22 April 1778, Commander John Paul Jones leads a small
detachment of two boats from his ship, the Ranger, to raid the shallow port at
Whitehaven, England, where, by his own account, 400 British merchant ships are
anchored. Jones was hoping to reach the port at midnight, when ebb tide would
leave the shops at their most vulnerable.
Jones and his 30 volunteers had greater difficulty than anticipated rowing to
the port, which was protected by two forts. They did not arrive until dawn.
Jones’ boat successfully took the southern fort, disabling its cannon, but the
other boat returned without attempting an attack on the northern fort, after
the sailors claimed to have been frightened away by a noise. To compensate,
Jones set fire to the southern fort, which subsequently engulfed the entire
town.
The destruction caused by the Whitehaven raid was paltry, but its effectiveness
as propaganda was electrifying. No raid had been made on an English seaport
since 1667, thanks to Britain’s dominance of the seas. Englishmen wondered
uneasily where the mighty Royal Navy had been in Whitehaven’s time of need, and
Jones appeared, not for the last time, in English newspapers as a swashbuckling
pirate….
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