|
THE Chevalier Jones was a man of unbounded
ambition, and the honours bestowed on him by the King, though regarded
as a final and ample reward by many, only satisfied a lesser part of his
complex nature. There is not the slightest doubt that he was a most
disquieting free lance to be at large among those who were actuated by
less disinterested motives than himself. He had hoped for command of the
Serapis, which had been sold to the King on June 22nd for 240,000 livres.
He would have been glad to have La Terpsichore, on which the Duc de
Chartres first visited America, but in the French Navy the captains
greatly outnumbered the available ships, and he was obliged to content
himself with the Ariel, and the mission of carrying the supplies,
collected with so much labour by the Commissioners, to Washington's
army, a venture promising little glory. On his return to l'Orient he
found his crew mutinous and sullen, full of the grievance that their
commander had neglected their interests while enjoying the sunshine of
popularity. This was the consequence of an intrigue hatched by Lee and
Landais—the men being but pawns in the game—to ruin and annoy Jones.
Though getting money from the Commissioners was a feat greater than the
labours of Hercules, Jones blamed himself severely "for having returned
from Paris without having absolutely insisted on the previous payment of
my men." Landais had long since
been ordered to America for his court-martial, Dr. Franklin advancing
money for travelling expenses. Instead of obeying orders he, backed by
Lee, declared that the Alliance had been wrongly taken from him, as the
command had come from Congress. The officers and crew sent a petition to
the plenipotentiaries "setting forth their grievances and their wishes,"
while Landais modestly expressed a desire to be given his old command.
All this was enough to whiten the
remaining hairs left to Franklin, for he had supposed Landais half way
across the briny deep, soon to be in the hands of responsible authority;
while his turbulent friend Paul seemed, for once, suitably provided with
enough work to keep him occupied for some months.
The good old gentleman was so exasperated
that he wrote a concise and definite reply to Landais, in which there
was not the faintest hint of any temporising, or of replacing him on the
Alliance.
"No one ever learned the opinion I formed
of you from inquiry made into your conduct. I kept it entirely to
myself. I have not even hinted it in my letters to America, because I
would not hazard giving to any one a bias to your prejudice. By
communicating a tart of that opinion privately to you I can do no harm,
for you may burn it. I should not give you the pain of reading it if
your demand did not make it necessary. I think you, then, so imprudent,
so litigious and quarrelsome a man, even with your best friends, that
peace and good order, and consequently the quiet regular subordination
so necessary to success, are, where you preside, impossible. These are
within my observation and apprehension. Your military operations I leave
to more capable judges. If, therefore, I had twenty ships of war in my
disposition I should not give one of them to Captain Landais. The same
temper which excluded him from the French Marine would weigh equally
with me; of course I shall not replace him in the Alliance."
Franklin exhausted his diplomacy to bring
reason to that mutinous crew, "whom the power of France would have
enabled him to crush at once." The officers and men of the Alliance were
naturally indignant at the charge of having fired into the Bonhomme
Richard. Franklin politely tells the discontented ones that, "if it came
to be publicly known that you had the strongest aversion to Captain
Landais, who had used you basely, and that it is only since the last
year's cruise, and the appointment of Commodore Jones to the command,
that you request to be again under your old captain, I fear suspicions
and reflections may be thrown upon you by the world, as if this change
of sentiment may have arisen from your observation during the cruise
that Captain Jones loved close fighting, that Captain Landais was
skilful in keeping out of harm's way, and that you therefore thought
yourself safer with the latter." He exhorts them to take an old man's
advice, and go home peacefully with their ship. He might as well have
talked to the winds of heaven; "which failure proves that something
beside reason is at times necessary in governing seamen."
The sailors refused to weigh anchor and
depart from l'Orient unless they received six months' wages, all their
prize money, and "until their legal captain, Pierre Landais, was
restored to them." The last clause being interlined in Landais's own
writing.
Not to be baffled, Jones posted to
Versailles, where he obtained an order for apprehending and imprisoning
Landais if necessary, and was promised letters to the Commissary of the
Port to facilitate his departure. On the 13th of June the mutiny had
reached its culmination. Causing his appointment to the Alliance to be
read on the deck of the ship, and addressing the assembled crew, Jones
demanded that whoever had any complaint to prefer against him should
speak out. "There was," he says, "every appearance of contentment and
subordination. . . . I am certain the people love me and would readily
obey me." The proofs of this affection were of a very unusual kind, for
no sooner had Jones quitted the ship than Landais Came on board and
usurped the command, "flatly refusing to relinquish the ship !
