The sleepy inhabitants of Liverpool stared in amazement as French troops, dressed in their finest white grenadier’s uniforms and with bayonets glistening, disembarked from naval transport vessels along the city’s broad waterfront. Liverpool’s impressive harbor, often home to dozens of merchantmen plying the East and West Indies trade, was occupied by a squadron of vessels flying the colors of the American Continental Navy. In the spring’s dawn mist, the troops of Louis XVI swiftly took up positions around the city’s wharves and docks. Other soldiers moved quickly through the city streets, gathering the most prominent of Liverpool’s inhabitants and political leadership. Once collected, the prisoners were marched through the confused and frightened city to the headquarters of the invasion’s commander. These principals of Liverpool’s politics and industry, on arriving at their destination, were greeted with an unbelievable sight. There, conferring with his army and naval officers, was the commander of this modestly sized expedition, Colonel Marquis de Lafayette of the King’s Dragoons, recently returned from the American theater.1 Resplendent in his finely tailored French uniform, the 21-year-old officer greeted the gentlemen pleasantly and proceeded to make his guests as comfortable as the occasion would allow. The captives were yet again surprised to discover the identity of the expedition’s naval commander: none other than the dreaded John Paul Jones himself! The American war had come home to roost and one of Great Britain’s largest industrial and merchant cities was being held ransom by the combined forces of the American Continental Congress and the king of France.
The above event, of course, never occurred. Had other events not superseded it, however, raids on Liverpool and other British port cities were a possibility. Lafayette and Jones’s plans were considered at the highest levels of the French ministry and among America’s representatives in Paris.
Countless individuals played roles in the drama, but the primary protagonists in this study are Continental Army Major-General (and Colonel of Dragoons) Marquis de Lafayette, Captain John Paul Jones of the Continental Navy, and Benjamin Franklin, American Commissioner to France. Lafayette, Jones, and Franklin were joined in their planning by the Comte de Vergennes (French Minister of Foreign Affairs), the Comte de Maurepas (French Minister of State and Finance), and Gabriel de Sartine (French Minister of Marine). Each of these men had experience and expertise important for the operation.
The Marquis de Lafayette was born in the small town of Chavaniac, Auvergne, in 1757, the son of a French Army officer and a Paris socialite. After spending his adolescence in the French Army, at 19 years of age he was bestowed a major-general’s commission in 1776 and sailed for America in the spring of 1777. His age notwithstanding, Lafayette achieved the respect and admiration of General George Washington and his seniors in the Continental Army and Congress. Lafayette’s actions in America made him a phenomenon in America and France and, on his return in 1779, he was treated as a conquering hero.2 It was in this atmosphere that the young Marquis began plotting the methods by which he and his American allies could embarrass and harass the British coastline.
Soon after his return to Paris, Lafayette penned a letter to the Comte de Vergennes in which he argued for an invasion of Canada by a French expeditionary force—of course under
Lafayette’s command—and warned of the possible indiscretions of French officers returning from America that might give away the plan.' The Minister of Foreign Affairs did not discourage Lafayette’s plotting but regarded the subjugation of British Canada for the Americans as of little value to Louis XVI.4 The desire of the French government to minimize costs was doubtless one reason for Lafayette to settle on a less ambitious venture.
