"Paul Jones is one of the curiosities of history. He certainly was of immense value to your struggling cause. He kept England in terror; he showed the first qualities as a naval commander; he achieved great successes with very little force. Yet he has a damaged reputation. I do not think he deserves this reputation; but I know he has it. Now I can see but one difference between him and any of your land-heroes or your water-heroes whom all the world respects. This is, that he was born on our side, and they were born on the American side. This ought not to make any difference. But in actual fact I think it did. Jones was born in the British Islands. The popular feeling of England made a distinction between the allegiance which he owed to King George and that of born Americans. It ought not to have done so, because he had in good faith emigrated to America before the Rebellion, and took part in it with just the same motives which led any other American officer.[H] "He had a fondness for books and for society, and thought himself gifted in writing. I should think he wrote too much. I have seen verses of his which were very poor." [_Mem_. by F.C. I should think Ingham's grandfather wrote too much. I have seen letters of his which were very long, before they came to their subject.] The letter continues:-- "To return. The Serapis, as I have said, was but just built. She had been launched that spring. She was one of the first 44-gun frigates that were ever built in the world. We (the English) were the first naval power to build frigates, as now understood, at all. I believe the name is Italian, but in the Mediterranean it means a very different thing. We had little ships-of-the-line, which were called fourth-rates, and which fought sixty, and even as low as fifty guns; they had two decks, and a quarter-deck above. But just as I came into the service, the old Phoenix and Rainbow and Roebuck were the only 44s we had: they were successful ships, and they set the Admiralty on building 44-gun frigates, which, even when they carried 50 guns, as we did, were quite different from the old fourth-rates. Very useful vessels they proved. I remember the Romulus, the Ulysses, the Actaeon, and the Endymion: the Endymion fought the President forty years after. As I say, the Serapis was one of a batch of these vessels launched in the spring of 1779. "We had been up the Cattegat that summer, waiting for what was known as the Baltic fleet.[I] If there were room and time, I could tell you good stories of the fun we had at Copenhagen. At last we got the convoy together, and got to sea,--no little job in that land-locked sailing. We got well across the North Sea, and, for some reason, made Sunderland first, and afterwards Scarborough.