FROM
John Paul Jones was born in Scotland in 1747, the son of a gardener. At twelve he went to Virginia as a cabin boy and engaged for several years in the slave trade. He was arrested on a murder charge on two occasions but managed to escape, and in 1775 was commissioned in the new Continental navy, being the first to raise the Grand Union flag at sea. His daring exploits in the Revolutionary War, culminating in the engagement between his ship the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis, played an influential part in the recognition of American independence—and created a national legend.
Shunned by Congress, he was received as a hero by French society. He was appointed an admiral by Catherine the Great to command a Russian fleet against the Turks but returned to France, where he died in 1792.
The letter was written not long before the 'Father of the American Navy" died in poverty and neglect in revolutionary Paris.
I have noticed—and no reader of the naval history of France can have failed to notice it—that the underlying principle of operation and rule of action in the French Navy have always been calculated to subordinate immediate or instant opportunities to ulterior if not distant objects. In general I may say that it has been the policy of French admirals in the past to neutralise the power of their adversaries, if possible, by grand manoeuvres rather than to destroy it by grand attacks.
A case in point of this kind is the campaign of the Count de Grasse in his conjoint operation with the land forces of General Washington and the Count de Rochambeau, which so happily resulted in the capitulation of Cornwallis at Yorktown. . . .
Now, my dear Kersaint, you know me too well to accuse me of self- vaunting. You will not consider me vain, in view of your knowledge of
John Paul Jones
what happened in the past off Carrickfergus, off Old Flaboro Head, and off the Liman in the Black Sea, if I say that, had I stood—fortunately or unfortunately—in the shoes of de Grasse, there would have been disaster to some one off the Capes of the Chesapeake; disaster ot more lasting significance than an orderly retreat of a beaten fleet to a safe port. To put it a little more strongly, there was a moment when the chance to destroy the enemy's fleet would have driven from me all thought of the conjoint strategy of the campaign as a whole.
I could not have helped it.
And I have never ceased to mourn the failure of the Count de Grasse to be as imprudent as I could not have helped being on that grandest of all occasions.
You will by no means infer from these cursory observations that I fail to appreciate, within my limited capacity, the grandeur of the tactical combinations, the skill of the intricate manoeuvres, and the far-sighted, long-thought out demonstrations by which the Count de Toulouse drove Rooke out of the Mediterranean in August 1704 with no more ado than the comparatively bloodless battle off Malaga; or the address with which La Galissoniere repulsed Byng from Minorca in 1756 by a long-range battle of which the only notable casualty was the subsequent execution of Byng by his own government for the alleged crime of failing to destroy the fleet opposed to him! . . .
And yet, my dear Kersaint, one reflection persecutes me, to mar all my memories and baffle my admiration. This is the undeniable fact . . . that the ships and seamen of Graves, whom de Grasse permitted to escape from his clutches off the Capes of Chesapeake in October 1781, were left intact to discomfit de Grasse himself off Santa Lucia and Dominica in April 1782, under Rodney.
You know, of course, my dear Kersaint, that my own opportunities in naval warfare have been but few and feeble in comparison with such as I have mentioned. But I do not doubt your ready agreement with me if I say that the hostile ships and commanders that I have thus far enjoyed the opportunity of meeting did not give anyone much trouble thereafter. True, this has been on a small scale; but that was no fault of mine. I did my best with the weapons given to me.
The rules of conduct, the maxims of action, and the tactical instincts that serve to gain small victories may always be expanded into the winning of great ones with suitable opportunity; because in human affairs the sources of success are ever to be found in the fountains of quick resolve and swift stroke; and it seems to be a law inflexible and inexorable that he who will not risk cannot win.