An indication that Lafayette was incubating a plan to raid the British coastline appears in letters written to the Comte de Maurepas, and in one from Benjamin Franklin in mid-March 1779.5 Permission for the planned operation had to be obtained from America’s eldest statesman, Benjamin Franklin. In this capacity, Franklin corresponded a great deal with Lafayette and Jones as they planned for the coastal raiding of the British Isles.6
Lafayette and Franklin began planning sometime in mid- March 1779. Lafayette wrote Maurepas that he had already discussed his ideas for an “extensive campaign against England” with the Comte de Vergennes and, presumably, Franklin as well. Lafayette suggested a corps of 1,500 “of the best possible men, that is to say, all Frenchmen,” should embark on vessels ostensibly bound for North America or the Leeward Islands. The convoy of transports and light escort vessels would instead sail for the coast of England and the Irish Channel, where it would cause the “destruction of the ports, of the ships anchored there, of the storehouses” and extort ransom from the numerous port cities. Lafayette argued that while the successive raiding of British ports would be damaging, it “would be nothing compared with the alarm it would spread in England.” The British, it was maintained, would be so terrified that they would be required to mobilize the militia, which would be a “double expenditure” on the British war chest.7
Lafayette pointed out two obstacles that he felt would have to be overcome for the expedition to be effectual. The first was the difficulty of transporting and supplying the needed troops and equipment. The Marquis declared that the corps he was proposing was so small that it would be easy to disembark and re-embark, and the force could be victualed from onboard provisions. Second, Lafayette feared that the expeditionary force might be destroyed or taken prisoner by a larger, better equipped enemy. This danger, Lafayette asserted, was mitigated in view of the fact that the enemy would have “no time to collect a more numerous body of troops.” Lafayette also contended that the British would not risk dispersing their Channel Fleet to chase the smaller, more mobile, force that would be at Lafayette’s disposal.8
The presumed reaction of the British public, government, and military was more accurate than Lafayette could know. The summer of 1778 found the British military machine organizing its home armed forces for defense against a possible full-scale French invasion. As with past invasion scares, the British Commander-in-Chief, Lord Amherst, garrisoned the port cities, ordered dragoon units to patrol the English coastline, and placed the militia in training camps throughout England. Amherst, however, placed the bulk of the British regular army reserve in and around the city of London, thus leaving many of Lafayette’s intended targets questionably defended.9 A previous surprise, small- scale raid by Captain John Paul Jones on the port of Whitehaven in 1778 demonstrated the seeming inability of the British Navy and militia structure to defend against such raids, and the ability of Jones to accomplish them.10
The Scottish-born John Paul also was to play a significant role in the scheme to lay waste to Britain’s coastal cities. After spending his youth at sea, an unfortunate incident in late 1773, in which he killed the leader of a mutinous crew, caused John Paul to journey secretly to America in 1775, where he changed his name by adding Jones. When the American Revolution began, he sought out a commission in the infant Continental Navy.11 Jones’s exploits with the Providence, including the taking of 16 prizes, garnered him command of the ship Ranger in 1777 with orders to travel to France. Congress told Jones that he would receive command of a ship being built in Amsterdam for the Continental Navy, but on arriving he found that the American commissioners there had given that ship to France. Undeterred, Jones sailed from Brest, raided the English coastal city of Whitehaven, and continued to pursue British merchantmen.12 Jones arrived in France with his prizes to cheers and with a reputation as a daring, competent, and dangerous commander.
Similar to Lafayette, Jones did not sit idly by waiting for opportunity for glory to present itself. Instead, Jones began lobbying for a new, faster ship in which he could cruise the British or American coastline, choosing his targets at will. Captain Jones, and his confidants who also happened to know Lafayette, had envisioned a plan very similar to that proposed by Lafayette to Maurepas. While Lafayette was himself in Brest, these mutual friends may very well have planted the seed for Lafayette’s own planned expedition.13
Meanwhile, Lafayette continued his discussions about obtaining men and money with Franklin and the French ministry. Franklin, having apparently discussed the plot in person with Lafayette, wrote to the Marquis with his thoughts on the plan. Franklin believed that the raiding party “might easily surprise and destroy, or exact... a heavy Contribution ... in ready Money and Hostages.”14 In the 18th century, the term “hostage” oftentimes was used synonymously with prisoners of war. Franklin asserted that the command of such an expedition needed “a prudent St brave Sea Commander who knows the coasts” and “a Leader of the Troops who has the Affair at Heart” and “is naturally active and quick.”15
Lafayette, on receiving Franklin’s encouraging letter, promoted the scheme again to the French ministry. The Comte de Maurepas received another letter from Lafayette in which the young general informed the minister of Franklin’s pleasure at hearing of Lafayette’s plot. Lafayette used the pronoun “our” to describe the plan, either intimating that Maurepas already was supporting the proposed expedition or in an attempt to surreptitiously imply the minister’s compliance.16 Lafayette informed Maurepas that Franklin had agreed to loan the venture the 50-gun Due de Duras (shortly after renamed the Bonhomme Richard in Franklin’s honor) and her commander, Captain John Paul Jones. This communication was the first time that Jones was specified as the expedition’s naval commander. Lafayette also used the letter to stress to Maurepas the need for high-quality infantry, particularly the feared grenadiers, and the need for swift, shallow-draft vessels and good intelligence.17
