“His present desire, to be sent with Count d’Estaing, consists with all his former conduct. And it will, I dare say, be a very pleasing reflection to Congress that he is about to pursue a knowledge of his profession, so as to become still more useful, if ever he should be again called to the command of a squadron or a fleet.” Congress passed a very flattering resolve, granting his request, and especially recommending him to his excellency the Marquis de Vaudreuil. The commodore immediately repaired to Boston, where he was received by the marquis with every mark of attention. Though the flag-ship of the marquis, the Triomphante, was crowded, and sixty officers sat daily at his table, Commodore Jones was received on board that ship, and was assigned lodgings corresponding with those of Vaudreuil. The splendors of the court of Louis XVI. still lingered around the court and camp of Louis XVI. Nearly all the officers of the French army and navy were men of illustrious birth, intelligent, chivalric, high-bred gentlemen. In this society Jones, himself a courtly and well-educated man, found congenial companionship. He was a man of pure lips and refined bearing, fond of cultivated female society, and instinctively recoiling from all coarseness and vulgarity. He was esteemed a very valuable acquisition to the enterprise. His modest, friendly spirit, united with his unrivalled intrepidity, won the affection of the officers and the homage of the crew. The fact was also recognized that there was not, on board the fleet, a single man so intimately acquainted with those seas, and particularly with the island of Jamaica, as he was. Jones was highly pleased with the opportunity of improvement thus presented him, and with the very kind manner in which he had been received. In his journal he wrote, with characteristic modesty: “As the Marquis d’Estaing had commanded a fleet of more than seventy sail of the line, I had the flattering hope of finding myself in the first military school in the world; in which I should be able to render myself useful, and to acquire knowledge very important for conducting great military operations.” The squadron, consisting of ten sail of the line, left Boston on the 24th of December, 1782. The course of the ships was directed toward the mouth of Portsmouth harbor, where they were to be joined by two other ships of the line, the Auguste and the Pluton. But a severe wintry storm arose, with freezing gales and snow, and drove the squadron far away to the vicinity of the Bay of Fundy. Here the fleet was for a time in imminent danger from its proximity to the land and to vast fields of floating ice.