by Tim McGrath
At dawn the two American sailors reached the shore and made for the encampment of General William West, who sent word immediately to Hopkins. From his headquarters West could see the stranded Diamond keening hard to port, but with enough water running beneath her to keep from totally careening and allowing her starboard guns to be tilted and loaded.
Hopkins was ecstatic. Here was his chance, at long last, to cut the albatross of the Glasgow off his neck. He had transferred his broad pennant to the frigate Warren, but he sent neither her nor her sister frigate Providence downriver to confront the paralyzed Diamond, and for good reason: the shallows that trapped the British ship were just as treacherous for deep-draft American frigates. Instead he took two dozen hands off the Warren, added them to the crew of the sloop Providence, and summoned Abraham Whipple, the very man who had destroyed the Gaspee in similar conditions years ago. With Rhode Island’s toughest old salt and a nimble sloop to sail in the most familiar of waters, Hopkins headed downriver to victory. What could possibly go wrong?
Since it was Hopkins, everything.
Initially he was right about his choice of ship. The wind, blowing exceedingly hard from the west, would have prevented the larger ships from getting downriver in time. When the Providence arrived to give battle (around three p.m.), Fielding had already made one attempt to heave off the bar. And help was on the way from the tender Centurion, Captain Richard Braithwaite, who sent his barge and longboat ahead to assist the Diamond. Through his spyglass Hopkins could see a large two-decker coming up fast, a mile and a half away: the hated James Wallace’s Experiment.
By this time the local militia was getting into position to fire on the Diamond from nearby Warwick Island. Hopkins had the Providence’s boat take him there, and immediately assumed total command of the action.
Once ashore, he found militiamen throwing up breastworks while they waited for two 18-pounders, all the better to batter the Diamond with. After conferring with their colonel, Hopkins returned to the sloop, sending her close to the Diamond’s stern before he ordered his men to open fire. Fielding returned the broadside with his bow chasers, while the two guns on the island fired two dozen rounds at the frigate, damaging her hull. At that moment, the colonel signaled Hopkins to return to the island.
Once the commodore returned, the colonel informed him that they were out of ammunition. Hopkins could offer them powder and wads, but lacked the proper shot for guns this size. He sent men to Providence for more ammunition and climbed back into the longboat as darkness set in.
He had just scaled the sloop’s gangway when the colonel signaled him again. “Lower away,” Hopkins roared, and was rowed back to Warwick Island a third time. The colonel wanted bread—his men needed sustenance. A furious Hopkins wheeled around towards his longboat. It was gone: his men had not tied the boat properly. It was drifting away, too far out in the freezing-cold water to be retrieved. Hopkins was marooned. Shortly thereafter, the Experiment arrived. Unlike the Gaspee, the fortunate Diamond escaped.53
The whole affair made Hopkins look a fool, not so much unsuccessful as inept. It was worse than the Glasgow—at least she could fight back effectively. Despite his avowed empathy for the Reverend Hopkins, the commodore could not help himself, cursing like the sailor he was all the way back to Providence.
For many congressmen, getting rid of Hopkins now seemed easy. Keeping their newest hero happy was something else.
In November 1776, Hopkins sent John Paul Jones on that risky mission to Nova Scotia to take or destroy the enemy’s colliers, then rescue the American prisoners toiling in the New Breton coal pits. Already smarting from his low rank on the Captains List, Jones was determined to complete his mission before winter storms and ice prevented him from doing so. In his hold he carried 583 barrels of rum, enough to keep both his crew and any rescued tars warm on the voyage home.54
The Alfred and Providence were sailing east near Tarpaulin Cove when a privateer, the schooner Eagle, was spotted. As both ships were undermanned, and suspecting that a Rhode Island privateer was likely to have deserted Continentals on the muster roll, Jones sent both ships’ barges over to inspect the crew. Marine Lieutenant John Trevett, back from his adventures with Biddle, commanded the Providence’s barge, while Lieutenant John Peck Rathbun of the Alfred led the other, his men dressed as Indians in an attempt to hide their identities from their fellow Rhode Islanders.