Losing no time, Jones sped off again to
Versailles, where he was assured orders had been sent to l'Orient "to
compel Landais and his crew to obedience, or, if he attempted to quit
the port, to fire on him and, if necessary, sink the ship; but when
Jones returned to l'Orient he found no orders had materialised. However,
the authorities of the port, his friends, assured him of their support,
and, in this unprecedented situation, he adhered to his policy of
tolerant forbearance when he learned that the Alliance had been towed
from the road of l'Orient to Port Louis.
Though no express from Versailles had
been received, M. de Thevenard, the commandant, made preparations to
stop the Alliance, having sent orders in the evening, without consulting
Jones, "to fire on the Alliance and sink her to the bottom, if they
attempted to approach and pass the barrier that had been made across the
entrance of the port. Had I remained silent an hour longer the dreadful
work would have been done," Paul wrote in his journal.
At Franklin's request the Ministry of
Marine had sent orders that the Alliance must be prevented from sailing
at all hazards, but by what means was not mentioned to the peaceful
Quaker, who received a shock on reading Paul's letter, where he told
Franklin that, rather than doom so many innocent men to death, he had
taken upon himself to cancel the orders to de Thevenard, adding, "Your
humanity will, I know, justify the part I acted in preventing a scene
that would have rendered me miserable for the rest of my life."
Upheld by Arthur Lee, and spared just
punishment by the leniency of the Commodore, Landais put to sea on June
22nd. Though the ship was laden with military stores, of which
Washington's army stood in urgent need, Landais, after passing Cape
Finisterre, determined to cruise as far south as the Windward Isles.
There was a stormy scene between Lee and the Captain, the former
upholding officers and crew in their refusal to obey Landais. Then
occurred a comedy of true Gilbertian flavour. Lee, being a doctor, with
degrees from the University of Edinburgh, ordered a survey to be held
upon the Captain, who was declared insane; then, as ex-Commissioner of
the United States, he ordered Lieutenant Degge to take command of the
Alliance, which resumed her proper course, arriving at Boston the 2nd of
August. It has never been satisfactorily decided to what the intense and
persistent enmity Lee displayed towards Paul Jones should be attributed.
When the Alliance was fitting out and taking aboard her cargo of
military supplies, Lee had asked and obtained permission from Franklin,
to return to the United States on board the vessel. But Lee had no
intention of sailing with Jones in command, and did everything to make
matters as unpleasant as he could. During his four years as Commissioner
he had accumulated a vast amount of furniture, household effects, among
other things two coaches, all of which he insisted should be stowed away
on the Alliance. As the object of the voyage was to take out supplies
for the army, Jones refused, for, had he shipped all Mr. Lee's
belongings, there would have been no room for anything else. He,
however, offered to arrange for them to be taken on one of the merchant
ships going under convoy of the Alliance, and was deaf to any other
arrangement. Consequently Lee left no stone unturned to take the command
away from Jones, with the result related above.
The social side of life furnished the
Chevalier with pleasures, which in a great measure counterbalanced the
annoyances to which he was subjected, and left no time on his hands in
which to grow moody or repine over the irremediable. He busied himself
over the many projects he had in view, receiving assurance that the
Comte de Maurepas and Comte de Vergennes, whose assistance he had
solicited, would aid him so far as they were able to secure ships for an
expedition which he was then trying to organise.
On the 25th August he celebrated King
Louis's birthday on the 4ic1, and fired two royal salutes, and, on the
2nd of September gave a magnificent entertainment on the same ship. It
must be admitted that the employment of taking stores to America in the
Ariel was not up to Jones's expectations, and he still hoped to be able,
through the interest of the new French Ministry, to obtain the Serapis,
as there were five hundred tons of army stores to be transported in
excess of the tonnage of the Arid.
