George Gibbs - Pike & Cutlass - Hero Tales of Our Navy

The writer expresses thanks for their courtesy to the editors of “Lippincott’s Magazine” and the editors of the “Saturday Evening Post,” of Philadelphia, in which periodicals several of these Hero Tales have been printed. He also acknowledges his indebtedness for many valuable historical facts to “Cooper’s Naval History;” “History of the Navy,” by Edgar S. Maclay; “History of Our Navy,” by John R. Spears; “Twelve Naval Captains,” by Molly Elliot Seawell; “American Naval Heroes,” by John Howard Brown; “Naval Actions of the War of 1812,” by James Barnes; and to many valuable works and papers in the archives of the Library of the Navy Department at Washington. Thanks are due the Art Department of the “Saturday Evening Post” and the Art Department of “Collier’s Weekly” for their permission to reprint many of the drawings herein.

August 15, 1899.

In April, 1778, there were more than two-score of French ships-of-the-line within easy sailing distance of the coast of England. They were tremendous three-decked monsters, armed with tier upon tier of cannon, and it took nearly a thousand officers and men to man each of them. They lay at anchor in the harbors of France or sallied forth into the open sea to the southward to prey upon the commerce of Great Britain. But grand as they were, not one of them dared to do what John Paul Jones did in the little Continental sloop of war “Ranger.” By good seamanship, an element of chance, and a reckless daring almost without precedent, he accomplished under the very noses of the gold-laced French admirals what they had been hemming and hawing about since the beginning of the war.

Inaction weighed upon the mind of Paul Jones more heavily than the hardest of labor. He had to be up and doing all the time, or trouble was brewing for everybody on shipboard. So when he reached Nantes, France, and found that the frigate which had been promised him was not forthcoming, he determined, alone and unaided, to do with the little “Ranger” what he was not yet destined to do with a bigger ship. No person but Paul Jones would for a moment have considered such a desperate project as the one he conceived. What the flower of the navy and chivalry of France had refused to attempt was little short of suicide for the mad American. But Jones was not cast in an ordinary mould. When he got to Brest, he made up his mind once and for all, by one good fire of British shipping to put an end to all the ship and town burnings in America.

There was clanking of bit and chain as the anchor was hove up short on the little craft. The officers and men of the great vessels of the French fleet looked over the glistening water, warmed by the afternoon sun of spring, and wondered where their impetuous harbor-mate was off to. A week before, they knew Paul Jones had demanded that the French Admiral salute the Continental flag which the “Ranger” wore for the first time. And they had given those salutes right willingly, acknowledging publicly the nation they had been helping in secret. They knew he was a man of determination, and they wondered what the American was going to do. Some of them – the younger ones – wished they too were aboard the dainty little craft, bound out to sea under a man who feared nothing and dared everything. They heard the whistles and hoarse calls of the bos’n as the men tumbled down from aloft, the sheets flew home, and yards went up to their blocks with a clatter and a rush that showed how willing were the hands at the tackles. The tops’ls caught a fine breeze from the southward and, bracing up, the “Ranger” flew down the harbor and around the point of Quiberon just as the sun was setting behind the purple cloud-streaks along the line of limitless ocean. Up the coast she moved, her bowsprit pointing fearlessly to the north, where lay the Scilly Isles. The Frenchmen left behind in the harbor looked enviously at the patch of gold, growing every moment more indistinct in the fading light, and said “En voilà un brave!”

The next day Jones left the Scilly Isles on his starboard quarter and steered boldly up Saint George’s Channel into the wide Irish Sea. The merchantmen he boarded and captured or scuttled did not quite know what to make of a man who feared so little that he looked into the eyes of the lion sternly and even menacingly when one movement might have destroyed him. These channel-men thought themselves secure, for such a venturesome procedure as that of Paul Jones was contrary to all precedent. They couldn’t understand it at all until their vessels were burned and they themselves were prisoners. Then they knew that they had been taken by a man whose daring far surpassed that of the naval captains of England and France. In plain sight of land he took a brig bound from Ireland to Ostend. He didn’t want to be bothered with prisoners, so he sent her crew ashore in their own boat to tell the story of their escape. Then off Dublin he took another ship, the “Lord Chatham,” and sent her in charge of a prize-crew down to Brest.

Paul Jones had one great advantage. Nowadays, when the railway and telegraph have brought all the people of the world closer together, such a cruise would be impossible. The report would be sent at once to the Admiralty, and two fleets, if necessary, would be despatched post-haste to intercept him. But Paul Jones knew the value of the unexpected. And although fortune favors the brave and the winds and waves seem always on the side of the ablest navigators, he had made his calculations carefully. He knew that unless an English fleet was at some point nearer than Portsmouth he would have ample time to carry out his plans.

He made up his mind before burning any shipping to capture, if possible, the Earl of Selkirk, who lived on St. Mary’s Isle, and to hold him as a hostage. By this means he hoped to compel England to treat American prisoners with humanity, according to the laws of war. But on the twenty-first of April he picked up a fisherman who gave him information which for the moment drove all thought of the Earl of Selkirk and the shipping from his mind. Inside the harbor of Carrickfergus, where Belfast is, lay a man-of-war of twenty guns, the “Drake,” a large ship, with more men than the “Ranger” carried. He would drop down alongside of her under cover of the night and board her before her crew could tumble out of their hammocks. Such an attempt in a fortified harbor of the enemy would not have occurred to most men, but Paul Jones believed in achieving the impossible. He waited until nightfall, and then, with a wind freshening almost to a gale, sped up the harbor. The “Drake” lay well out in the roadstead, her anchor lights only marking her position in the blackness of the night. Carefully watching his time, Captain Jones stood forward looking at the lights that showed how she swung to the tide. He kept full headway on the “Ranger,” until she could swing up into the wind almost under the jib-boom of the Englishman. By dropping his anchor across the chain of the “Drake” he hoped to swing down alongside, grapple, and board before the crew were fairly awake.

But this time he was destined to fail. Everything depended on the dropping of the anchor at the proper time. His orders were not obeyed, for not until the “Ranger” had drifted clear of the Englishman’s chain did the splash come. Then it was too late. Fortunately the watch on the “Drake” were not suspicious. Had they been wider awake they would have had the “Ranger” at their mercy, and Paul Jones might not have survived to fight them a few days later. As it was, they only swore at the stupidity of the Irish lubber they thought he was. Jones knew that his chance was gone, and as soon as a strain came on the cable it was cut, and he filled away to sea again.