Once aboard, the men used the time-tested way of seeking hiding sailors by stabbing the bags below deck with their cutlasses. They found four. The Eagle’s captain, Isaac Field, thought the inspection was over. It was not: Rathbun and Trevett took twenty-four hands from the privateer, abusing Field’s men with enough cursing to make Hopkins proud. Before departing, Rathbun cut the mainsheet (the long rope that controlled the mainsail) and ordered the bulkhead smashed. Once his barges were raised, Jones was off and sailing; later, Field would have his revenge.55
It took ten days for Jones to reach Cape Breton, his mastheaders searching for prizes throughout the passage. The North Atlantic was getting rough; green water crashed over the gunwales and ran down the hatches, soaking every hand to the bone. On November 11 Jones took the brigantine Active, the goods in her hold worth £600 sterling. The next morning, Jones hit the jackpot, capturing the Mellish, her hold stuffed with thousands of uniforms for Burgoyne’s army. Jones deemed her the most valuable ship yet taken by privateer or naval vessel. Writing his patron Joseph Hewes and his agent, Robert Smith, Jones chortled, “This will make Burgoyne ‘Shake a Cloth in the wind’ and check his progress on the Lakes.”56
On the sixteenth, the Alfred and Providence took another prize, the snow Kitty from London, carrying oil and fish. Her captain informed Jones that the Nova Scotia harbors were already frozen over. News travels fast from ship to ship, and bad news festers in the fo’c’sle. The crew of the Providence began grumbling openly about tarrying any longer this far north. Thanks to the rough conditions, both ships were leaking badly. Each day the temperatures dropped by degrees. Hacker told Jones that the very hearties who had served Jones so well when he commanded the Providence were now cold, wet, fearful, and rebellious. They wanted to go home.
Without hesitation, Jones ordered the Alfred’s gig lowered and had himself rowed to the Providence. He called all hands on deck and faced his old shipmates, raising his voice above the howling winds, doing his best to emulate Henry V and rally his men to “relieve our Captive ill treated Brethren from the Coal Mines.” He returned to the Alfred, believing he had silenced the “Unacceptable murmuring” aboard the Providence.
He had not. The “Epidemical discontent” returned as soon as he climbed into the gig. That night, Hacker, cowed by the mood before the mast, slipped away for Rhode Island. The absence of the Providence did two things: it steeled an angry Jones’s resolve to complete his mission, while his crew, aware of why the Providences had slipped their cable and concerned over their own ship’s condition, began muttering themselves.57
The sailors’ worries were justified. Generations of mariners had learned to abandon the North Atlantic in wintertime. It was dangerous enough to climb the ratlines and inch along footropes in the fairest weather; rolling seas, strong, bitter winds, and ice-covered lines made routine labors death-defying. Nonetheless, Jones made for Canso again, sailing through a blizzard that literally blew the Alfred to Cape Sable.
Once off Canso, he sent his longboats into the harbor under cover of darkness, where they burned both a transport laden with Irish stores and an oil warehouse. Before departing, he seized a schooner to replace the Providence, and learned from an islander that three frigates had been searching for him ever since his earlier expedition commanding the Providence. Other captains would have heeded such a warning; Jones took it as a compliment.
Fog slowed his progress when, on the twenty-fourth, Jones found himself surrounded by three ships. Believing them to be the frigates that were after his hide, he dete
rmined “to sell my liberty as dearly as possible” and stood for the nearest one. They were colliers, the very coal ships Hopkins had ordered captured or destroyed. Jones took all three. Luckily, he was not spotted by their escort, the HMS Flora, a thirty-two-gun frigate.
