Wickes and Conyngham had established the Irish Sea as an ideal place to raid. It separated the island of Great Britain from Ireland. To the north was the Irish Channel, forming a deep strait between Northern Ireland and southwestern Scotland, connecting the Irish Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. The strait was narrow enough to allow easy movement of migrants and goods between Scotland and Ireland. In the eighteenth century, it was also a haunt of diverse privateers and smugglers causing the disruption of British merchant shipping.
It was here that John Paul was born in July 6, 1747, the son of the head gardener of Arbigland Estate, near the southern Solway Coast of Scotland.1 Originally the family was from Fife and John Paul Sr. was born at Edinburgh’s port of Leith, where William Craik, the owner of Arbigland met him and hired him to lay out his gardens. John’s mother was Jean Duff. Arbigland was fortunate to have Craik, a polymath, as its laird, who had inherited the rundown estate in 1736 and decided to revive it by putting new ideas into practice. Craik designed and completed Arbigland House in the Adam style in 1755, as well as building the kirk for nearby Kirkbean. He was also an agricultural improver in the manner of Charles Townsend, draining the land, reclaiming low-level marsh from the sea, and laying out a park and fields protected by drystone dykes. The money for his enterprises is thought to have derived from smuggling brandy from the Isle of Man.
John Paul might have become a gardener like his father or uncle. The Pauls’ fourth child, he was sent to live with his uncle, who was Lord Selkirk’s gardener at St Mary’s Isle, 25 miles to the west of Arbigland. John came back to go to Kirkbean School but spent much of his time at the nearby port of Carsethorn on the Solway Firth, which served as the port for the region’s largest town, Dumfries, 10 miles northward.2 In later life, William Craik’s son recalled that John would run to Carsethorn whenever his father would let him off, talk to the sailors and clamber over the ships, and that he taught his playmates to maneuver their tiny boats to mimic a naval battle, while he, taking his stand on a cliff overlooking the roadstead, shouted shrill commands at his imaginary fleet.
It was from Carsethorn, at the age of 13, John Paul Jr. boarded a vessel to go to Whitehaven across the Solway, where he signed up for a seven-year seaman’s apprenticeship.3 He sailed out as ship’s boy aboard the Friendship under Captain William Benson, traveling annually from Whitehaven to Barbados and then Virginia. He went especially to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he visited his older brother William. William was a tailor, living in a corner house, and was married, although it was an unhappy relationship, leaving no children. The Friendship was at the Chesapeake port for several months, where John spent the time learning navigation.
After his return to Whitehaven, John found that the Friendship’s owner, John Younger, was in financial difficulty and he released him from his apprenticeship. When the Seven Years’ War ended, the Friendship was sold and her crew let go.4 Sixteen-year-old John Paul had sailing skills, but like most seamen he was out of work. A year later, he went into the slave trade as third mate on the King George of Whitehaven. Slavers were still taking advantage of the legality of exporting slaves from Africa to America.
In 1766, John Paul transferred as first mate to the brigantine Two Friends of Kingston, Jamaica. Only 50ft long with a crew of six, it carried seventy-seven blacks from Africa in a slaving voyage. The smell from ‘black-birders’, as the slavers were called, could be detected for 10 miles distance. Still a teenager when paid off in Jamaica, he quitted the slave traffic calling it an ‘abominable trade’. He was given free passage home by a friendly Scot on the new brigantine John of Kirkcudbright.5 During the voyage, Captain Samuel McAdam and the mate died of fever. Paul took command as the only qualified officer and brought the ship safely back home to Kirkcudbright, the Scottish port at the mouth of the River Dee. The owners Currie, Beck and Co were so pleased they appointed him master and supercargo (in charge of buying and selling the cargo) for the John’s next voyage to America.
Unfortunately, John Paul had a violent temper which became evident at this time and would manifest itself throughout his career. At the age of 21, while serving as captain of the John, he was accused in Tobago by Mungo Maxwell, the ship’s carpenter, of having flogged him excessively with the cat-o-nine tails.6 Maxwell, the son of a prominent Kirkcudbright worthy, was examined by a court, but his complaint was dismissed as frivolous. Later, when Maxwell died of Yellow Fever while returning home on a Barcelona Packet, it was his father who claimed that his son had been ‘most unmercifully, wounded on his back … and of which wounds he soon afterward died’. On this accusation, John Paul was arrested when he returned to Kirkcudbright and was charged with murder and placed in the seventeenth-century tollbooth.7 However, evidence from Tobago and a declaration from the master of the Barcelona Packet that Maxwell was in perfect health when he came on board was sufficient to acquit Paul.
