The Battle of Flamborough Head
When captain Richard Pearson of the Royal Navy surrendered to American revolutionary John Paul Jones, Jones naturally assumed that meant he had won.
1779
King George III 1760-1820
When captain Richard Pearson of the Royal Navy surrendered to American revolutionary John Paul Jones, Jones naturally assumed that meant he had won.
1779
King George III 1760-1820
Following the Declaration of Independence in 1776, American resentment towards King George III’s dastardly oppression reached such a pitch that they made common cause with that champion of republican liberty, King Louis XVI of France. One mustard-keen revolutionary, John Paul Jones, even buccaneered around Britain’s coastline harassing merchant shipping convoys, until the Royal Navy stepped in.
IN September 1779, John Paul Jones,* an officer in the American Continental Navy, led a makeshift flotilla of French ships around Scotland and down into the North Sea, harassing commercial shipping as far as Bridlington.
There, on September 23rd, Jones spied a convoy of over fifty trading vessels bound for the Baltic, with only HMS Serapis and a smaller escort for bodyguards. His own five ships burst out expectantly from behind Flamborough Head, but suffered the worst of it until a grenade scored a lucky hit on Serapis’s gunpowder store. Seeing the convoy already safe in harbour, Serapis’s captain, Richard Pearson, surrendered to save further bloodshed.
Given Jones’s advantage in numbers and surprise, his failure to trouble the convoy, and the fact that his own ship sank, any victory he might claim was of the Pyrrhic kind.* Nevertheless, news that his adversary had received a knighthood rankled. “I’d like to meet him on the high seas again” growled the American. “I’ll make him a lord!”
Rear Admiral John Paul Jones (1747-1792), a Scotsman in the service of the American revolutionaries. He had adopted the surname Jones in an attempt to mask an unsavoury reputation, which he had earned during a career that some felt had bordered on piracy. He had spent a year in the service of the Russian Empire, until British naval advisers to Catherine the Great threatened to resign en masse if he remained in it. On Britain’s contribution to the Russian navy, see Samuel Greig.
See the story A Pyrrhic Victory.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Jones try to attack a commercial convoy near Bridlington in September 1779?
He hoped to disrupt British commercial activity.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Jones wanted to damage Britain’s economy. He planned to disrupt British shipping.