Lafayette saved the most detailed proposal for the Comte de Vergennes. Lafayette requested four companies of French grenadiers (640 men), two companies of light infantry (320 men), and one battalion of infantry (500 men), for a total of 1,460 men. As per Lafayette’s previously stated desire to ravage the countryside surrounding his intended targets, he also appealed for a detachment of cavalry, to consist of 200 dragoons. Considering that he might need to attack fortifications guarding his objectives as well, Lafayette called for the expedition to be granted some artillery that could be off-loaded from the transports. This artillery unit would consist of six four-pounders and ,two howitzers accompanied by enough men to manage them. Wrapping up his design for the land force, Lafayette requested of Vergennes that it also include a complement of siege engineers and topographical engineers, clearly demonstrating that Lafayette was aware of the dangers of harbor fortifications to his projected force.18
The naval force was something that Lafayette, by his own admission, felt little qualified to address, claiming, “I have led six and seven thousand men in war but have never piloted a vessel.”19 In spite of his ignorance of naval matters, he did not restrain from making very detailed requests of Vergennes for the naval arm of the expedition. In one example, he explained to Vergennes that his transports should be calculated at a minimum of two tons of burthen per man, adding that “there is never too much room on board, and there are always some useless persons aboard whose presence had not been counted on.”20
Lafayette also wanted to make clear what the expedition might have to fear from its antagonists. The greatest threat to the expedition came from the assumed power and speed of the Royal Navy in its home waters and its ability to disperse or destroy the expedition before it reached its intended targets. While the overextended Royal Navy was having a difficult time keeping its Channel Fleet in a condition to repel a substantial enemy fleet, its cruisers could have disrupted Lafayette’s plans.21 There also was the danger that the fortifications or troop concentrations in the various cities would be sufficient to repulse any attempt by Lafayette to land his troops, thus making the capture of the ports impossible. This concern, at least in the case of Liverpool, was somewhat tenuous. Following Jones’s 1778 raid on Whitehaven, the city of Liverpool had requested that fortifications guarding the Mersey be finished. They were not.22 Last, Lafayette worried that, once on land, the troops would be flanked or encircled, leading to the capture or destruction of the entire landing party.23
After his letter to Vergennes, Lafayette apparently believed he had been given tentative approval for his plan, provided he acquired the opinion of Captain Jones on the matter. Lafayette informed Franklin at the end of March 1779 that he had sent for Captain Jones so that the two men could discuss the details of the expedition. According to Lafayette, following his discussions with Jones about the prospect of the expedition’s success, the ministry would then decide whether to proceed.24
As late as the middle of April it was clear that material support was lagging. Lafayette informed the French Minister of War that “the problem of cannons must be settled” and that the troop detachments involved had not been ordered to proceed to the embarkation point of Lorient.25 Jones was having similar difficulties in equipping his vessels, being particularly concerned about the quality of his cannon and armaments.26 On the bright side, Jones wrote that he had ample men for the mission, claiming more than 320 officers, seamen, and volunteer soldiers on the muster rolls.27
The commitment of John Paul Jones to Lafayette’s scheme is apparent from two letters sent to Jones on 27 April, one from Lafayette and the other from Franklin. Lafayette wrote Jones that he was thankful for Jones’s “obliging letter” on the subject sent sometime prior. He noted that the number of infantry to be used had shrunk from approximately 1,500 to a mere 650. The communication also contained Lafayette’s usual micromanaging of the expedition’s affairs, cataloging how many men he believed should be assigned to each ship. Lafayette ended his letter with his typical patriotic flourish, stating that he would “be happy to divide with you whatever share of glory” the mission would provide.28
The same day found Benjamin Franklin also penning a letter to the American captain. Franklin informed Jones, like Lafayette, that the American frigate Alliance had been ordered to join Jones’s squadron at Lorient and that Lafayette was soon to arrive as the mission’s ground commander. Never passing up the opportunity to impart wisdom to his juniors, the author of Poor Richard’s Almanac offered his sage advice:
It has been observ’d that joint Expeditions of Land and Sea Forces often miscarry thro’ Jealousies and Misunderstandings between the Officers of the different Corps. This must happen where there are little Minds actuated more by personal Views of Profit or Honor to themselves, than by the warm and sincere Desire of Good to their Country. Knowing you both as 1 do, and your just manner of thinking on these Occasions, I am confidant nothing of the Kind can happen between you, &. that it is unnecessary for me to recommend to either of you that Condescension, mutual Goodwill and Harmony, which contribute so much to success in such Undertakings. . . . There is Honor enough for the both of you, if the Expedition is conducted with a prudent Unanimity.29
Not surprisingly, Franklin made sure that a copy of this letter made it into Lafayette’s hands as well.
