Whitehaven was a town of considerable importance in the Scottish and North of England shipping trade. The inhabitants were for the greater part sailors and others who made their living by the sea, and there was never a time when the docks were not crowded with vessels, of all countries, from the sloop to the full-rigged ship, discharging or taking on cargoes which figured largely in England’s commerce. At one side of the harbor lay the town, and farther around to the left lay the docks where the shipping was. Over two hundred vessels, large and small, lay there or out in the roadstead. Two forts, mounting fifteen guns each, guarded the town. They were adequately garrisoned, and it looked like a piece of desperate folly to make the attempt upon a town directly under their guns. Paul Jones knew Whitehaven from his childhood. He remembered just where the guard-houses were to be found, and knew how to force the entrance to the barracks. By three o’clock in the morning he was ready to make the assault. Two cutters with fifteen men in each, armed with cutlasses and pistols, were all he took to do the work. With thirty men he went fearlessly and confidently to intimidate the soldiers, spike the guns in the forts, overawe the town, and burn the shipping! Lieutenant Wallingford was given command of one of the cutters. His mission was to burn the shipping to the left. The other cutter Paul Jones commanded himself, and assumed the more hazardous duty of holding with his fifteen men the forts and the town, until such a blaze should illumine the morning sky that all England would know that the burning of Portland, Maine, was avenged. Quietly they pulled up towards the great stone dock, where the shipping-houses were. The tide was very low as they moved past the schooners and brigs in the harbor, many of them careened far over on their sides, waiting for a rise in the tide to pull down to more comfortable moorings. But the boats went by without challenge or notice, and Wallingford’s cutter had slipped away like a gray shadow in the darkness. The first violet streaks of dawn were just beginning to throw the shore-line to the east in hazy silhouette when they reached the landing-place.