It is an interesting commentary on the
gratefulness of Republics that Jones received from the American
Government absolutely no promotion or reward for his superb victory over
the Serapis, while Captain Pearson was knighted by King George for the
gallant defence of his ship. Writing to the American agent Dumas, on
September 8th, Jones referred to the good fortune of his late adversary,
and said: "The next time I meet him I will make a lord of him!
On October 7th the Ariel sailed, to run
into the most terrible storm that had swept the coast for years, in
which the 4riel lost her fore and main masts, "and rode waterlogged in
the open ocean to windward of the Penmarques, perhaps the most dangerous
ledge of rocks in the world, for two days and three nights in a tempest
that covered the shores with wrecks and dead bodies, and that drove
ships from their anchors ashore even in so sheltered a port as l'Orient."
They managed to get back to l'Orient on the 12th, but Jones says: "Long
as I have followed the sea in all climates and at all seasons I never,
till that event, conceived how awful is the majesty of tempest or the
unspeakable horrors of shipwreck."
The repairs to the Ariel consumed two
months, as all the cargo had to be taken out, the powder dried and
muskets cleaned before they were utterly spoiled by the salt water. Paul
tried again to get La Terpsiclzore, only to find himself anticipated by
Captain Beauvallon. Dc Sartine had been, superseded as Minister of
Marine by the Maréchal de Castries, a friend of the American party, and
Jones wrote immediately on learning of his appointment to congratulate
him, enclosing "an outline of a project for action," which he begged his
Excellency to consider: the gist of which was, that the following spring
Jones should cruise with the Alliance and Confederacy, a new ship being
built in Boston. On the 17th December Paul wrote, bidding farewell to
Aimée, as the nearness of parting and the uncertainty of the future
recalled, with almost overwhelming vividness, the softer memories of his
life in France—
"The men of France I esteem, respect and
honour. They are brave, generous and faithful. But the women of France!
What words can I find to express my homage, my worship, my devotion!
They have been in these years of toil and storm and battle my guardian
angels; they have saved me from despair, and they have inspired me to
conquer. Their approving smiles and tender praise have been to me more
than the applause of statesmen and even more than the favour of royalty
itself.
"Should fate decree this to be my last
view of enchanted France I can at least perish somewhere far away with
the music of the voice of a Frenchwoman soothing me, and the beauty of a
Frenchwoman's face and form pictured in my glazing eyes."
Before sailing on December 18th the
Commodore gave a "superb entertainment " on the Arid, which did not
escape description in detail by a puritanical contemporary. "The ship
was tastefully prepared by spreading her awnings, so as to convert the
quarterdeck into a ball and banqueting room. A curtain of pink silk hung
from the awning to the deck, decorated with alternate mirrors and
pictures, some of which latter partook of the prurient character of the
French taste of that day. Between the mirrors and pictures were wreaths
of artificial flowers. The deck was laid with carpets. These
arrangements were made under the superintending care of a French lady,
of Jones's acquaintance; while cooks and waiters from the shore made
liberal preparations for the feast. When all was ready at the appointed
hour, Jones despatchod three of his boats ashore, the crews of which
were neatly dressed in uniform and decorated with the American and
French cockades united. The ship, too, was dressed with flags. At three
o'clock the company arrived, consisting of many persons of rank of both
sexes, splendidly dressed.
"Jones received them, as they came up the
ship's side, and conducted them to their seats on the quarterdeck, with
a great deal of ease, politeness and good nature. At half-past three the
company sat down to an elegant dinner, from which they did not rise till
sunset. All hands were at quarters, prepared, by Jones's order, to
exhibit a representation of the capture of the Serapis. At eight
o'clock, as the moon rose, the evening being much the same as on that
memorable occasion, a gun was fired on the forecastle as a signal to
commence. It was immediately followed by a tremendous explosion of great
guns, small arms, rockets and grenades. The tops, as in the action with
the Serapis, were kept in a complete blaze. The scene was splendid, but
the din was awful. The ladies, beside themselves with terror, begged
Jones to have mercy on them, and the action was prematurely arrested at
the end of an hour. The admiral's band, which had been lent for the
occasion, now struck up a lively air and the dance began. It continued
with unabated spirit until midnight, when the company was set on shore
by the boats, with the same regularity with which they came off, except,
as Fanning says, that some of them were 'half seas over.' The officers
gallantly attended them to their very doors." |
