Commodore Paul Jones 2

Commodore Paul Jones 2

Near the close of the fifth decade of the eighteenth century, George I

reigned in England, by the grace of God and because he had succeeded

in putting down the rebellion of 1745; Frederick the Great was

tenaciously clutching the fair province of Silesia which Maria

Theresa, with equal resolution but with faint prospect of success, was

endeavoring to retain; Louis XV (the well beloved!) was exploiting the

privileges and opportunities of a king with Madame de Pompadour and

the _Parc aux Cerfs_; and the long war of the Austrian succession was

just drawing to a close, when there was born on July 6, 1747, to a

Scots peasant, named John Paul, and to Jean MacDuff, his wife, a son,

the fifth child of a large family.[1]

 

The youngster was duly christened John Paul, Junior, after his sire.

He is the hero of this history. He first saw the light on the estate

of Arbigland, in the parish of Kirkbean, in the county of

Kirkcudbright, a province once called the Royal Stewartry of

Kirkcudbright (pronounced "Kircoobree"), because it had been governed

formerly by a steward or deputy, appointed by the crown, of which the

county had been an appanage.

 

The father of the subject of this memoir filled the modest situation

of a master gardener, a precursor of the modern and scientific

landscape gardener, or engineer, in a small scale, in the employ of a

Scots bonnet laird named Craik. His remote family--peasants, yeomen

always--had come from the ancient lands of the Thanes of Fife, whence

his grandfather had removed to Leith, where he kept a mail garden or

wayside inn--in short, a tavern. It is to the credit of Master John

Paul, Senior--evidently a most honest and capable man in that humble

station in life into which it had pleased God to call him--that he

forsook the tavern and clung to the garden. When he had finished his

apprenticeship as gardener he removed to Arbigland, where he married

Jean MacDuff, the daughter of a sturdy yeoman farmer of the

neighboring parish of New Abbey, whose family had been established in

their present location from time immemorial.

 

The marriage was blessed with seven children, the two youngest sons

dying in infancy. The first was a boy named William; the next three

were girls, named Elizabeth, Janet, and Mary Ann; and the fifth and

last, considering the death of the infants, the boy named John, after

his father. _En passant_, there must have been something favorable to

the development of latent possibilities in gardeners' sons in that

corner of Scotland, for in the neighboring county of Ayr, a few years

later was born of similar bucolic stock the son of another tiller of

the soil, known to fame as Robbie Burns!

 

The cottage in which young Paul made his first appearance was a little

stone building in a verdant glade in a thriving wood hard by the north

shore of the Solway. In front of the cottage whose whitewashed walls

were in full view of the ships which entered the Firth there was a

patch of greensward. The country of that section of bonnie Scotland in

which is the parish of Arbigland is rugged and broken. To the east and

to the west, huge, craggy mountains shut in a thickly wooded plateau,

diversified by clear, rapid streams abounding in fish. The fastnesses

in the hills even then were covered with romantic ruins of decayed

strongholds of feudal times, reminiscent of the days of the Black

Douglasses and their men. The coast line, unusually stern and bold, is

broken by many precipitous inlets, narrow and deep. At the foot of the

cliffs at low tide broad stretches of sand are exposed to view, and

the rapid rise of the tide makes these shelving beaches dangerous

places upon which to linger. The water deepens abruptly beyond the

beaches, and vessels under favorable circumstances are enabled to

approach near the shore.

 

Amid such scenes as these the childhood of young Paul was passed. Like

every thrifty Scots boy of the period, he had plenty of work to do in

assisting his mother and father. The life of a Scots peasant of that

time was one of hard and incessant toil; his recreations were few, his

food meager, his opportunities limited, and the luxuries absent. Young

John Paul ate his porridge and did his work like the rest. It would

probably now be considered a sad and narrow life, which the stern and

rigid austerity of the prevailing form of Calvinism did nothing to

lighten. That gloomy religion, however, did produce men.

 

It was the parish school which shaped and molded the minds of the

growing Scots, and it was the Kirk which shaped and directed the

schools, and the one was not more thorough than the other. I doubt if

anywhere on earth at that day was the standard of education among the

common people higher and more universally reached than in Scotland.

During the short school year Paul was sent religiously to the nearest

parish school, where he was well grounded in the rudiments of solid

learning with the thoroughness which made these little schools famous.

No demands of labor were allowed to interfere with the claims of

education. On Sunday he was religiously and regularly marched to the

kirk to be duly inducted into the mysteries of the catechism, and

thoroughly indoctrinated with the theory of predestination and its

rigorous concomitants.