Captain John Paul tried to put this behind him and in October 1772, he took command of the Betsy. He traded back and forth between England, Madeira, the West Indies and Tobago and seems to have accumulated some wealth. A year later, however, whilst in Tobago, Paul’s crew became mutinous over pay and the ringleader swung at him with a club.8 In a rage, Paul ran him through with his sword. Since his assailant was a Tobago local, Paul’s friends urged him to leave the island quickly, not trusting a local jury to give him a fair hearing. He fled, leaving his affairs and property in the hands of his partner and agent. Having been accused of killing one crew member and now this second obvious one, concerns about his treatment of his crews increased dramatically. It became difficult for him to put or hold a crew together. He was forced to evade the law by changing his name to ‘Mr John Jones’ and in 1774 he escaped to Fredericksburg, Virginia to find refuge in his brother William’s modest estate, as he had recently died. Here John hoped to be incognito until his Tobago incident blew over.
Coming out of hiding in 1775 at Fredericksburg, John Jones was still basically a Scot when he volunteered to serve in the new Continental Navy. After a strenuous self-promotion campaign lasting a year, he was appointed a first lieutenant of the Alfred.9 This was followed by serving as captain of the Providence in Rhode Island and then as captain of the Alfred.
By October 10, 1776, Congress had a listed John Paul Jones as eighteenth among its Continental captains, behind James Nicholson, John Manley, Hector McNeill and Lambert Wickes. Jones reacted negatively to his low place on the list, claiming, ‘there are characters [on the list] who are truly contemptible – with such, as private gentlemen, I would distain to sit down.’10 He argued, ‘until [the officers above him] give proof of their superior abilities, I never shall acknowledge them as my senior officers – I never will act under their command.’ He went on to claim that many of his fellow officers were illiterate ‘characters so rude & contracted’. He shared his disappointment with Robert Morris, who would support an improving role for the Continental Navy to the very end of the war.
Meanwhile, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire finding a captain for the Continental sloop Ranger was a controversial process. In September 1776, New Hampshire Congressional delegate Josiah Bartlett was lobbied by John Roche, an Irish captain in the West Indies trade, to command the Ranger. Earlier, John Langdon had given Roche his recommendation for the position to present to Congress and he had returned to Langdon with orders to build the Ranger. Roche would be involved in its construction and Langdon called it ‘Roche’s ship’.11 Roche rented a house in Portsmouth from where he searched for ordnance, sails, canvas, cordage and bunting. Despite Bartlett’s and Langdon’s support of Roche, however, Massachusetts’ authorities claimed they had evidence of his unlawful misconduct. He was suspended from command in June 1777 until the Navy Board had made an inquiry into his character, an activity which was never completed and he subsequently disappeared from the record. At the same time, John Langdon and William Whipple in Congress were given authority to appoint most officers of the Ranger. Only the appointment of the top command was reserved to Congress, and in February 1777 their choice was an outsider, now named John Paul Jones.
Jones would complain to the New Hampshire commissioners that his appointment to the Ranger had been ‘rendered abortive by the jealousy of the then Commodore Hopkins’.12 Jones had served as a lieutenant on the Alfred and his experience with Hopkins had not been fruitful. Hopkins had joined Bartlett and Langdon in opposing Jones’ command of the Ranger. Jones’ designation as captain was seen as an act of hostility by New Englanders in Congress. However, as Hopkins star was falling, Jones’ was rising, although New Englanders would never allow him to assume the position of commodore that Hopkins had held.
Jones arrived in Portsmouth in July and he picked Mathew Parke and John Gizzard Frazer as officers for the Ranger. Parke was soon aiding him in procuring supplies for the ship. Other officers’ appointments were in the hands of New Hampshire’s commissioners.13 Langdon and William Whipple had been approached by numerous New England candidates to serve as the Ranger’s officers. One possibility for lieutenant was New Hampshire merchant Captain Thomas Simpson, who was older than Jones. Simpson was Langdon’s brother-in-law and a cousin to the Quinceys, the Wentworths, the Wendells, and even John Handcock, the president of Congress.14 He and Elijah Hall were selected as lieutenants by the commissioners. Born in Raynham, Massachusetts, Hall had been appointed lieutenant in the Continental Navy on June 14, 1777. The ship’s surgeon would be Dr Ezra Green of Dover, New Hampshire. John Wendell, Portsmouth merchant, wanted a midshipman’s place on the Ranger for his son, Daniel. These Portsmouth friends of Langdon or Whipple were mostly landsmen.
