While John Paul Jones was moving heaven and earth to get away to sea with his famous _Bonhomme Richard_, the American naval ships in home waters were by no means idle, even though British successes, with combined land and naval forces, had seriously reduced the fleet. On March 18, 1779, a squadron consisting of the frigate _Warren_, thirty-two guns, Capt. John Burroughs Hopkins; the _Queen of France_, twenty-eight guns, Capt. Joseph Olney, and the famous old _Ranger_, of eighteen guns (she that whipped the _Drake_), under Captain Simpson, sailed from Boston. A few days later a privateer was captured. From her crew it was learned that a fleet of armed transports and storeships had sailed with supplies from New York for the British army in the South. How the Yankee squadron crowded on sail in pursuit of this fleet; how the ships of the fleet were sighted two days later, jogging along at the ordinary pace of the slowest; and how they came to the wind or squared away or tacked or wore ship in a confused effort to escape at the sight of the Yankees would have been something worth seeing by any one interested in ocean races. There were nine of the transports, and seven were taken. These included the _Jason_, twenty guns; the _Maria_, sixteen guns; the _Hibernia_, eight guns, and four unarmed transports. Captain Campbell and twenty other English army officers were in the fleet _en route_ to join their regiments, and these were by no means an unimportant part of the capture when one recalls the treatment Americans were receiving from the British when captured. The Captain Hopkins who had this good luck was a son of Esek Hopkins, the first American naval captain. He carried his prizes into port at once. Then, in May the frigate _Queen of France_, under Capt. John P. Rathbourne; the _Ranger_, under Simpson, and the _Providence_ (twenty-eight guns), under Capt. Abraham Whipple, went on a cruise. Whipple, it will be remembered, was the leader of the party disguised as Indians who, with paving stones as their chief weapons, captured and destroyed the schooner _Gaspé_ in the first salt-water conflict of the war (1772). Captain Rathbourne was he who, in the little brig _Providence_, captured New Providence Island on January 27, 1778, with six vessels that were in the harbor. For two months this squadron did nothing, but early in July they fell in with a great fleet of merchantmen escorted by a ship-of-the-line (seventy-four guns) and a number of frigates. Notwithstanding the efficiency of this guard, the Yankees cut out eleven of the merchant ships and carried them into port. It is recorded that the cargoes of these ships were worth over a million dollars in gold, and that this cruise was financially the most profitable of the war.