A CRITICISM OF AUGUSTUS C. BUELL'S "PAUL JONES, FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN NAVY."
Few more interesting volumes relating to American history have been recently written than Mr. Augustus C. Buell's book, "Paul Jones, Founder of the American Navy, A History," published in 'goo, in two volumes. This pleasing work possesses many graces of style and presentation which the dry-as-dust historians might imitate to their on pecuniary advantage and to the pleasure of their readers. But on the other hand it would have been saved from many misstatements had it been brought to those tests for reliability of sources and accuracy of names, dates and facts, which the scientific historian regularly applies to his duller writings. The most faulty part of the book is Chapter II of Volume I, entitled "Founding the American Navy," which seems to be based upon a spurious manuscript.
It will facilitate the discussion if we first give a brief resume of the chief events relating to the establishment of the Revolutionary Navy, using simply the statements known and accepted before the appearance of Mr. Buell's book.
On October 5, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of three ( Journals of the Continental Congress, October 5), which according to John Adams consisted of himself, John Langdon of New Hampshire, and Silas Deane of Connecticut (Works of John Adams, III, 7), to prepare a plan for intercepting two British brigs loaded with arms, powder and other warlike stores. A report which this committee made on October 6 was acted upon on October 13, when Congress decided to fit out two armed vessels and appointed a committee consisting of Deane, Langdon and Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina to estimate the expense to be incurred in fitting out the vessels ( Journals, October 6 and 13). On October 30 this latter committee, which was later called the Naval Committee, made a report. Congress now ordered two more vessels to be prepared for sea, and added four additional members to the former committee, Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island, Joseph Hewes of North Carolina, R. H. Lee of Virginia and John Adams of Massachusetts (Journals, October 30). The Naval Committee during October, November and December, 1775, drew up rules and regulations for the navy, obtained a fleet of eight vessels and prepared them for sea, and officered them by making Esek Hopkins of Rhode Island commander-in-chief, and by appointing four captains, five first lieutenants, five second lieutenants and three third lieutenants. John Paul Jones was first on the list of first lieutenants (Journals, December 22). On December 14, 1775, Congress appointed a committee of thirteen to take charge of the building of thirteen frigates (Journals, December 14). This new committee was called the Marine Committee, and by the spring of 1776 had superseded the Naval Committee as the naval executive of the Continental Congress.
Mr. Buell's account differs from the above principally in two particulars: he places some three or four months earlier the appointment of the first naval committee, and he gives John Paul Jones a much more prominent part in the obtaining and fitting out of vessels and in the organizing of the navy than hitherto he had been supposed to have had.
Buell says that about May 1, 1775, two frigates of the French Navy, commanded by Commodore de Kersaint, with "the Sailor Prince of France, Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke de Chartres," second in command (who had been selected to become High Admiral of France), put into Hampton Roads, Virginia. In May, 1775, Jones visited these two frigates and "made no secret with the young Duke and Commodore Kersaint that his object was to obtain information as to the plan, design and construction of hull, arrangement of battery, spars, rig and other technical particulars, for the guidance of the Marine Department of the new American Government, which he assured them would be formed within two months, and which would fight it out with England to the bitter end" (Buell, I, 25-26).
Now it is most astonishing, as has been pointed out by Mr. William G. Stanard in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (VIII, 444), that the Virginia Gazette, published at Williamsburg, Virginia, should take no notice of this most conspicuous event. The writer has not only corroborated Mr. Stanard's conclusions by inspecting the files of the Virginia Gazette, but he has also searched the files of several other colonial papers of the period, which he found profuse in their announcements of the arrival of insignificant craft of all sorts, but absolutely silent respecting the improbable incident of the French vessels.
Buell next informs us, after referring to the meeting of the Continental Congress on May 10, 1775, that "on June 14 a provisional Marine or Naval Committee was appointed 'to consider, inquire and report with respect to organization of a naval force. At first this committee consisted of Robert Morris, chairman: Philip Livingston, Benjamin Harrison, John Hancock, Joseph Hewes and Nicholas Van Dyke, members" (Buell, I, 27). At a session held on June 24, the committee on the motion of Mr. Hewes, authorized the chairman -" to invite John Paul Jones, Esquire, gent., of Virginia, Master Mariner, to lay before the Committee such information and advice as may seem to him useful in assisting the said Committee to discharge its labors " (Buell, I, 27-28). It is certainly singular that neither the manuscript journals nor the manuscript secret journals of the Continental Congress, which are now in the Library of Congress, mentions the appointment of this committee. It is also singular that Robert Morris, the chairman of the committee, should not be a member of Congress at this time, not being chosen until November 3, 1775; and that Nicholas Van Dyke should also be a member of the committee, although he did not enter Congress until June 2, 1777 (Journals, November 6, 1775, and June 2, 1777).
