South American Fights and Fighters - Cyrus Townsend Brady (best novels to read for beginners .txt) 📗

and got aboard. They were making preparations to search and pillage the ship, when there was a terrific explosion, and the ill-fated _Tonquin_ blew up with all on board. In her ending she carried sudden destruction to over two hundred of the Indians.

It is surmised that the four unwounded men left on the ship realized their inability to carry the _Tonquin_ to sea, and determined to take to the boat in the hope of reaching Astoria by coasting down the shore. It is possible that they may have laid a train to the magazine--the _Tonquin_ carried four and a half tons of powder--but it is generally believed, as a more probable story, on account of the time that elapsed between their departure and the blowing up of the ship, that Lewis, who was yet alive in spite of his mortal wounds, and who was a man of splendid resolution and courage as well, {277} realizing that he could not escape death, remained on board; and when the vessel was crowded with Indians had revenged himself for the loss of his comrades by firing the magazine and blowing up the ship. Again, it is possible that Lewis may have died, and that Weeks, the armorer, the other wounded man, made himself the instrument of his own and the Indians' destruction. To complete the story, the four men who had escaped in the boats were pursued, driven ashore, and fell into the hands of the implacable Indians. They were tortured to death.

Such was the melancholy fate which attended some of the participants in the first settlement of what is now one of the greatest and most populous sections of the Union.



[1] I have seen a man at the wheel of the old _Constellation_ on one of my own cruises similarly injured.



IV


John Paul Jones

Being Further Light on His Strange Career[1]

One hundred and eighteen years ago a little man who had attracted the attention of two continents, and who, in his comparatively brief career of forty-five years, had won eternal fame for himself among the heroes of the world, died in Paris, alone in his room. He had been ill for some time, and his physician, calling late in the evening, found him prone upon his bed, sleeping a sleep from which no call to battle would ever arouse him. Like Warren Hastings, John Paul Jones was at rest at last; "in peace after so many storms, in honor after so much obliquy."

He was buried in a Protestant cemetery in Paris, which was officially closed in January, 1793. The exact location of his grave there was forgotten. For many years even the fact that he was buried there was forgotten. The other day the cable flashed a message which gladdened every American heart. Under the inspiration, and at the personal charges, of General Horace Porter, United States Ambassador to France, {282} a search had been instigated and the body was found and completely identified. It is a service of sentiment that General Porter has rendered us, but not the less valuable on that account. To love the hero, to recall the heroic past, is good for the future. The remains of the great captain came back to the United States. On the decks of such a battleship as even his genius never dreamed of, surrounded by a squadron that could have put to flight all the sea-fighters of the world before the age of steam and steel, the body of the little commodore was brought back to his adopted country to repose on the soil of the land he loved, for whose liberty he fought, whose honor he maintained in battle; and a suitable monument is to be raised by our people to commemorate his services, to inspire like conduct in years to come.

Commodore John Paul Jones, the first of the great American fighters, and not the least splendid in the long line, was born of humble origin in a southern county of Scotland. His family was obscure, his circumstances narrow, his advantages meagre, his opportunities limited. At the age of twelve he became a sailor. Genius rose, superior to adverse circumstances, however, and before he died he was one of the most accomplished officers who ever served the United States. The greatest men of America and France took pleasure in his society and were proud of his friendship.

He progressed rapidly in his chosen career. At nineteen he was chief mate of a slaver, a legitimate occupation in his day but one that filled him with disgust. At twenty-one he was captain of a trader. In 1773 he came to America, forsook the sea and settled in Virginia.


I. The Birth of the American Navy


He was still poor and still obscure when on December 7, 1775, he was appointed a lieutenant in the new Continental Navy, In that capacity he was ordered to the _Alfred_, a small converted merchantman, the flagship of Commodore Hopkins. He joined the ship immediately, and in the latter part of December he had the honor of hoisting with his own hands the first naval flag of an American squadron. This was the famous yellow silk banner with a rattlesnake and perhaps a pine tree emblazoned upon it, and with the significant legend, "Don't tread on me!"

Hopkins made an abortive expedition to New Providence, in which Jones had but one opportunity to distinguish himself. At the peril of his commission, when the regular pilots refused to do so, he volunteered to take the _Alfred_ through a difficult and dangerous channel. Needless to say, he succeeded--he always succeeded!

His first independent command was the little schooner _Providence_, of seventy men and twelve four-pound guns. In the Fall of 1775 he made a notable cruise in this schooner; he skirmished with, and escaped from, by seamanship and daring, two heavy frigates, the _Solebay_ and the _Milford_; in four months he captured sixteen vessels, eight of which were sent in as prizes, five burned, three returned to certain poor fishermen; and he destroyed property aggregating a million dollars.

