Commodore Paul Jones 5

Commodore Paul Jones 5

The ships were slight in force, their equipments meager and deficient,

and of inferior quality at best. The men had but little experience in

naval warfare, and their officers scarcely much more. There were men

of undoubted courage and capacity among them, however, and several to

whom the profession of arms was not entirely new. At least two of

them, Jones and Biddle, were to become forever famous for their

fighting. Compared with the huge and splendid navy of England, the

whole force was an unconsidered trifle, but it was a beginning, and

not a bad one at that, as the mother country was to find out. The

outfitting of the squadron was by no means complete, and, though the

commodore with the others labored hard, the work proceeded slowly and

with many hindrances and delays; it was never properly done. Then the

ships were ice-bound in Delaware Bay, and it was not until nearly two

months had elapsed that they were able to get to sea.

 

The principal difficulty in the rebellious colonies, from the

standpoint of military affairs, was the scarcity of powder. There were

guns in respectable numbers, but without powder they were necessarily

useless. The powder mills of the colonies were few and far between,

and their output was inadequate to meet the demand. It is now well

known that although Washington maintained a bold front when he

invested the British army in Boston, at times his magazines did not

contain more than a round or two of powder for each of his guns. His

position was a magnificent specimen of what in modern colloquialism

would have been called a "bluff." There was, of course, but little

powder to spare for the improvised men-of-war, and most of what they

had was borrowed from the colony of Pennsylvania. To get powder was

the chief end of military men then.

 

On February 17, 1776, the little squadron cleared the capes of the

Delaware, and before nightfall had disappeared from view beneath the

southeast horizon. It appears that the orders were for Hopkins to sail

along the coast toward the south, disperse Dunmore's squadron, which

was marauding in Virginia, pick up English coasting vessels, and

capture scattered English ships cruising between Pennsylvania and

Georgia to break up the colonial coasting trade and capture colonial

merchantmen. But it also appears from letters of the Marine Committee

that another object of the expedition was the seizure of large stores

of powder and munitions of warfare which had been allowed to

accumulate at New Providence, in the Bahama group, and that Hopkins

sailed with much discretion as to his undertaking and the means of

carrying it out. The Bahama project was maintained as a profound

secret between the naval committee and its commodore, the matter not

being discussed in Congress even.

 

With that end in view the commander-in-chief, by orders published to

the fleet before its departure, appointed the island of Abaco, one of

the most northerly of the Bahama group, as a rendezvous for his

vessels in case they became separated by the usual vicissitudes of the

sea. The scattered ships were directed to make an anchorage off the

southern part of the island, and wait at least fourteen days for the

other vessels to join them before cruising on their own account in

such directions as in the judgment of their respective commanders

would most annoy, harass, and damage the enemy.

 

Shortly after leaving the capes the squadron ran into a severe

easterly gale off Hatteras, then, as now, one of the most dangerous

points on the whole Atlantic seaboard. The ships beat up against it,

and all succeeded in weathering the cape and escaping the dreaded

perils of the lee shore. If lack of training prevented the officers

from claiming to be naval experts, there were prime seamen among them

at any rate. When the gale abated Hopkins cruised along the coast for

a short time, meeting nothing of importance in the way of a ship.

Rightly concluding that the fierce winter weather would have induced

the enemy's vessels to seek shelter in the nearest harbors, and his

cruise in that direction, if further continued, would be profitless,

he squared away for the Bahamas, to carry out the second and secret

part of his instructions.

 

It was for a long time alleged that he took this action on his own

account, and one of the charges against him in the popular mind was

disobedience of orders in so doing; but he was undoubtedly within his

orders in the course which he took, and it is equally certain that the

enterprise upon which he was about to engage was one in which more

immediate profit would accrue to the colonies than in any other. He

should be held not only guiltless in the matter, but awarded praise

for his decision. On the 1st of March the squadron, with the exception

of the Hornet and the Fly, which had parted company in the gale,

reached the island of Abaco, about forty miles to the northward of New

Providence.

 

No part of the western hemisphere had been longer known than the

Bahamas. Upon one of them Columbus landed. The principal island among

them, not on account of its size, which was insignificant, but because

it possessed a commodious and land-locked harbor, is the island of New

Providence. No island in the great archipelago which forms the

northeastern border of the Caribbean had enjoyed a more eventful

history. From time immemorial it had been the haunt of the buccaneer

and the pirate. From it had sailed many expeditions to ravage the

Spanish Main. It had been captured and recaptured by the successive

nationalities which had striven for domination in the Caribbean, and

in their brutal rapacity had made a hell of every verdant tropic

island which lifted itself in the gorgeous beauty peculiar to those

latitudes, above the deep blue of that lambent sea. It had come

finally and definitely under the English crown, and a civilized

government had been established by the notorious Woodes Rogers, who

was himself a sort of Jonathan Wild of the sea, but one remove--and

that not a great one--from the gentry whose nests he broke up and

whose ravages he had put down. It had been taken since then by the

Spaniards, but had been restored to the British.