Franklin informed Jones of the king of France’s decision to entrust a detachment of troops to Jones’s care and, when desired, Jones was to land those troops where their commander (Lafayette) determined. As the naval commander of the expedition, Jones was instructed to assist the troops, once landed, in such a manner as to maintain the combined strength of the united task force. Jones was entreated in his instructions to “never depart” from the landed troops, making sure that he was always in a position to quickly reembark the troops if the situation demanded it. Jones was ordered that, if any English seamen were taken prisoner, they were to be returned to France where they would be exchanged for American prisoners of war. Franklin went on to instruct Jones to maintain control over his officers, particularly those who had escaped British prisons. He was concerned that these officers, out of resentment for their detainment, might treat British prisoners of war harshly, thus tarnishing “the Honour of our Country.” The final instruction to Jones was that he, along with Lafayette, was not to “wantonly burn” his English targets.30
Following his receipt of Franklin’s fatherly insight, Jones wrote Lafayette that his instructions were an “honor to his [Franklin’s] noble mind” and would give Jones “the truest satisfaction to execute.” Jones went on to express to Lafayette that he “cannot Insure [sic] success but we will endeavor to deserve it.”31 Franklin received a letter of similar devotion to the mission from Jones as well, in which he claimed that Franklin’s instructions “would make a Coward brave.” Jones assured Franklin that there would be no disorder in Jones’s command and that between himself and Lafayette there existed a great deal of “love and esteem,” thus eliminating the fear of disunion.32
In spite of Lafayette’s fervent desire to keep the details of the mission a secret, word of the anticipated forays had already reached British moles in Paris. The most likely source of intelligence for the British was Dr. Edward Bancroft, a British agent working for the American commissioners in Paris.33 The British had employed Bancroft as a double agent since the first arrival of American representatives in Paris at the beginning of hostilities. Lafayette had even planned on bringing Dr. Bancroft along with him on the mission against the English seaports.34 Bancroft also had the full confidence of Lafayette, Franklin, and Jones.
As they received wind of the possibility of having their cities burned to the ground or held ransom, the seaports cried out for assistance. The Liverpool City Council called on the North ministry to finish the fortifications protecting the Mersey, send them much needed weapons, and remove any foreign prisoners being held in the city. The lieutenant governor of the Isle of Man, not even a planned target, raised the militia and declared that the island was a probable base of operations for the enemy fleet. There were calls all along the Irish Sea for beacon fires, post riders, and militia preparation to check the incursions of Lafayette and Jones.35 It would appear that Lafayette and Jones would have surprised no one with their appearance on the horizon off the west coast of Britain.
Meanwhile, the French ministry had been convening with its Spanish allies about future operations against their common enemy. Spain, upon entering the war, convinced the French that the only way to ensure a quick victory was to invade Britain en masse.36 France and Spain negotiated at length and eventually decided on a plan that would land tens of thousands of French troops on the south coast of England, near the city of Portsmouth. These troops would be ferried across the Channel, protected by a combined fleet of French and Spanish vessels.37 The result of this decision was the cancellation of Lafayette and Jones’s inventive plan to take the war to the British homeland.