One of his prisoners approached Jones: the American prisoners he had been ordered to rescue were gone, conscripted into the Royal Navy. Despite ice, dreadful storms, and a disappearing sloop, Jones had been unwavering in his quest to complete his mission as long as it stood even the slimmest chance of success. Now, with no one to rescue, 140 prisoners below deck, dwindling supplies, a disheartened crew, and horrific weather, it was time to go.58
Before departure he caught one more valuable prize, the ten-gun privateer John. With four frigates now hunting for him, he turned the John over to his friend John Rathbun and sent out orders detailing his signals for the other four vessels, telling the prize-masters to make for the most convenient port if separated. Rathbun was to keep the John within three cable lengths of the Alfred; if it came to a fight, the leaky flagship would need help.59
Remarkably, Jones kept his squadron together until December 7, sailing through strong gales as they reached the Massachusetts coast. A stiff wind filled every sail when the Alfred’s mastheader spied a large ship on the horizon twelve miles distant. She was the Milford, the same frigate Jones had eluded on his last cruise. Keeping the John alongside, Jones signaled the other ships to crack on every sail and flee. Deciding he wanted Rathbun with him on his quarterdeck, he sent Lieutenant Robert Saunders to command the John. Looking through his spyglass, Jones watched the Milford’s captain, John Burr, set his fore and mizzen topsail, run out his guns to give chase to the Alfred and John—exactly what Jones wanted. As night set in, Jones mounted a lantern aloft and led the Milford away from the fleeing prizes. The ruse worked. Burr believed the ships now to be the Flora and the very colliers now slipping through his fingers.60
The next morning Jones signaled Saunders. The Alfred’s lethargic condition prevented Jones from sailing too close to the Milford, not knowing her strength. He sent the John to windward of the frigate and signaled “if She was of Superiour or Inferiour Force,” thereby to know whether to fight or flee. The clear skies were disappearing behind a line of storms when Saunders signaled Jones: Superiour Force.
Superior or not, Jones ordered his guns run out. Once the Milford was in range, he let loose a broadside, hoping to give Saunders every available second to sail away. Then, with the Milford following, Jones “drove the Alfred Seven and Eight Knots under two Courses to a point from the Wind”—an incredible bit of sailing for a ship in such poor condition. At nightfall, Burr changed course; Jones presumed he took off after the John, confident that he had taken the frigate far enough off course to keep his prize safe.
But the John did not escape. When he spotted her, Burr made such a straight beeline that he overtook her in thirty minutes. Lieutenant Saunders struck his colors, believing Jones had abandoned him.61
Five days later another snowstorm struck the Alfred, damaging her sailing abilities to the point that Jones had to forsake Boston for the trickier harbor at Plymouth, running his ship aground in the process. It would be days before the Alfred limped into Boston harbor. His arrival in port matched his mood: for all he had accomplished, Jones considered his cruise a failure. It weighed heavily on his conscience. “My success hath indeed fallen far short of my wishes,” he wrote to the Marine Committee.62
Once he arrived in Boston, Jones’s disappointment in himself turned into anger at practically everyone else. He was no sooner on dry land than he learned he was being sued by the owners of the privateer Eagle over his seizure of her crew and the vandalism of Rathbun’s “Indians.” The owners openly accused Jones of an act of piracy, demanding £10,000 in restitution.63
While his fellow captains in Philadelphia were preparing their ships for sea or joining Washington’s campaign, Jones took a room at a Boston waterfront tavern, where he interrupted his fits of pacing with a prodigious outpouring of letters. Before departing for Nova Scotia, he made a stirring proposal to Robert Morris, calling it “An expedition of Importance.” He would take part of the navy’s original fleet, sail to the African coast, and strike a blow where the British least expected. His proposal was not answered.
With snow whipping along the Boston docks, Jones needed enemies to fight. He found them in his own navy. His first target was John Manley, number two on the infamous list and Washington’s favorite, named commodore of “the General’s Fleet” months earlier. Manley, Jones wrote, kept the other captains at “an Awful distance” while haughtily flying a commodore’s broad blue pennant atop his frigate, the Hancock. Just the sight of this ship, which the British later called “the finest frigate in the world,” was enough to send Jones into a jealous pique: with her beautiful lines and an exact replica of the president of Congress as her figurehead, resplendent in yellow breeches, white stirrups, and a blue coat with yellow buttonhooks. Manley, like Nicholas Biddle, was a veteran of the British navy. Unlike Biddle, he made sure everyone knew it. Jones called him “a Stick Officer”—a derisive term for a bosun’s mate, which was as far as Manley had ascended in the king’s service.