Later, in command of the _Alfred_, with a short crew of one hundred and fifty, when he should have had three hundred, he made another brilliant cruise in {284} which he burned several British transports, captured one store-ship, laden to the gunwales with priceless munitions of war and supplies, cut out three of the supply fleet from under the guns of the _Flora_ frigate, and had another smart brush with the _Milford_.


II. Jones First Hoists the Stars and Stripes


Commissioned captain on the 14th of June, 1777, in the same resolution which established an American flag, he was ordered to the _Ranger_, a little ship-rigged corvette of three hundred tons. In her, on the 4th of July of the same year, he hoisted the first stars and stripes that had ever waved over a ship-of-war. In Quiberon Bay--famous as one of the battle-grounds of the world--on the evening of the 14th of February, 1778, in the _Ranger_, he received the first formal recognition ever given by a foreign fleet to the United States in a salute to the American flag. As it was after sunset when the salutes were exchanged, and in order that there should be no mistake about it, the next morning, the 15th of February, Jones transferred his flag to the _Independence_, a small privateer, and deliberately sailed through La Motte Picquet's great fleet of towering line-of-battle-ships, saluting and receiving salutes again.

Still on the _Ranger_, on the 24th of April, he fought the British sloop-of-war _Drake_, of equal force and larger crew, to a standstill in an hour and five minutes. When the _Drake_ struck her flag, her rigging, sails and spars were cut to pieces. She had forty-two killed and wounded--more than one-fifth of her crew--and was completely helpless. The _Ranger_ lost two killed and six wounded.

In 1779 Jones hoisted his flag on the _Duc de Duras_, a condemned East Indiaman, which would have been broken up had he not turned her into a makeshift frigate by mounting forty guns in her batteries--fourteen twelve-pounders, twenty nines and six eighteens. This, in honor of Franklin, he named the _Bonhomme Richard_. Accompanied by the fine little American-built frigate _Alliance_ and the French ship _Pallas_, with the brig _Vengeance_, and the cutter _Cerf_, he cruised around England, taking several prizes, and striking terror all along the shore.


III. The Battle With the _Serapis_


On the evening of the 23rd of September he fell in with the Baltic convoy. He was accompanied at the time by the _Alliance_ and the _Pallas_. The Baltic convoy was protected by the _Serapis_ and the _Scarborough_. The _Serapis_ was a brand-new, double-banked frigate of eight hundred tons, carrying twenty eighteen-pounders, twenty nines and ten sixes. Inasmuch as the eighteen-pounders on the _Richard_ burst and were abandoned after the first fire, the _Serapis_ could and did discharge nearly twice as many pounds' weight of broadside as the _Richard_, say three hundred pounds to one hundred and seventy-five. The _Pallas_ grappled with the _Scarborough_--a more equal match--and Jones attacked the _Serapis_, which was not unwilling--quite the contrary--for the fight.

The battle was one of the most memorable and desperate ever fought upon the ocean. The _Richard_ was riddled like a sieve. Her rotten sides were literally blown out to starboard and port by the heavy batteries of the _Serapis_. Jones had several hundred English {286} prisoners on board. The master-at-arms released them, but, with great readiness and presence of mind, Jones sent them to the pumps, while he continued to fight the English frigate, his own ship kept afloat by their efforts.

Captain Pearson, of the _Serapis_, was as brave a man as ever drew a sword, but he was no match for the indomitable personality of the American commander. After several hours of such fighting as had scarcely been seen before on the narrow seas, he struck his flag. The _Alliance_, accompanied by a jealous and incapable Frenchman, had contributed nothing to Jones's success. Indeed, she had twice poured her broadsides into the _Richard_. The American vessel was so wrecked below and aloft that she sank alongside, and Jones had to transfer the survivors of his crew to the English frigate. The aggregate of the two crews was nearly seven hundred, of which about three hundred and fifty were killed or wounded.

It is the greatest pity that the poverty of America did not permit Jones to get to sea in a proper frigate, or in a ship of the line, before the close of the war. After the Revolution, in which he had borne so conspicuous a part, so much so that his exploits had electrified both continents, he took service under Catherine of Russia, carefully reserving his American citizenship. In her service he fought four brilliant actions in the Black Sea, in which he had to contend with the usual discouragement of indifferent personnel and wretched material, and in which he displayed all his old-time qualities, winning his usual successes, too.

Worn out in unrequited service, disgusted with Russian court intrigues of which he was the victim, resentful of the infamous Potemkin's brutal attempts {287} at coercion, he asked leave of absence from Catherine's service and went to Paris, where, in the companionship of his friends, and in the society of the beautiful Aimèe de Telison, the one woman he loved, he lived two years and died