They realized to both Britain and the Continent the existence of a new flag and a new state in the family of nations. The naval plan devised by Morris, as vice-president of the Marine Committee, deserves additional notice. It was to be put into operation by John Paul Jones, with a fleet composed of the “Alfred,” “Columbus,” “Cabot,” “Hampden,” and sloop “Providence.” Jones was first to proceed to St. Christopher in the West Indies, which island was almost defenceless, capture the cannon, stores, and merchandise there deposited, and then sail for Pensacola, Florida. Morris thought Jones might find it best to pass along the south side of Hispaniola, and alarm Jamaica by putting in to some of its ports. Arriving at Pensacola, he would find it defended by two or three sloops of war, which could be easily silenced, and the town would fall into his hands with its munitions of war, including one hundred pieces of artillery. Having reduced Pensacola, Jones was to send a brigantine and sloop to cruise at the mouth of the Mississippi, in order to waylay the British merchantmen leaving there in March and April with cargoes of indigo, rice, tobacco, skins, and furs, to the value of £100,000 sterling. Returning from the Gulf, he might alarm St. Augustine, and finally he might refit in Georgia, or South or North Carolina. He was directed to carry as many marines as possible for his operations on shore. Morris’s object in this expedition involved a nice bit of naval policy. He purposed not so much the taking of booty, as the alarming of the whole British nation, and the forcing of the enemy to withdraw some of her naval forces from the coast of the United States. “It has long been clear to me,” he said, “that our infant fleet cannot protect our coasts; and the only effectual relief it can afford us, is to attack the enemy’s defenceless places, and thereby oblige them to station more of their own ships in their own countries, or to keep them employed in following ours, and either way we are relieved so far as they do it.” Morris proposed his plan as a substitute for one of Jones, which contemplated a descent on the west coast of Africa; and to the carrying out of which the Marine Committee had given its consent. Morris thought that the same results as Jones sought could be obtained with less risk by “cruizing Windward of Barbadoes as all their Guinea Men fall in there.”[214]