e Spanish ships
were better built than the British.

Lurking in the background to haunt British thought was the growing
American navy. John Paul was a Scots sailor, who had been a slave trader
and subsequently master of a West India merchantman, and on going
to America had assumed the name of Jones. He was a man of boundless
ambition, vanity, and vigor, and when he commanded American privateers
he became a terror to the maritime people from whom he sprang. In the
summer of 1779 when Jones, with a squadron of four ships, was haunting
the British coasts, every harbor was nervous. At Plymouth a boom blocked
the entrance, but other places had not even this defense. Sir Walter
Scott has described how, on September 17, 1779, a squadron, under John
Paul Jones, came within gunshot of Leith, the port of Edinburgh. The
whole surrounding country was alarmed, since for two days the squadron
had been in sight beating up the Firth of Forth. A sudden squall, which
drove Jones back, probably saved Edinburgh from being plundered. A few
days later Jones was burning ships in the Humber and, on the 23d of
September, he met off Flamborough Head and, after a desperate fight,
captured two British armed ships: the Serapis, a 40-gun vessel newly
commissioned, and the Countess of Scarborough, carrying 20 guns, both
of which were convoying a fleet. The fame of his exploit rang through
Europe. Jones was a regularly commissioned officer in the navy of
the United States, but neutral powers, such as Holland, had not yet
recognized the republic and to them there was no American navy. The
British regarded him as a traitor and pirate and might possibly have
hanged him had he fallen into their hands.

Terrible days indeed were these for distracted England. In India,
France, baulked twenty years earlier, was working for her entire
overthrow, and in North Africa, Spain was using the Moors to the same
end. As time passed the storm grew more violent. Before the year 1780
ended Holland had joined England's enemies. Moreover, the northern
states of Europe, angry at British interference on the sea with their
trade, and especially at her seizure of ships trying to enter blockaded
ports, took strong measures. On March 8, 1780, Russia issued a
proclamation declaring that neutral ships must be allowed to come and go
on the sea as they liked. They might be searched by a nation at war for
arms and ammunition but for nothing else. It would moreover be illegal
to dec