Give Me a Fast Ship

by Tim McGrath

  By this time, news of Lord North’s changes in both personnel and policy had reached France. Admiral Howe was to be replaced by Vice Admiral James Gambier—not nearly as popular as “Black Dick”—while General Howe was to be succeeded by Sir Henry Clinton. But the big news lay in new orders from Lord North’s government. As First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich gave a grave assessment of the condition of the King’s Navy: in a word, alarming. The French navy alone, he believed, would tip the scales in America’s favor. Lord Germain’s orders to Clinton stressed a drastic change from the Howes’ “olive branch and musket” approach:

  Relinquish the Idea of carrying on offensive Operations against the Rebels within Land, and as soon as the Season will permit, to embark such a Body of Troops as can be spared . . . on board of transports under the Conduct of a proper number of the King’s Ships, with Orders to attack the Ports on the Coast, from New York to Nova Scotia, and to Seize or destroy every Ship or Vessel . . . destroy all Wharfs and Stores, and Materials for Ship-building . . . [and establish] a Post upon the Delaware River.

  Germain also directed that once New England and the mid-Atlantic ports were occupied or destroyed, “it is the King’s Intention that an Attack should be made on the Southern Colonies with a View to the Conquest and Possession of Georgia & South Carolina.” The Howe brothers’ gentlemanly approach to the rebellion was coming home with the Howes.4

  Since Jones’s arrival in France, he had shared his ideas as to how the Continental Navy should be employed with the American commissioners, just as he had at home with Robert Morris and Joseph Hewes. Now he was about to put his theories into action, not against Nova Scotia fishing villages but in the British Empire’s front yard. Jones was in Philadelphia in 1775 when news reached Congress of the burning of American towns by the British in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He wanted to pay them back in kind—not by destroying civilian homes but “by making a good fire in England of shipping,” he declared. Ever cocksure—at least in public—he wrote John Ross, American agent at Nantes, “the world lays all before me.” He sailed on April 8.5

  One week later, foul weather greeted Jones on his return to St. George’s Channel—waters he knew well from his merchant days. He had big plans for his return to home waters: ship burnings, coastal raids, and a kidnapping.

  The Ranger was making for Whitehaven, the very town Jones first shipped from as a boy. It remained a bustling port; scores of ships—perhaps over a hundred—might be in the harbor for Jones to torch. The last time a British seaport had been raided was in 1667 by Dutch admiral Willem Joseph van Ghent during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

  From Whitehaven, Jones would cross the Mull of Solway to Kirkudbright, where he had been ignominiously jailed over the Mungo Maxwell affair. Jones intended to kidnap the local laird, the Earl of Selkirk, a friend of William Craik and the Maxwells. His ransom would not be demanded in coin but in the release of American sailors, imprisoned at Mill Prison and Forten Prison in England. Jones saw his plans as the perfect combination of patriotic risk and retribution. Young John Paul was not deemed worthy enough for the Royal Navy; John Paul Jones wanted to show them otherwise.6

  The peril of being in enemy waters did not concern Jones nearly as much as the tempest swirling below deck. Sometime during this brief passage, Lieutenant Jean Meijer, a Swede who had signed on this cruise in search of adventure, asked to see Jones in private. Meijer had learned from a fellow Swedish sailor that a cadre of officers and men planned to seize Jones and either clap him in irons or throw him overboard. After turning command of the Ranger over to Simpson, they would make for Portsmouth. At a prearranged signal, the ship’s sailing master, David Cullam, a hulking brute, would subdue Jones when other officers uninvolved in the plot were scattered about the ship.

  At the appointed time, the conspiring officers went below, leaving Jones alone on the quarterdeck as Cullam came up the steps. Jones greeted him with a loaded pistol and pointed it at his head. The hands on deck did not hear what Jones said, but they saw Cullam back down the stairs.

  We may find it shocking that Jones did not clap Cullam in irons. In fact, Cullam was not even relieved of his position. Jones really had no choice. Other than Meijer he had no ally among the officers, and he was well aware that the crew was in Simpson’s pocket. Should the Ranger get in a fight, Jones would have to keep one eye on the enemy before him and the other on the New Englanders behind him.

