Augustus C Buell

Paul Jones Founder of the American Navy - a History - Volume II Augustus C Buell

Publisher Marketing: numerous biographers of Paul Jonea do not agree in their estimates of the motives that prompted the Conrnodore to let the AlIiance go so easily when he had in his hands full power to stop her, at all hazarils. Most of them take the view that he was reatuated wholly by impulses of humanity that he knew or believed Landaia, backed and encouraged as he was by Arthur Lee, would make the effort to get out in defence of the French authorities that if he should do so Then venard would open on him with the one hundred and thirty-eight heavy guns of the Barrier Forts, some of which were sixty-eight pounders, and as they commanded the narrow channel at close range, such a fire must tear the little frigate to pieces in five minutes and that it would be better to submit to the wrong done by two men than to subdue them by measures calculated to destroy more than two hundred men who had done no wrong. This view we think reasonabIe, and it is borne out by Joness on rocords of the affair presented in the foregoing pages. Others hold that the Commodore is not desirous of returning home in the Alliance that he preferred to stay in France, where he still believed, or at least hoped, he might obtain a now command and make another cruise in European waters. Yet others-at least two-the Edinburgh life and Guerres on course franqaise History of French Privateering -intimate that he was loath to tear himself away from the charms of Parisian society, of which he was at that moment par exellence the lion. Be the actual truth what it may, as between these conflicting theories, it is beyond question that the Commodore wasted no time in mourning. The next day after the Alliance sailed he wrote to Dr. Frmlrlin asking him to exhaust his good officer to obtain for him the command of the Serapis, then nearly ready two receive a crew and sea-stores. He already had the Ariel, rating as a twenty-gun corvette which the King had lent to Dr. Franklin to accompany the Alliance home. The Ariel was a ship of her rate, carrying eighteen twelve-pounders and four long sixes, and berthing one hundred and eighty men. After Arthur Lee and Landais had seized the Alliance, Jones held back the Ariel for future contingencies. Beforo sailing in the Alliance, Landais had sent ashore Lieutenants Dale and Stack and about sixty men of the Richards old crew. Lieutenant Edward Staok and his comrade, Lieutenant Eugene Macarty, of the old crew of the Bon Homme Bichard, deserve a better place in American history and a warmer spot in the Amaricm heart than have hitherto been given to the memories.