The choice for Marine commander was Samuel Wallingford, captain in the fourth company of a New Hampshire regiment and a friend of Langdon’s. After Jones had been named captain, he wrote to Wallingford from Portsmouth that he had been
nominated as Lieutenant of Marines in the Service of these States, [and was] directed forthwith to Enlist as many Able Bodied Men as possible to Serve in the Navy under my Command – You are to enter All the good Seamen who present themselves – as Sundry petty Warrant Officers will be Appointed from Among them.15
To get them to the Ranger, the men would be entitled to wages from the date of entry and also their travelling expenses and ‘a bounty of Forty Dollars for every Able Seaman will be Paid on their Appearance at the Ship’. Having done this recruiting, Wallingford would be ready to sail with the Ranger in November 1777. To further make up the crew, Jones requested that the New Hampshire House of Representatives allow him to enlist matrossmen from the batteries in Piscataqua Harbor, and they allowed him up to twenty. Jones sent officers to scour not just New Hampshire but Boston, Salem and Marblehead, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island. A March 1777 broadside called on all ‘gentlemen seamen and able-bodied landsmen’ to make ‘an agreeable voyage in this pleasant season of the year’.16 It was explained they were not to immediately be given Congress’s advertised advance on their recruitment, but they would receive the advance and their travel expenses once they arrived at the Ranger. Petty officers were to be appointed from ‘the most deserving seamen’. Recruiters hid the possibility that the Ranger would not be sent to France as Jones felt it would dampen the effort. The call enticed recruits from Wells and York (now in Maine but at that time part of Massachusetts), making the Massachusetts contingent nearly as large as that of New Hampshire.
When recruits arrived at the Ranger in Portsmouth, they found that Jones had no funds for the advance, as Congress had not meant it for those who signed for a single cruise, it being only for those who signed for three years during the war. Jones could only offer half their monthly wages if they left wives or attorneys to receive it, provided they signed for a year, not a single cruise. For those who signed only for the cruise, he could advance no more than one month’s pay besides a clothing allowance. Clearly Congress did not have the funds to be generous to recruits for a single cruise. Many of the recruits felt they had been hoodwinked by ‘false promises’ and ‘deceitful advertisements’.17 New Hampshire’s commissioners passed on their local prejudices to the Ranger’s crew. It had been recruited at Langdon’s Shipyard by Simpson, who they felt was a ‘Fatherly officer’, while Jones would be seen as ‘deceitful’.18 Later, the crew felt that Jones had altered the Ranger’s articles to extend their enlistments and had stalled payment of prize money. As a result, they would tend to obstruct rather than follow Jones.
During the Ranger’s late November cruise across the Atlantic to France, John Paul Jones was on the lookout for ‘English property’.19 Finally, he met and took two merchant ships from Malaga bound to Yarmouth and London with cargos of raisins, figs, lemons and wine, which he felt could be sold when they arrived in France. His Continental warship was acting like a privateer, although its ability to profit from the sale of these prizes would be delayed. It was also evident in the crossing that the Ranger had sailing problems. It arrived and traveled up the Loire River to the dockyard at Nantes, where Jones arranged for changes to its rig, the addition of ballast, and careening.
In France, Jones thought his responsibility for the Ranger would be over as he would be immediately transferred to command the frigate L’Indien, being built in Amsterdam, the Dutch Republic. But he would be frustrated as the commissioners could not afford to build, rig, man and provision such a large ship. The French government had stepped in and taken over the expense as well as the ownership of the new ship.20 Jones learned this when he traveled to Paris in November, where Franklin suggested that instead he use the Ranger to capture a British nobleman to be exchanged for American prisoners. Jones thus became concerned to take prisoners for a naval exchange. Franklin had visited Whitehaven more recently than Jones and the two may have discussed it as a possible target. This raid was to be different from those of Wickes and Conyngham since ports were now targets. Jones tantalized his crew by claiming that they would be paid for any ship they burnt in Whitehaven harbor as if they had captured it.
The Ranger would spend the winter and early spring having its masts set further aft and the sails shortened. Meanwhile, France signed two treaties with the commissioners in February 1778, one a commercial and the other a military alliance.21 The second was regarded by the commissioners as most crucial since they wished France to go to war immediately with Britain. France had never been anxious to declare war on Britain, however, not just because of a lack of preparation, but because the Dutch alliance with Britain required them to come to Britain’s aid if she were attacked, so that France did not want be seen as striking the first blow against Britain. France also hoped that Spain would join the alliance with the United States, a situation which never happened. With the French alliance in place, Jones now had the opportunity to raise the stakes and do something that Conyngham and Wickes could not. He could operate openly from France against British Isles, even though France had yet to declare itself a victim of British aggression in order to declare war.