  In truth, much of the blame rested upon Jones’s shoulders. Unlike Barry and Biddle, he established little connection with his men. All they wanted was to survive and be paid; Jones wanted glory first and foremost. He had been weeks in Paris, and the void at the top had been filled by Simpson, the man Jones abhorred. Had this been HMS Ranger, Cullam would surely have been executed along with his coconspirators. But the Continental Navy was not so established. Its sailors and officers were for the most part poorly trained, frequently poorly led, and almost always poorly paid—when they were paid at all. At this moment, Jones needed a prize more than a cat-o’-nine-tails.7

  On April 15, the Ranger captured the brigantine Dolphin, carrying flaxseed to Wexford. While the cargo was of little worth, Jones took the crew prisoner and sank her. Then came a true prize, the Lord Chatham, a 350-ton merchantman, her hold full of English porter, ironically bound for Dublin, the world’s capital of stout. Jones put a prize crew aboard her and sent her to Brest. Two days later the Ranger was well up the Firth of Solway, past the Isle of Man. Soon she was off Whitehaven.

  Jones rounded up thirty volunteers to man the Ranger’s boats; they would row into town at ten that night. The Ranger’s lights were doused and the boats lowered when suddenly the wind kicked up, the seas rose too high, and Jones aborted the mission. The Ranger sailed away.8

  On the nineteenth, the Americans were again off the Isle of Man when they were spotted by a revenue cutter, the Hussar, Captain Gurley, eight guns. Suspecting that the Ranger was a large smuggler, Gurley made straight for her. Through his spyglass, Gurley saw her captain “dressed in white with a large hat”—a French army captain’s uniform. As the Hussar approached, Jones ordered Cullam to take his speaking trumpet and ask Gurley for a pilot—a shopworn ruse to take hostage first, ship later. Gurley demanded that Cullam identify himself. “Molly of Glasgow,” he replied.

  The delay gave Jones time to size the Hussar up as easy pickings. Enough of the charade: Jones ordered Gurley to heave to or be sunk, running out his guns and running up the American flag.

  But Gurley was not cowed. Just as he gave Jones the same orders, Cullam traded his speaking trumpet for his musket and fired at Gurley a split second before the Ranger opened fire. Cullam missed. Seeing his ship outgunned, Gurley sheered off, taking Jones on a chase he would have been proud of had he been commanding the cutter. Despite Jones’s “warm attempt” to take her, the Hussar got away.9

  The cutter’s escape only added to the disgruntled mood of the Ranger’s crew. Even the temperate Dr. Green was angry: “had the Captain have permitted the Marines to fire,” the Americans “might have taken her with great Ease,” he wrote in his diary. Not only that, but the Ranger’s cover was blown—Gurley would spread word that another rebel ship was following the route of the Reprisal, Lexington, and Revenge. Jones headed west, and sank two small ships to prevent further word of his presence getting out. He soon learned from his newest captives that a fleet of twelve merchantmen was nearby, but a hard squall ended Jones’s hopes of taking them.10

  The Ranger was off northeast Ireland near Carrickfergus (just above Belfast) when another fishing boat captain told Jones about a twenty-gun warship, the Drake, anchored there. En route, Jones developed a plan to sail into the harbor, cross the ship’s bow, have his marines cover the enemy deck with musket fire, throw his grappling hooks over, and board her. He took one of the fishermen to serve as pilot.

  Once more the weather and his crew befouled his plans. The Ranger glided
silently into the harbor, her gun ports closed. The Drake’s watch suspected nothing. As the Ranger closed in, Jones ordered the anchor dropped to bring his ship right alongside the Drake. Had the mate in charge been sober the plan might have worked. But Jones believed the man “had too much brandy”—a gift from Simpson?—and the Ranger slid right past the Drake, forcing Jones to cut the anchor cable. Intent on another attempt, Jones wore ship, but a fierce gale began howling down the roadstead, sending the Ranger towards the lee shore and perilously close to the lighthouse. Curiously, Jones and his fisherman-pilot avoided running aground near the lighthouse, making it out of the harbor unscathed and undetected.11

  The following morning, under perfect sailing conditions, Jones beheld a sight he had not seen for years: “the Three Kingdoms.” The coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland lay before him, covered in white from an overnight snowfall “as far as the Eye could reach.” Jones summoned all hands.12

  Once the crew was assembled, Jones informed them of his plan. “I am resolved once more to attempt Whitehaven,” he declared. Two boats would enter the harbor that evening and take the two forts by surprise. While one party spiked the guns, another would burn the merchantmen in port before escaping to the Ranger before sunup. The tides would be in their favor: high in the evening, when the forts would be taken, and so low later on that the ships in port would be sitting in a foot of water or less, making it easier to burn them. Jones would lead the enterprise. Who would accompany him?

