American War of Independence: How US naval hero John Paul Jones met his match in the redoubtable Helen, Countess of Selkirk – Susan Morrison

After a bungled raid on the Countess of Selkirk’s home, the Scotsman hailed by some as the ‘father of the US Navy’ wrote a belter of a letter of apology and returned a stolen teapot

During the American War of Independence, Benjamin Franklin hatched a simple plan. Give the Scottish-born John Paul Jones a swift, deadly sloop, the Ranger, to harry the enemy on home turf and do a bit of looting to boost a depleted war chest. Someone threw in the idea of kidnapping a high-ranking British aristocrat to exchange for some captured US military manpower.

Unfortunately, the plan had three flaws. John Paul Jones was a brilliant naval warrior, but the wind sometimes went out of his sails a bit on dry land. Then there were the men under Jones’s command. Some crews prove themselves under testing conditions. This crew just proved testing. And finally, they were to run into Helen, Countess of Selkirk.

The voyage had barely begun when the “restless and sullen” crew of the Ranger became mildly mutinous. For one thing, they hadn’t been paid in months. Onboard shop steward David Cullam, or Cullum, and Captain Jones had a free and frank exchange of views. Cullam put the crew's concerns forward. Jones put a loaded pistol to Cullam’s head. This was a technological advance in Jones’s case. He ended a previous attempted mutiny by running the leader through with a sword. No one said Jones was a sympathetic manager.

Order restored, the mission continued. Just after midnight on April 23, 1778, John Paul Jones and his men hit Whitehaven, the first port he had ever sailed from. Jones’s crew planned to set fire to the town and the ships in harbour, and perhaps do some plundering in the confusion. An officer, Wallingham, and his team landed to start a blaze, but claimed they needed ‘lights’, so they went to find them in a pub. With predictable results. The townsfolk of Whitehaven woke and chased the crew down. Armed with pistols, John Paul Jones himself covered the empty-handed retreat.

‘Pillage, burn, and plunder all they could'

His next target was close to his boyhood home, across the Solway Firth, St Mary's Isle near Kirkcudbright, the estates of the Earls of Selkirk. Jones knew those waters well. It sounded easy. Get ashore and carry away the 4th Earl, Dunbar Douglas, as that bargaining chip for the exchange of American PoWs. Brilliant. He didn’t factor in the clearly tough Helen, Countess of Selkirk.

The log of the Ranger notes that the weather was “Light Airs and hazey weather’ on April 24. It was around noon when Jones landed with 12 of his men, armed to the teeth. They headed to an elegant Georgian house, which probably screamed ‘loot’ to his rebellious crew. The plan went sideways fast. An estate gardener spotted the landing party. Jones shouted they were a press gang sent to force young men into the Royal Navy.

The lad did exactly what Jones thought he would do. Scarpered, at high speed, and would undoubtedly tell every man-jack of impressment age within hearing distance to clear out and fast. Unfortunately, he also told Jones and his men that the Earl was not at home. Jones, presumably exhausted by the botched midnight raid, thought the game was up, but the crew begged to differ. The house was still there, with a chance of silver, and that’s what the crew wanted, to “pillage, burn, and plunder all they could”.

Grudgingly, Jones permitted them to head to the house. He would not go, and he laid down rules. One, there should be no running amok. Two, only the officers, Callum and Wallingford, were to enter and “politely demand” silver and plate. The rest of the crew had to loiter outside. And three, whatever was given should be taken, no arguing.

Callum and Wallingford did as they were told, and knocked on the door. The butler answered, and they introduced themselves as officers of the ‘States of America’ navy. Helen Hamilton, Countess of Selkirk, heavily pregnant at the time, appeared. She kept her cool, even though she could see the sailors lurking in the shrubbery. As she wrote to her husband later, they were a villainous lot armed with “a musket, a bayonet, two large pistols and a hanger [a type of sword]”.

Butler passes off coal as loot

The two gentlemen presented themselves to her ladyship. She seemed faintly relieved to hear them describe themselves as officers. Wallingford made a big impression in a “green uniform, an anchor on his buttons”. They asked again about the Earl not being at home. This was true, she assured them.

Well, could they have some silver, please? Lady Selkirk calmly turned to her butler and issued orders. Tea for the officers, whisky for the rum lot outside trampling her herbaceous border, oh, and a sack with some silver in it.

The butler did as instructed, with a few minor alterations. He half-filled the sack with coal, then topped it off with distinctly ‘everyday’ silver. It was claimed that the teapot from breakfast was thrown in. Weighed down with their swag, the lads made their way back to the Ranger. Lady Selkirk wrote that, on “the whole, I must say they behaved civilly”. She gave Jones a broadside though: “This Paul Jones is… a great villain as ever was born, guilty of many crimes and several murders.”

Jones seems to have been faintly embarrassed by the whole affair. He wrote a remarkable letter of apology to the redoubtable Lady Selkirk. In a belter of a missive, he simultaneously apologised for the looting, blamed it on his truculent crew and pointed out that he knew the good lady had passed off second-rate silver. Despite all this, he assured her, he would buy back and return the plunder.

And so it was. It took a while and some strenuous negotiations, but Lady Selkirk got her teapot back. And it is said that there were still tea leaves in the pot.