This annulment made for an anticlimatic ending to the months of fervent planning. On learning of the cancellation, Lafayette wrote Jones of “how sorry” he was going to feel “not to be a witness to your succes [sic], abilities and Glory.” Lafayette closed his letter to Jones with a request: “Whatever part of the world you will be in, I hope you’ll let me often hear from you.”38 Lafayette then returned to take command of the King’s Dragoons, preparing in Saintes for an invasion that also was never to take place. For his part, Jones expressed great “disappointment” at the canceling of the operation, but stood ready to undertake any new mission that Franklin ordered. Fie was especially disappointed in losing the opportunity to serve with “a Character so amiable as the Marquis.”39
The majority of histories of the American Revolution (including naval ones) rarely address the planned Lafayette/Jones raids. As a result, lit tie critical examination of the feasibility of those raids has taken place. There is little doubt that both Lafayette and Jones were energetic commanders whose careers demonstrated that they could be militarily successful. There is also little doubt that their plan had the support of Benjamin Franklin, the ranking American representative in Paris. The amount of support from the French ministry, however, is less apparent. During the period in which Lafayette wrote furiously to French ministers to garner support for his plan, responses from those ministers are notably absent. There is no doubt that Lafayette met personally with these men to promote his plan, but one would expect to find in his correspondence at least one positive response.40 This lack of correspondence did not seem to dampen Lafayette’s enthusiasm. Lafayette, Jones, and Franklin continued to plan as if they had the complete sponsorship of the French government.
The apparent lack of support on the part of the French ministry is not surprising considering other events taking place in the spring of 1779. Spain’s belief that a victory over Great Britain could be accomplished only by a sizeable invasion of the home island itself forced the French government to consider the possibility of mounting a full-scale invasion ten times larger than Lafayette’s proposal.41 This would explain why Jones and Lafayette were having such a tough time acquiring the needed material. It would appear that any support, spoken or otherwise, that Lafayette had received from his French contacts was designed to either placate the young Marquis or perhaps distract their British enemy.
Even had the plan for Lafayette and Jones’s raids been implemented, it was fraught with dangers that the young commanders apparently had not considered. Lafayette and Jones obviously had not contemplated the “unseen, all- pervading element” of friction in war as described by Clausewitz a generation later. Lafayette’s planning assumed that he would easily be able to transport and land his forces without interference from the British Channel Fleet or cruisers. This assumption could hardly be supported given the Channel Fleet’s strength in the spring of 1779. During the period in which Lafayette’s raids would have taken place, the Channel Fleet’s commander, Admiral Charles Hardy, had at his command at least 30 ships of the line.42 Lafayette also apparently was ignorant that the British Navy maintained observation vessels off Ushant that would have been able to warn of any hostile approach.43 Contributing to Lafayette’s danger was the fact that, by 22 June, Hardy’s entire fleet sat off Ushant, thus standing between Lafayette and his targets.44 Even if Lafayette’s force could have evaded the British Channel Fleet, there was always the danger that weather in the Channel, or the Irish Sea, could have damaged or separated the raiding force, making any landings impossible. Taking these factors into consideration, it is doubtful that Lafayette’s naval arm would have been able to bring his ground forces into play, and the plan would have been jeopardized from the moment it took sail.
The possibility of friction was not limited to the naval arm. By no means would England have been defenseless against Lafayette’s ground force. While British forces were scattered throughout England, their numbers were still very impressive. There were 17,469 regular infantry spread across the southern part of Great Britain. These forces were augmented by another 33,573 militia troops who had been called up for temporary service. Lord Amherst also could have called on the nearly 5,000 troops that Britain had stationed in Scotland.45
Many of these ports were defended by fortifications of varying degrees of quality. The small-bore artillery that Lafayette had requested for his raids would have been of little use against stone, brick, and earthen works. Lafayette’s only other option would have been to use his ships’ guns to hammer the fortifications, thus putting Jones’s squadron in danger from the defender’s emplaced batteries.
Throughout their respective careers, Lafayette and Jones undertook their assigned missions with a vigor that was absent in many of their British counterparts. Vigor alone, though, would not have guaranteed the success of their proposed raids on the western port cities of England. Liverpool, Whitehaven, Bristol, and Cork can consider themselves lucky that they never saw the sails of Jones’s armada or the bayonets of Lafayette’s grenadiers, but it is unlikely that they ever would have had the opportunity.