 

Of him, as of other boys, it is veraciously stated that he conceived a

great fondness for the sea, and it is related that all his plays were

of ships and sailors--a thing easily understood when it is remembered

that his most impressionable hours were spent in sight and sound of

the great deep, and that the white sails of ships upon the horizon

were quite as familiar a picture to his youthful vision as the

tree-clad hills and valleys of his native land. It is evident

that he had no fancy for the garden. A man of action he, from his

bib-and-tucker days. His chroniclers have loved to call attention to

the fact that even as a lad he manifested the spirit of one born to

rule, for in the sports and games it was his will which dominated his

little group of comrades--and the Scotsman, even when he is a child,

is not easily dominated, be it remembered. His was a healthy, vigorous

boyhood.

 

His desire for the sea must have been stronger than the evanescent

feeling which finds a place sooner or later in the life of most boys,

for in 1759, with the full consent of his parents, he crossed the

Solway to Whitehaven, the principal port of the Firth, where he was

regularly bound apprentice to a merchant named Younger, who was

engaged in the American trade. He was immediately sent to sea on the

ship Friendship, Captain Benson, and at the tender age of twelve years

he made his first voyage to the new land toward whose freedom and

independence he was afterward destined to contribute so much. The

destination of the ship happened to be the Rappahannock River. As it

fortunately turned out, his elder brother, William, had some years

before migrated to Virginia, where he had married and settled at

Fredericksburg, and by his industry and thrift finally amassed a

modest fortune. Young Paul at once conceived a great liking for

America which never faltered; long afterward he stated that he had

been devoted to it from his youth.

 

The ship duties in port not being arduous, the young apprentice,

through the influence of his brother, was permitted to spend the

period of the vessel's stay in America on shore under the roof of his

kinsman. There he continued his studies with that zeal for knowledge

which was one of his distinguishing characteristics, and which never

left him in after life; for it is to be noted that he was always a

student; indeed, had he not been so, his subsequent career would have

been impossible. It was largely that habit of application, early

acquired, that enabled him to advance himself beyond his original

station. He especially applied himself to the science of navigation,

the intricacies of which he speedily mastered, so that he became

subsequently one of the most expert navigators that sailed the sea.

 

His natural inclination for the sea stood him in good stead, and he

finally acquired a complete knowledge of the details of his trying

profession. Upon the failure of Mr. Younger, who surrendered the

indentures of young Paul to him as the only thing he could do for him

in his present circumstances, he was sufficiently capable to receive

an appointment as third mate on the slaver King George, of Whitehaven.

A few years after, in 1766, being then but nineteen years of age, he

was appointed to the most responsible position of chief mate of the

slaver Two Friends, a brigantine of Jamaica. The contrast between the

old and the new _régime_ is brought vividly before us when we learn

that to-day a cadet midshipman--the lowest naval rank at present--of

the same age has still a year of schooling to undergo before he can

even undertake the two years' probationary cruise at sea required

before he can be commissioned in the lowest grade.

 

Slave trading was a popular and common vocation in that day, not

reprehended as it would be at present. Gentlemen of substance and

station did not scruple to engage in it, either as providing money and

receiving profit, or as actually participating as master or supercargo

of ships in the traffic. It is interesting to note that young Paul, as

he grew in years and acquired character, became intensely dissatisfied

with slaving. The sense of the cruelties, iniquities, and injustice of

the trade developed in him with coming manhood, and gradually took

such possession of him that, as was stated by his relatives and

himself, he finally resolved to withdraw from it.

 

This determination, scarcely to be expected from one of his birth and

circumstances, was greatly to his credit. The business itself was a

most stirring and lucrative one, and for a young man to have attained

the rank he enjoyed so early in life was evidence that he need have no

fear but that the future would bring him further advancement and

corresponding pecuniary reward. In this decision he was certainly in

advance of his time as well; but that love of liberty which had been

bred in him by the free air of the bold hills of his native land, and

which afterward became the master passion of his life, for which he

drew his sword, was undoubtedly heightened and intensified by this

close personal touch with the horrors of involuntary servitude.

 

In the year 1768, therefore, giving up his position on the Two

Friends, he sailed as a passenger in the brigantine John, bound for

Kirkcudbright. It happened that the captain and mate of the vessel

both died of fever during the voyage, and at the request of the crew

Paul assumed command and brought the vessel safely to her port.

Currie, Beck & Co., the owners of the John, were so pleased with this

exploit that they appointed young Paul master and supercargo of the

vessel, in which he made two voyages to the West Indies. He was a

captain, therefore, and a merchant at the age of twenty-one. The

owners of the John dissolved partnership on the completion of his

second voyage, and disposed of the ship, giving Paul the following

honorable certificate upon his discharge from their employ:

 

"These do certify to whom it may concern, that the bearer, Captain

John Paul, was two voyages master of a vessel called the John, in our