England was astonished and enraged in finding the laws of naval warfare which she had enacted, and had so long practised with impunity upon all other nations all around the globe, now brought home to herself. She called Paul Jones all manner of hard names. He was a beggar, a thief, a traitor, a highway robber, a pirate. He was thus denounced for doing that, in the English and Irish Channel, which England’s fleet was doing all along the coast of America. And yet it was heroic in Jones thus to brave all the terrors of the British navy, while it was ignoble and mean for that proud navy to plunder and burn the few unprotected vessels of the feeble colonies struggling for existence in the New World.
England had long made her banqueting-halls resound with the song,
“Britannia needs no bulwarks
To frown along the steep;
Her march is on the mountain wave,
Her home is on the deep.”
It was the noble mission of Paul Jones to teach Britannia that the arm of the avenger could reach her even in her own Channel, and in her own harbors. Thus England was compelled to drink of the poisoned cup which she was forcing to the lips of others.
Upon the western coast of Scotland, about fifty miles north of the Mull of Galloway, there was a capacious harbor called Lochryan, or Lake Ryan. Captain Jones learned from his captives that there was there a fleet of ten or twelve English merchant vessels, and also the tender of a man-of-war, which had on board a large number of impressed seamen, who were to be forced into the British navy. It was not improbable that many of these were American citizens, who had been seized in our merchant or fishing vessels, and who would thus be compelled to work the guns of Great Britain against their own countrymen. “I thought this an enterprise,” writes Paul Jones, “worthy of my attention.”
Indeed it was. He spread his sails for Lochryan. The wind was fair, so that he could run into the bay, speedily apply the torch, kindle the whole fleet into flame, and then run out before a sufficient force could be collected to prevent his escape. But just as he reached the entrance of the bay, and everything was in readiness for the successful prosecution of his enterprise, the wind changed, and blew with great fierceness directly into the bay. Thus, though he could easily effect his entrance, he could not sail out from the bay until the wind changed. He might therefore be caught in a trap. He was thus constrained to abandon the project.
About sixty miles north of Lochryan is the Frith of Clyde, whose river is the most important stream in the west of Scotland. Captain Jones seeing upon his lee bow a cutter, or small sloop-rigged vessel, belonging as a tender to a man-of-war, steering for the Clyde, gave chase. But when he reached the remarkable rock of Ailsa, finding that the cutter was outsailing him, he abandoned the chase. In the evening he fell in with a merchant sloop, which he sunk.
The next day, which was the 21st, he entered the Bay of Carrickfergus, on the eastern coast of Ireland. At the western extremity of the bay lies the city of Belfast, which occupies the first rank among the commercial marts of Ireland. The fortified town of Carrickfergus is situated upon the northern shore. A British ship of war, the Drake, mounting twenty guns, was at anchor in the bay. Thoroughly armed and manned, she was a formidable antagonist for the Ranger to attack. As vessels of all sizes were continually coming and going in this great thoroughfare, and as the Ranger carefully avoided all warlike appearance, no suspicion of her formidable character was excited on board the Drake. Jones therefore cast anchor, preparing to make his attack in the night. I will give the result in his own words:
“My plan was to overlay her cable, and to fall upon her bow, so as to have all her decks open and exposed to our musketry. At the same time it was our intention to have secured the enemy by grapplings, so that, had they cut their cables, they would not thereby have attained an advantage. The wind was high, and unfortunately the anchor was not let go so soon as the order was given; so that the Ranger was brought to upon the enemy’s quarter, at the distance of half a cable’s length.
“We had made no warlike appearance. Of course, we had given no alarm. This determined me to cut immediately, which might appear as if the cable had parted. At the same time it enabled me, after making a tack out of the Loch, to return with the same advantage which I had at first. I was, however, prevented from returning, as I with difficulty weathered the light-house on the leeside, and as the gale increased. The weather now became so very stormy and severe, and the sea ran so high, that I was obliged to take shelter under the south shore of Scotland.”
The North Channel, which separates Ireland from Scotland, is at this point about thirty miles wide. The next morning the sun rose in a cloudless sky. It was bitterly cold in those northern latitudes. Captain Jones was on the same parallel with Newfoundland. From the deck of his vessel he could clearly discern the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. A white mantle of snow covered the hills and valleys as far as the eye could extend. He decided to direct his course to the shores of England, and to make another attempt upon the shipping in the harbor of Whitehaven. The wind became very light, and it was not until midnight that he reached the entrance to the harbor. For the hazardous enterprise of penetrating a harbor defended by two batteries, he manned two boats with volunteers, fifteen men in each. There were in the harbor two hundred and twenty vessels, large and small. The tide was out, and many of these vessels aground. About one hundred and fifty of them were on the south side of the harbor adjoining the town. The remainder were on the north side.
Captain Jones had command of one of the boats. Lieutenant Wallingford was intrusted with the other. Jones supplied Wallingford with the necessary combustibles to set fire to the shipping on the north side. With fifteen men, armed only with pistols and cutlasses, he set out to capture two English forts on the south side, and then to set fire to the shipping there. The garrisons of these forts had no more apprehension of an attack from the despised Americans, than Gibraltar fears assault from some feeble tribe in Southern Asia with whom England may chance to be at war.
In consequence of the unfortunate delay, they did not reach the first fort until just as the morning was beginning to dawn. Most of the soldiers were soundly asleep in the guard-house. There were a few drowsy sentinels dozing at their posts. Jones, with his heroic little band, silently clambered over the ramparts. The terrified sentinels, not knowing what was coming, rushed into the guard-house. Jones quietly locked them in, spiked every gun, and then rushed forward to the next battery, which was distant about a quarter of a mile. Here he successfully repeated his achievement, so that not a gun from either of the batteries could harm his boats.
He looked eagerly across the harbor, expecting to see the bursting forth of the flames. It was now broad day; but no sign of flame or smoke was to be seen. To his great disappointment, the boat under Lieutenant Wallingford had crossed to the south side, having accomplished nothing. The party seemed confused and embarrassed, and made the very extraordinary statement that their torches went out just as they were ready to set fire to the ships!
The failure was probably caused by sheer cowardice. And it must be admitted that it was indeed one of the most desperate of enterprises. These fifteen men, having crossed an ocean three thousand miles wide, had penetrated the heart of a British harbor, to apply the torch to seventy vessels.
The crews could not have amounted to less than ten men, on an average, to each vessel. Thus the British sailors alone in that half of the harbor, would amount to seven hundred men. The assailants, it will be remembered, amounted to but fifteen men, in a frail boat, armed only with swords and pistols. Even the bravest might recoil from such odds. But as these men had volunteered for the enterprise, and knew all its perils, it was the basest poltroonery in them to prove recreant at the crisis of the expedition.
The torches which Captain Jones’s boat party carried, had also, by some strange fatality, all burned out. Captain Jones, however, obtained a light from a neighboring house, entered a large ship, from which the crew fled, and deliberately built a fire in the steerage. This ship was closely surrounded by at least a hundred and fifty vessels lying side by side, and all aground. Captain Jones, to make the conflagration certain, found a barrel of tar, and poured it upon the kindling. The flames soon burst from all the hatchways, caught the rigging, and, in fiery wreaths, circled to the mast-head.