  Instead of being overwhelmed with volunteers, Jones was inundated with dismissive comments and barbed questions. First to announce their lack of support were Lieutenants Simpson and Hall, citing fatigue. They were sailors, they insisted, not arsonists (Jones later stated they preferred “gain over honor”). Then Surgeon Green spoke up. Jones had considered him an ally on board; to his surprise, Green was vehemently against the raid. Believing that Jones would burn the town as well as the ships—which Green took to mean the villagers’ fishing boats as well—Green remonstrated with Jones: “Nothing could be got by burning poor people’s property,” he scolded. There was a murmur of approval from the crew. His denunciation shocked and angered Jones.13

  Remarkably, he kept his famous temper in check. He had no intention of burning anyone’s home. His idea of striking fear into the British with this raid was being compromised by his officers, whose collective vision did not extend to Buckingham Palace, Parliament, or Lloyd’s of London, as Jones’s did. They saw this raid as risk with no reward. Their towns had not been bombarded nor their homes burned; they had no desire for revenge. They deemed Jones’s mission as beneath them, just as Simpson did. Had Jones’s crew been from Falmouth and not Portsmouth, they might have been more supportive.

  But by nightfall he again had thirty volunteers. His shoulders draped by his dark blue coat, Jones stepped into the Ranger’s cutter while Marine Lieutenant Samuel Wallingford took charge of the jolly boat. Lieutenant Meijer came with Jones. Armed with cutlasses, pistols, and pikes, and “candles”—pinecones covered with canvas and soaked in brimstone—the volunteers lowered the boats at midnight, well behind Jones’s schedule.14

  Typical for Jones’s luck on this cruise, the wind soon died. The men began their long row to Whitehaven, reaching the stone quay just before dawn; so much for taking advantage of the cover of darkness. Once the boats were secured, Jones led his party to the first fort, leaving a detail under Meijer behind with the boats. He sent Wallingford’s men to the merchantmen, literally stuck in the mud of low tide. Unlike Trevett at New Providence, Jones had no scaling ladders; he and his men ascended the wall by climbing atop their comrades’ shoulders. Jones was the first man over the ramparts.

  It was a cold morning, and with no thought or fear of invasion or a surprise inspection by the officer of the watch, the sentries were all in the guardhouse. Brandishing their cutlasses and pistols, Jones’s men burst through the door, taking them without a fight. Next, Jones led his men to the fort’s three dozen guns. Within minutes they were spiked; the captain next led the Rangers in a pell-mell run to the southern battery of the fort to do the same. Looking over the wall, Jones saw scores of merchantmen, all of them two hundred tons and over, “laying side by side aground, unsurrounded by Water.” Dozens more were visible on the south side of the fort, but not a sign of Wallingford’s men; where there is no smoke, there is no fire.

  For while Jones’s men were following his orders with exactitude, Wallingford’s were throwing a party. Instead of making for the idle ships, they had hustled to the nearest pub. In seconds, the tavern’s liquor was the property of the Continental Navy; in minutes, Wallingford’s sailors and marines were drunk. The bad news for Jones was that these volunteers had not followed his plan; the good news was that they had not followed theirs, which was to abandon their captain in Whitehaven. Meijer and his guards prevented them from taking the boats.15

  Now betrayal was added to the mayhem and mutiny planned by the New Englanders. An Irishman named David Smith had signed on in Portsmouth, ostensibly to sail for the Cause but actually to return home. Whitehaven was close enough. As American sailors captured a fort and a tavern, Smith—in reality David Freeman—became a horseless Paul Revere, running through the streets, pounding on doors and rousing sleeping Scots, spreading the news that their ships were going to be burned. Thus alarmed, villagers left their homes, many in just nightshirts and armed with everything from muskets to carving knives, heading to the docks to repel the rebel invaders.16

  By now it was five a.m., and daylight was breaking. Jones confronted some of Wallingford’s detachment, demanding to know why they had disobeyed orders. Slurring their words, they told him their lanterns had gone out, and they had nothing to ignite their “candles.” A growing noise from the streets caught Jones’s ear, and soon he saw scores of Scotsmen, their eyes afire, determined to take Jones’s American pirates.

