John Paul Jones went ashore on the British coast to burn the British shipping and no more. He was determined to “put an end, by one good fire of shipping, to all the burnings in America.” He was also determined to capture an earl to hold as a hostage, and compel a brutal enemy to treat captured Americans as civilized nations have always treated prisoners of war. He missed the earl, and his men took the earl’s silver plate to the value of £500, which plate Jones purchased afterwards with his own money, and returned to the earl with a manly letter. [Illustration: An English Caricature of John Paul Jones. (“From an original drawing taken from the Life on board the Serapis.”) _Published in London, October 22, 1779._] In view of the barbarities of which the English had been guilty in America, and of the retaliation which self-defence as well as justice demanded, John Paul Jones, after his cruise along the coast, might well and righteously have used the words which a titled British robber of the helpless used when brought before Parliament to answer for his crimes: “By God, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.” After one hundred years have passed away it is safe to say that every American who reads of the events of the American Revolution stands astonished at the moderation of the fathers. As to the facts of the descent on Whitehaven, they may be soon told. Lowering two boats after the _Ranger_ had arrived, Captain Jones ordered fifteen men, armed with cutlasses and pistols, into each. Then he placed Lieutenant Wallingsford in charge of one, and took the other himself. Unfortunately, one of the crew, a man named David Freeman, had shipped with the express purpose of serving the English whenever opportunity offered. It is said that 220 vessels, great and small, lay in Whitehaven harbor, of which 150 were on the south side, where the town stood, and the remainder were on the north. Nearly if not quite all had been left aground by the ebb tide--the tide that prevented Jones reaching the shipping until daylight. Wallingsford was sent to fire the shipping at the north, while Jones landed at the town. Whitehaven was guarded at that time by two forts of fifteen guns each. With his single boat’s crew Jones ran to the nearest one. The sentinels, greatly alarmed, fled into the guard-house, where Jones locked them in. Then he spiked the guns. At the other fort, a quarter of a mile away, he was equally successful. Turning, then, to see the flames rising from the ships across the harbor, he found that nothing had been done to them. Lieutenant Wallingsford’s failure to obey orders has been variously accounted for, but whatever his error may have been, he wiped it out by fighting for the flag till he died in the battle of two days later.