1. Lafayette had recently returned from America, where he held a commission in the Continental Army as a major-general. On his return to France, he was commissioned as the Colonel of the King’s Dragoons in the French Army.
2. For information on Lafayette’s early military career see Noel Poirier, “Young General Lafayette,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 12, no. 2 (Winter 2000), pp. 32-41; Louis Gottschalk, Lafayette Comes to America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935); Louis Gottschalk, Lafayette Joins the American Army (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937).
3. Letter from Lafayette to Comte de Vergennes, 14 February 1779, Stanley J. Idz- erda, ed., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution, Selected Letters and Pa- pers, 1776-1790, Vo. 2, April 10, 1778-March 20, 1780 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 229-30.
4. Louis Gottschalk, Lafayette and the Close of the American Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), p. 9.
5. Letter from Lafayette to Comte de Maurepas, 14 March 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 238-41; Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Lafayette, 20 March 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 241-43.
6. Mark M. Boatner, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994), pp. 393-95; A. J. Langguth, Patriots, The Men Who Started the American Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 488-98.
7. Letter from Lafayette to Comte de Maurepas, 14 March 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 238-39.
8. Letter from Lafayette to Comte de Maurepas, 14 March 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, p. 240.
9. Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775-1783 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), pp. 210-11.
10. Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones, A Sailor’s Biography (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1959), pp. 171-76.
11. Morison, John Paul Jones, pp. 45-51.
12. Morison, John Paul Jones, pp. 1-222; Boatner, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, pp. 565-66.
13. Letter from Gabriel de Sartine to Benjamin Franklin, 27 April 1779, Barbara B. Oberg et al., ed., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 29, March 1 through June 30, 1779 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 382; Gottschalk, Lafayette, p. 9.
14. Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Lafayette, 22 March 1779, Oberg, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, pp. 185-87; Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 243-44.
15. Oberg, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, pp. 185-87.
16. Letter from Lafayette to Comte de Maurepas, 23 March 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 244-46.
17. Idzerda, Lafayette pp. 244-46.
18. Letter from Lafayette to Comte de Vergennes, 26 March 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 247-48.
19. Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 247-48.
20. Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 247-48.
21. Mackesy, The War for America, p. 260.
22. Morison, John Paul Jones, p. 230.
23. Idzerda, Lafayette, p. 249.
24. Letter from Lafayette to Benjamin Franklin, 31 March 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, p. 250.
25. Letter from Lafayette to Prince de Montbarey, 14 April 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, p. 254.
26. Letter from John Paul Jones to Leray de Chaumont, 30 April 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, p. 263.
27. Letter from John Paul Jones to Leray de Chaumont, 30 April 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 263-64.
28. Letter from Lafayette to John Paul Jones, 27 April 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 258-60.
29. Letter from Benjamin Franklin to John Paul Jones, 27 April 1779, Oberg, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, pp. 383-84; Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 261-62.
30. Franklin’s Instructions to John Paul Jones, 28 April 1779, Oberg, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, pp. 386-87.
31. Letter from John Paul Jones to Lafayette, 1 May 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette pp. 264-65.
32. Letter from John Paul Jones to Benjamin Franklin, 1 May 1779, Oberg, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, pp. 405-6.
33. Gerald W. Gawalt, ed., John Paul Jones’ Memoir of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1979), pp. 25-26.
34. Letter from Lafayette to John Paul Jones, 27 April 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 258-60.
35. Morison, John Paul Jones, p. 230.
36. Mackesy, The War for America, p. 279.
37. Mackesy, The War for America, pp. 280-81.
38. Letter from Lafayette to John Paul Jones, 22 May 1779, Idzerda, Lafayette, p. 267.
39. Letter from John Paul Jones to Benjamin Franklin, 26 May 1779, Oberg, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, p. 561.
40. Idzerda, Lafayette, pp. 232-67; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 136-50.
41. Dull, The French Navy, pp. 140-42.
42. Mackesy, The War for America, p. 282.
43. Mackesy, The War for America, p. 281.
44. W. M. James, The British Navy in Adversity, A Study of the War of American Independence (New York: Longman’s, Green and Company, 1926), p. 176.
45. Mackesy, The War for America, appendix.