 

The town of Nassau, which lies upon the northern face of the island,

is situated upon the side of a hill which slopes gently down toward

the water. The harbor, which is sufficiently deep to accommodate

vessels drawing not more than twelve feet, is formed by a long island

which lies opposite the town. There are two entrances to the harbor,

only one of which was practicable for large ships, though both were

open for small vessels. At the ends of the harbor, commanding each

entrance, two forts had been erected: Fort Montague on the east and

Fort Nassau on the west. Through culpable negligence, in spite of the

quantity of military stores it contained, there was not a single

regular soldier on the island at that time, and no preparations for

defense had been made.

 

It was proposed to make the descent upon the western end of the island

and then march up and take the town in the rear. Paul Jones, however,

in the council which was held on the Alfred before the debarkation,

pointed out the greater distance which the men would have to march in

that case, the alarm which would be given by the passage of the ships,

and advised that a landing be effected upon the eastern end of the

island, whence the attack could be more speedily delivered, and, as

the ships would not be compelled to advance, no previous alarm would

be given. Hopkins demurred to this plan on the ground that no safe

anchorage for the ships was afforded off the eastern end. The Alfred

had taken two pilots from some coasting vessels which had been

captured, and from them it was learned that about ten miles away was a

small key which would afford the larger vessels safe anchorage. As

Hopkins hesitated to trust the pilots, Jones, at the peril of his

commission, offered in conjunction with them to bring the ships up

himself. His suggestions were agreed to, his offer accepted, and when

the vicinity of the key was reached he took his station on the

fore-topmast crosstrees of the Alfred. He had sailed in the West

Indian waters many times, and was familiar with the look of the sea

and the indications near the shore. With the assistance of the pilots,

after a somewhat exciting passage, he succeeded in bringing all the

ships to a safe anchorage. That he was willing to take the risk, and,

having done so, successfully carry out the difficult undertaking,

gives a foretaste of his bold and decisive character, and of his

technical skill as well.

 

Preparations for attack were quickly made. Commodore Hopkins, having

impressed some local schooners, loaded them with two hundred and fifty

marines from the squadron, under the command of Captain Samuel

Nichols, the ranking officer of the corps, and fifty seamen under the

command of Lieutenant Thomas Weaver of the Cabot, and on March 2d the

transports with this attacking force were dispatched to New

Providence.[3] They were convoyed by the Providence and the Wasp, and

a landing was effected under the cover of these two ships of war.

Unfortunately, however, some of the other larger vessels got under way

at the same time, and their appearance alarmed the town.

 

It never seems to have occurred to any one but Jones that the west

exit from the harbor should be guarded by stationing two of the

smaller vessels off the channel to close it while the rest of the

squadron took care of the eastern end. It seems probable from his

correspondence that he ventured upon the suggestion, for he

specifically referred in condemnatory terms to the failure to do so.

At any rate, if he did suggest it, and from his known capacity it is

extremely likely that the obvious precaution would have occurred to

him, his suggestion was disregarded, and the western pass from the

harbor was left open--a fatal mistake.

 

The point where the expedition landed without opposition was some four

and a half miles from Fort Montague. It was a bright Sunday morning

when the first American naval brigade took up its march under Captain

Nichols' orders. The men advanced steadily, and, though they were met

by a discharge of cannon from Fort Montague, they captured the works

by assault without loss, the militia garrison flying precipitately

before the American advance. The marines behaved with great spirit on

this occasion, as they have ever done. Instead of promptly moving down

upon the other fort, however, they contented themselves during that

day with their bloodless achievement, and not until the next morning

did they advance to complete the capture of the place.

 

The inhabitants of the island were in a state of panic, and when the

marines and sailors marched up to attack Fort Nassau they found it

empty of any garrison except Governor Brown, who opened the gates and

formally surrendered it to the Americans. During the confusion of the

night Brown seems to have preserved his presence of mind, and rightly

divining that the powder would be the most precious of all the

munitions of warfare in his charge, he had caused a schooner which lay

in the harbor to be loaded with one hundred and fifty barrels, the

limit of its capacity, and before daybreak she set sail and made good

her escape through the unguarded western passage. A dreadful

misfortune that, which would not have occurred had Jones been in