  Thinking quickly, Jones posted guards by the docks, then sent a sailor into a house for matches. There was a collier near the quay; if Jones could put her to the torch the fire might spread to the other ships nearby. Jones threw one of the candles on her. Nothing. Some Americans came up the pier with a barrel of tar, and Jones sent it aboard the collier, to be taken below and set on fire. Soon flames shot out of the ship’s hatchways, just as the waterfront became overrun with townsfolk. Brandishing his pistol, Jones approached them, putting himself between the crowd and the burning collier, and ordered them to disperse. They withdrew, just as the flames “caught the rigging and ascended the mainmast.”17

  Jones ordered his men to their boats. “The sun was a full hour’s march above the horizon,” he later reported. For another minute he remained alone on the pier, taking in the panic and cacophony he had caused. Then he climbed into the cutter and the two boats rowed apace for the Ranger just as some of the Scotsmen retrieved a couple of dismantled, unspiked cannons. Once in place, they fired them aimlessly at the departing rebels, who discharged their muskets and pistols in a sardonic salute. There had been no casualties.18

  Aboard the Ranger, the rest of Jones’s crew spent the night and the early morning looking ashore, waiting for pillars of smoke to rise from Whitehaven and the ships in port. Now they “began to fear that Our People had fallen into the Enemies Hands,” Ezra Green wrote in his diary. Suddenly, they could make out the Ranger’s boats heading towards them. While the crew was glad to see their shipmates returning, Simpson and Hall, recognizing Jones by his dark hat and white uniform, fell glum. If Jones’s plan had gone awry for the most part, his very presence was proof that theirs had failed abysmally.19

  While Jones was angry that the Whitehaven raid had fallen so far short of his expectations, he kept this to himself. Had he landed sooner, or had he the crew from the Providence, he later wrote, “not a single Ship out of more than Two hundred could possibly have escaped; and all the World would not have been able to save the Town.” He later took heart that his exploit showed “that
not all their boasted Navy can protect their own Coasts, and that the Scenes of distress which they have occasioned in America may soon be brought to their own doors.”20

  For now, Jones was on borrowed time. Between the Hussar’s escape and his Whitehaven incursion it would not be long before the enemy would be combing the Irish Sea and the North Channel looking for “the Pirate Jones,” as he was soon to be called. He still had two more “scheems” to carry out, and he was already off on the next one. The Ranger was soon under full sail, heading to Kircudbright. They reached St. Mary’s Isle and were below the Selkirk castle before noon.21

  St. Mary’s Isle is actually a peninsula that barely juts into the Firth of Solway, and the Selkirk “castle” a brick mansion situated on a hundred wooded acres. Jones assumed Lord Selkirk to be of such importance and influence that kidnapping him would guarantee both the freeing of American prisoners and give further luster to Jones’s reputation. Again, he got it wrong; Selkirk was a peer of the realm with very little influence, political or otherwise. He was also not nearly as malevolent as old Craik, possessing a reputation for generosity and civic duty.22

  The channel to St. Mary’s Isle has its hazards, but Jones knew these waters from his boyhood. Acting as his own pilot, he took the Ranger past Torr’s Point and the endless array of blooming trees of Clauchcandolly, below Criffel, the looming snowcapped peak that had looked down on Jones’s activities as a child. He was home. For the second time that day, the cutter was lowered, and Jones headed off to kidnap a lord.23

  To accompany him and the volunteers Jones brought two officers, Wallingford and Cullam. As they made their way up the steep, wooded path they came upon Selkirk’s gardener. Jones informed him that this gang of toughs was a press gang, seeking to add some landsmen to the Royal Navy’s “recruits.” Not wanting to be taken himself, the gardener fled, but not before telling Jones that Selkirk was away.