This letter told the commissioners to buy a new fast-sailing frigate for Captain Jones, and to have it fitted up as he desired. They were then to advise him as to what he should do with it. VII.--THE CRUISE OF THE RANGER. When the _Ranger_ sailed out of Boston harbor, the stars and stripes of the American republic waved from the mast head. Paul Jones was the first naval officer to raise this flag. You remember that two years before, on the _Alfred_, he had first hoisted the pine tree emblem. When Jones with his ship entered Quiberon Bay, in France, the French admiral there saluted the American flag. This was the first time that a foreign country had recognized America as an independent nation. Paul Jones anchored the _Ranger_ at Brest and went to Paris to deliver his letter, and lay his plans before the commissioners. He told them two important things: First, that our navy was too small to win in open battle with the fleets of the English. Second, that the way to keep the English vessels from burning, destroying, and carrying away property on the American coasts, was to send vessels to the English coasts to annoy the English in the same way. The commissioners thought that these plans should be carried out at once; and since a new frigate could not be purchased for some time, they refitted the _Ranger_ for his use. On April 10, 1778, Paul Jones set out on what proved to be a memorable cruise. You remember that when he first went to sea, as a boy, he sailed from Whitehaven. This town is on the English coast, just across the Solway Firth from John Paul's old home. He knew there were large shipping yards there, and he determined to set fire to them. He planned to reach the harbor in the night, and burn the ships while the people were asleep. Because of the wind and tides, it was nearly midnight when he arrived. He found three hundred vessels of different kinds lying in the harbor. His men were put into two small boats, and each boat was ordered to set fire to half the ships. It was nearly daylight when they rowed away from the _Ranger_. Nothing could be heard but the splashing of their oars. Their flickering torches showed to them the old sleeping town, with the many white ships along the shore. Leaving orders that the fire be speedily kindled, Captain Jones took with him a few men, and scaled the walls of the batteries which protected the harbor. He locked the sleeping sentinels in the guardhouse and spiked the cannon. Then, sending his men back to the harbor, he went, with one man only, to another fort, which was a quarter of a mile away. Here he also spiked the guns. After all this had been done he returned to his boats to find that his sailors had done nothing. Not one ship was on fire! The lieutenant in charge told Paul Jones that their torches had gone out. "Anyway," he said, "nothing can be gained by burning poor people's property."