverse circumstances, however, and before he died he was one of the most accomplished officers who ever served the United States. The greatest men of America and France took pleasure in his society and were proud of his friendship. ”

“ Our navy officers of the Revolution were bred, as a rule, in the hard school of experience, and, to most of them, the task of writing was about as distasteful as taking a dose of unpalatable medicine. The result has 302been that, while the world for one hundred and twenty-five years has been fully informed of the superb heroism of John Paul Jones, it has been kept in comparative ignorance of what his contemporaries accomplished. ”

“ The truth is that John Paul Jones entered the American navy in December, 1775, when every man in the service was a citizen of Great Britain. He became a citizen of the United States when the new nation was born. At the end of the war he could make the proud boast that “I have never borne arms under any but the American flag, nor have I ever borne or acted under any commission but that of the Congress of America.” ”

“ Men in a crowd numbering hundreds fell over each other to get out of range. A more amusing instance of the power of a resolute man over a mob will rarely be found in history.
For fifteen minutes John Paul Jones, single-handed, held at bay more than a thousand men. Then he entered his boat and rowed away, leaving the townsmen to fight the fire and shed tears of gratitude over the deserter who had saved them from destruction at the hands of fifteen men armed with cutlasses and flint-locked, single-barrelled, shoot-if-you-are-lucky pistols! ”

“ By the combined efforts of crew and prisoners, the fire in both ships was extinguished. Then all bent their efforts to removing the wounded and prisoners from the Richard to the Serapis, together with ammunition and other valuables.
All the rest of that night the heroic old craft kept afloat, with the Stars-and-Stripes—the same flag the Colonial maids of Portsmouth had given Paul Jones upon his departure in the Ranger—flying proudly at her peak. Then, as if waiting for daylight to illuminate her last action before man, she slowly sank just as the sun came up across the waters in the east. ”

“ Meantime the British government denounced John Paul Jones as a pirate and put a price upon his head. It offered ten thousand guineas for him, dead or alive, and that sum then was equal to more than $100,000 now.
It is to the glory of this naval captain that it was so. The English writers to this day deliberately misrepresent the man. They strive to distinguish him from all other heroes of the American Revolution because he was born in Scotland. They pretend to admire those who were born in the colonies. ”

“ When war broke out between England and her American colonies, John Paul Jones was commissioned as a first lieutenant by the Continental Congress, on the 22nd of December 1775. In 1776 he participated in the unsuccessful attack on the island of New Providence, and as commander first of the “Providence” and then of the “Alfred” he cruised between Bermuda and Nova Scotia, inflicting much damage on British shipping and fisheries. On the 10th of October 1776 he was promoted captain. ”

“ With the sailors he was always a favorite. Before the vessel reached American waters he could climb a mast or yardarm with the most nimble of them, and was as fearless as the captain himself when the waves were running high.
At last the green shores of America were sighted one morning by the lookout at the masthead. Near sunset the Friendship dropped anchor in the quiet waters of the Rappahannock River, not far from the plantation where Willie Paul lived with William Jones, the cousin who had adopted him years ago. ”

“ Are you not--"
"Captain John Paul Jones, at your service, madam," interrupted the little officer, with another bow, thrusting his hand in his bosom.
"Yes," said the young woman; "they said it would be you. Why, every news-letter in the land describes you as--as--"
"Pirate, madam, say it; you have not hesitated to speak the word heretofore. A rebel--a traitor--a pirate," he said, throwing up his head proudly,--"'tis a penalty which one pays for fighting for freedom ”

“ Never had Paul Jones seen men fight more tigerishly or with better aim than his were now doing. As the two ships were going off the wind, which was light, they both rolled considerably and together; in other words, when the Ranger went down to port the Drake came up to starboard. Quite early in the action, the Scotch captain had noticed that his quarter-gunners had caught the Drake's period of roll and were timing to fire as their muzzles went down and the enemy's came up. By this practice they were hulling the British ship prodigiously below her water-line and everywhere below her rail. ”

“ He was not a quarrelsome man; but he was the easiest person in the world for a quarrelsome man to pick a quarrel with. Good men all liked him; sneaks and tyrants hated him bitterly."
We may add that all records go to show that Paul Jones was as much a father to his crew as he was a commander. He interested the sailors in the smallest details of their work, gave them lessons in rope-splicing, or reproved a young chap for his "lubberly walk" with a personal demonstration of the correct swagger to be kept in mind by Jack afloat. ”

“ Let me tell you what I know about this man and how I know it; the public mind needs to be refreshed. When John Paul came to Virginia, some three years before the war of the Revolution, looking after an estate left him by his brother, he visited Halifax, North Carolina, at that time a place of considerable repute. Here he made the acquaintance of those grand old patriots, Allen and Willie Jones; he was a young man but an old tar, with a bold, frank sailor bearing that attracted their attention; he became a frequent visitor at their homes, where he was always welcome ”

“ Lurking in the background to haunt British thought was the growing American navy. John Paul was a Scots sailor, who had been a slave trader 205 and subsequently master of a West India merchantman, and on going to America had assumed the name of Jones. He was a man of boundless ambition, vanity, and vigor, and when he commanded American privateers he became a terror to the maritime people from whom he sprang. In the summer of 1779 when Jones, with a squadron of four ships, was haunting the British coasts, every harbor was nervous. ”

“ You’d better have some men sent on board to take charge of this craft. It’s a prize that Longsword and I took some distance up the coast.”
Lieutenant Wallingford looked his surprise, but said nothing. A crew was soon placed on [217] board the Condor, and Ethan and the Irish dragoon were taken to the Ranger.
John Paul Jones was undisguisedly delighted at the unexpected return of the two adventurers. He shook their hands and expressed his pleasure warmly.
“We are headed for Carrickfergus,” he said. “We understand that the frigate Drake has orders to come out after us.” ”

“ When quite a young man, John's father, a Lowlander, had also found employment on the Craik estate as gardener, and later by reason of his faithful work and popularity in the community, he had been made game-warden. The young gardener and the young lady's-maid soon fell in love with each other, were married, and in due course of time were blessed with five children, of whom Johnnie was the youngest. He was born in the year 1747. William, the brother, had gone to live with a cousin, William Jones, a childless planter in Virginia, before John was born. Willie had never been back since that day. ”

“ Captain Saltonstall also took a look at her. Several conjectures were raised as to her identity, and then the glass was handed to the first-lieutenant.
"What do you think she is, Mr. Jones?" asked Commodore Hopkins. He had more confidence in Paul Jones than he dared to confess, even to himself.
"I should say she was a British frigate, sir," was the lieutenant's prompt reply. "She is too small for a ship-of-the-line, and she does not carry sail enough for a merchantman under this breeze. It would seem to me that she is merely cruising about on the lookout for somebody." ”