Jones faced officer problems as he was forced to dismiss Marine Captain Matthew Parke over prize money and Major John Frazer was a casualty of excessive drink, making Jones believe he was ‘surrounded by enemies’.22 He decided he would have to command his crew ‘by persuasion’. His worst fears were realized at Brest when, on March 10, some of his crew took the Ranger’s cutter, went to the shore and deserted. Three days later, Jones found them and had them brought back under guard and confined in irons. It now appears that the New England crew had been augmented so that it also included ‘blacks, Spaniards, Swedes, French escapees from convict galleys, and a few Americans’. Both the pilot and barber were French. Later petitions show that two-thirds of the crew was still from New England.
Jones wrote to Silas Dean in late March about preparing the Ranger for an undisclosed project, as he attempted to maintain secrecy. Jones admitted he had cruised the Ranger in Camaret Bay, France ‘in disguise’, although he had ‘now pulled off [the] masque as the face of affairs are altered’, a reference to the change the alliance with France had made.23 Jones hinted that he would abandon his project if word came of the availability of the Amsterdam ship.
Because Britain’s warships were concentrated in the Channel Fleet, Jones faced a Royal Navy that was spread thinly in patrolling the English coast. When Wickes and Conyngham had cruised in July 1777, only the Royal Navy’s Pelican and Cameleon were stationed off Scotland’s Shetland Islands.24 The Hound, Alderney and Drake were between England and the Dutch coast. Smaller vessels were stationed about the Irish Sea at Waterford, Dublin, Milford, Liverpool and Glasgow, though none were at Whitehaven. As seen, warships were stationed to watch the French ports, especially Dunkirk and Brest. More important to the Admiralty, it had initiated a system of protected convoys in British coastal waters.
On April 11, Jones sailed the Ranger from Brest toward the Irish Sea, confident that he knew the waters from his boyhood. Eight days later, he made an attempt to fool the 8-gun Whitehaven revenue cutter Hussar, under Captain Gurley, into thinking the unmarked Ranger was a merchant ship, the Molly of Glasgow. A mystery ship to Gurley for it never identified itself, Jones asked for a pilot as he claimed to be unfamiliar with the waters, to which Gurley answered that he could not spare one as he was chasing a smuggler. Suddenly, Gurley reported,
in a threatening manner, [the Ranger] ordered him to bring to, or they would sink him – in an instant the ports were knocked open, the decks filled with men, and a tier of guns run out, several vollyies of small arms were fired into the Hussar, and such of the great guns as could be brought to bear upon her.25
The cutter tacked several times, getting out of reach of the Ranger’s guns and while it was damaged, there were no casualties. Although the Hussar had recognized Jones’ ruse, Gurley remained uncertain as to the identity of the ship.
In the morning of the 20th, near the Isle of Man, Jones sank a Scottish coasting schooner laden with barley and oats, and in the evening, a sloop in ballast from Ireland suffered the same fate. The next day, the Ranger was near fortified Carrickfergus, Ireland, another familiar place to him. When a fishing boat came out, Jones detained it and they volunteered that the Royal Navy 14-gun sloop Drake was now in port. Jones determined to attack her secretly at night by overlaying her cable and falling upon her bow, so as to have her decks open and exposed to his musquetry. However, the wind was high and his anchor was fouled so that the hanger was brought to upon the enemy’s quarters at the distance of half a cable’s length and ‘the crew was unwilling to undertake it.’26 A second effort was prevented as ‘The weather now became so very stormy and severe, and the sea ran so high, that [they] was obliged to take shelter under the south shore of Scotland.’ Those on the Drake seem not have been aware of any of Jones’ maneuvering. Thus far, Jones’ cruise was much like that of Conyngham or Wickes, but that would soon change.
In the eighteenth-century British Isles, between vast London and numerous fishermen’s villages were medium-sized ports like Whitehaven. Looking out on the Irish Sea from the Cumberland coast, Whitehaven was unusual in that it was a planned community built on a grid pattern in the seventeenth century. Landowner and MP Sir Christopher Lowther had taken a tiny fishing village and erected a town around a harbor to export coal from Cumberland coastal mines to Ireland.27 It also had transatlantic families who had developed trade in Chesapeake tobacco. As a result, an elaborate system of stone quays was constructed, ultimately divided between an outer and inner harbor. By 1762, its population reached 9,063, about the size of Charleston, South Carolina. A considerable number of merchant seamen, who had been crucial to the Atlantic and slave trades, resided there. Another consistency in its trade was smuggling, which for many had become a way of life.
Eighteen years earlier, John Paul had gone to Whitehaven to serve a seven-year seaman’s apprenticeship and while there he sailed to Jamaica, Tobago, Barbados, Virginia and West Africa. It would be his next target.