Manley’s overbearing attitude had already alienated him from the captain of the other frigate in the harbor, Hector McNeill of the Boston. Both being Scots, Jones and McNeill struck up a friendship that would last throughout the war. Like McNeill, Jones believed Manley to be “a Despicable Character” who had no business in their navy. Having endured the snobbery of British officers before the war, Jones was not about to tolerate the same from an American captain. “The Navy is in a wretched Condition,” he moaned to Morris.64
To complicate Jones’s Christmas affairs further, Esek Hopkins got involved, writing from Providence how glad he was to hear that Jones, and thus Hopkins’s son Esek (a midshipman under Jones), was safe. Then Hopkins lowered the boom: Jones was losing the Alfred. She had been given to Elisha Hinman on the Captains List, and Jones was back to commanding the sloop Providence. In closing, Hopkins mentioned the Eagle lawsuit, believing the “great Noise” over it would amount to nothing.
Once again, Hopkins was wrong. And while he pledged to deter the suit from going anywhere, he had not informed the Eagle’s owners that Jones had seized the men on Hopkins’s orders. Jones believed Hopkins was not defending him at all, let alone acknowledging that Jones’s deeds as a captain far outshone those of practically everyone above him. He accused Hopkins of “Smoking his pipe at home” while others—Jones in particular—risked their lives at sea.65
All of this, of course, reached Hopkins, who rose—or was it lowered?—to the occasion. He sent a dolorous letter to the Marine Committee, reporting that he had received several complaints from Jones’s officers and crew (including a letter from the imprisoned Lieutenant Saunders).
The committee saw things differently. Hopkins’s attacks on Jones seemed the latest in a long series of lamentations from the commodore. Hopkins was right that lack of manpower, money, and even luck had contributed to his precipitous drop in prestige, but now he was grousing about an officer who did what Hopkins did not do: succeed. To Morris, Jones was “a fine fellow and shou’d be constantly employed,” and Hancock agreed. He admired “the spirited conduct of little Jones,” perhaps seeing in the Scotsman a maritime version of his diminutive self. “Send him out again,” he ordered Morris.66
Morris was also impressed with Jones’s vision and insight. Here was a pragmatic captain who saw what the navy needed and dreamed of what it could accomplish. The fact that both the ideal officer needed to make the necessary changes and the one required to lead these bold missions were both named John Paul Jones did not matter to Morris. Jones wanted to fight.
Accordingly, Morris sent him a belated Christmas present, a long letter whose contents gave Jones exactly what he wanted to read. Morris acknowledged Jones’s deeds (“Congress . . .
never doubted that your Active Genius would find usefull employment for the Ships you command”) and ideas (“Your letters [are] always entertaining & in many parts useful”). While it was too late to attempt Jones’s suggested cruise to Africa, Morris now ordered him to “take the Alfred, Cabot, Ham[p]den & Sloop Providence” and wreak havoc on British islands and shipping from the Virgin Islands to Mexico.
For Jones, this was too good to be true. Unfortunately, thanks to the weather, the British blockade of Rhode Island, the abject conditions of the assigned ships, and Hopkins’s obfuscations upon hearing of Jones’s mission, it was. After weeks of pleading and arguing with Hopkins, Jones gave up. Determined to make his case for a fit command in person, Jones mounted a horse and rode through snow and mud around the British in New York, arriving in Philadelphia in late March. By then, Biddle was out to sea, Manley and McNeill were trying to man their frigates for a cruise, and James Nicholson was back overseeing the needs of his frigate in Baltimore.67
Before Jones reached Philadelphia, Hopkins’s own officers filed a formal grievance to Congressman Robert Treat Paine. The Diamond debacle was one embarrassment too many. They branded Hopkins as “a man that ridicules religion,” who called Congress “a pack of damm’d fools,” treated prisoners “in the most inhuman and barbarous manner,” became an “effectual obstacle” in getting the frigates manned and, finally, conducted himself “in a very blamable manner” against the Diamond. He also cursed.68
After composing a similar complaint to the Marine Committee, they sent Marine Lieutenant John Grannis to Philadelphia to personally deliver their damning statements. There were already more than enough congressmen who were tired of Hopkins’s excuses and complaints, so there was more than a whiff of politics in what came next. James Nicholson’s appointment as top captain was originally a sop to the southern states to placate their justified resentment of the overt New England influence on the navy and its New England–bred commodore. The officers’ grievances were exactly what Congress needed to ensure that there was only one number one. Ordered to testify before the Marine Committee, Grannis augmented the accusations of his peers. One sentence sealed Hopkins’s fate: sailors “would not join or reenlist in the navy so long as Commodore Hopkins had command in it.”69