John Adams in his autobiography reports a debate in Congress of October 6, 1775, and in his Notes of Debates, another of October 13. In each of these debates measures were under discussion which involved, as was thought, the establishment of a navy. Against such an undertaking the most strenuous opposition manifested itself. Adams says, speaking of the debate of October 5, "These formidable arguments and this terrible rhetoric were answered by us by the best reasons we could allege, and the great advantages of distressing the enemy, supplying ourselves and beginning a system of maritime and naval operations were presented in colors equally glowing and animated" (Works of John Adams, II, 463-464, Ill, 7-8). Now, according to Mr. Buell, at the time when these debates were taking place Congress had already, four months previously, appointed a Marine Committee; this committee had called to Philadelphia as its "master mariner" John Paul Jones and had chosen a commission of four merchant captains, of which Jones was the head, and this commission had surveyed sundry vessels, one of which at least the Marine Committee had bought, and the Marine Committee had ordered Jones to convert this vessel into a light frigate, etc. (Buell, I, 27-42). Now why should Congress be debating in October the feasibility of doing the very thing it had already done? According to Mr. Buell's narrative Congress had by October gone far towards creating a navy. It is impossible to harmonize this narrative with the autobiography and notes of John Adams. One or the other is at fault.
Mr. Buell's book, the statements of John Adams and John Paul Jones and the accounts of our Revolutionary Navy as given by many historians, agree that the first vessel purchased by Congress was the Black Prince, which was renamed the Alfred. Mr. Buell gives many interesting details respecting the Black Prince, some of which are at variance with other accounts of her and with well known facts. He says that she was built at Maryport, Cumberlandshire, England, about 1766, that she was employed in the North American trade and that in 1770 she was bought by a company of Philadelphia merchants trading to the East Indies (Buell, I, 29-30). These facts will have to be harmonized with the following: The Black Prince obtained a Philadelphia register on December 19, 1774 (Pa. Archives, 2d series, II, 668); two days later she sailed on her first voyage as a Philadelphia vessel (M. I. J. Griffin, Commodore John Barry, 20; Pennsylvania Packet, December 26, 1774) ; and no American merchantman visited the East Indies until after the Revolutionary War. Mr. Buell says that her burden was 44o tons; the Pennsylvania Archives gives her burden as 200 tons. Buell says that in June, 1775, the Black Prince was at Philadelphia preparing for her third trip to the East Indies. The Pennsylvania Packet of May 8, 1775, informs us that she had just cleared for Falmouth, England, and in Griffin's Commodore John Barry, page 19, we learn that she arrived in London on June 7, 1775.
Concerning the work of John Paul Jones in fitting the Black Prince for sea, Mr. Buell says that "he hove her down at the Christian Street wharf, Philadelphia, in September, 1775" (Buell, I, 31). The Pennsylvania Packet of October 16, 1775, names this ship in its list of vessels arriving at Philadelphia during the past week. She was returning from her summer voyage to England. There is not the slightest doubt that when Jones "hove her down at the Christian Street wharf," she was some hundreds of miles from Philadelphia, sailing on the broad Atlantic.
According to Mr. Buell, John Paul Jones laid before the Marine Committee two documents, one "on personnel" under date of September 14, and the other "on materiel" under date of October 3, 1775. Grave doubt is cast upon the authenticity of both documents by certain evidence, of which the following piece must suffice as a sample owing to limitations in the length of this article: In a draft of a letter written with erasures and corrections to Joseph Hewes by Jones in April, 1776, there occurs with a few verbal changes, the eighth paragraph of the document "on personnel," dated September 14, 1775. Now the paragraph in the document follows in several instances the erasures and corrections of the paragraph in the letter. This fact is not easily explained unless the document was written subsequently to the letter, and not seven months before it (Buell, I, 33; letter with erasures and corrections found in John Paul Jones' Manuscript, Library of Congress; letter in corrected form found in J. H. Sherburne's John Paul Jones, ed. 1851, 13).
The foot-note which ends the chapter under criticism is a sidelight of fiction, in which few rays of historic truth appear. The following illustration, wholly typical, will suffice: This note, in describing certain short guns used in the Revolution, informs us that they were the "precursors of the carronade ' invented about twenty years later. They were then known as 'Swedish guns' from their origin in that country" (Buell, I, p. 43). Carronades were invented by General Robert Melville in 1779, and were first cast in the iron works of the Carron Company on the banks of the Carron River in Scotland; and on January 9, 1781, such guns were to be found on 429 vessels of the British Navy (Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 330-333). It would serve no useful purpose to point out further the inaccuracies of this chapter.
Before closing this criticism, a word should be said with reference to the title of the work under discussion, " Paul Jones, Founder of the American Navy." There may be good reasons for leaving off the "J." or "John" in Jones' name. It is, however, something Jones himself did not do oftener than once in more than one hundred signatures to be found in the Jones Manuscripts in the Library of Congress. In his will he dictated his name, "John Paul Jones." But there is more fault than this to be found with the title, "Paul Jones, Founder of the American Navy." No one man founded our navy. Its establishment was a composite work, in which John Adams, Stephen Hopkins, Robert Morris, Joseph Hewes, John Hancock, John Paul Jones, Eselc Hopkins and many others participated.
Favorable reviews of Mr. Buell's book will be found in the American Historical Review, Volume VI, pages 589-590, and in the Nation., Volume LXXII, pages 180-181. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Volume VIII, pages 442-445, contains an unfavorable notice.