Launch of the Ranger
On May 10, 1777, the sloop-of-war Ranger slid into the water at John Langdon’s shipyard in Kittery, Maine, just across the river from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Armed with eighteen six-pounder guns and crewed by about 140 men, she was built for speed rather than heavy fighting. Her first commander was Captain John Paul Jones, who took charge on June 14, the same day Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the national flag.
Jones sailed for France in November 1777, carrying dispatches and looking for trouble. In February 1778, the Ranger received the first official salute to the American flag from a foreign naval power at Quiberon Bay. Two months later, Jones launched a daring raid on Whitehaven, England — the very port he had sailed from as a boy of thirteen — burning ships and spiking coastal guns. The following night, on April 24, the Ranger engaged the twenty-gun HMS Drake off the Irish coast. Superior gunnery and seamanship won the day, and Jones brought the captured warship back to Brest as a prize. The Ranger was eventually captured by the British at the fall of Charleston in May 1780 and renamed HMS Halifax.
The exploits of Jones and his Ranger are celebrated in The Stately Southerner, also known as “The Yankee Man-of-War” or simply “The Ranger.” The song follows the ship as she cruises off the Irish coast, outsailing and outfighting a British man-of-war. Jones later commanded the Bonhomme Richard in the famous Battle of Flamborough Head, the subject of Paul Jones.