The Admiral and the Ambassador (40 page)

Since the Exposition Universelle in 1900, Paris had celebrated July 4 as “America's Day, and there is a gratifying display of American flags, etc.,” which would add to the celebration of Jones were the body shipped out that day. And to wait longer, Porter warned, would conflict with French celebrations tied to Bastille Day. The Americans also risked a public relations problem. “If postponed too long, the people here and at home might construe the delay as neglect, as great indignation has been aroused by the negligence which continued one hundred thirteen years during which the body has been allowed to lie in a wretched spot in a foreign land, and they naturally would like to see it taken home as early as arrangements can be conveniently made for that purpose.”
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Washington finally agreed, though the date ultimately was pushed back a couple of days to July 6, Jones's birthday.

Another problem cropped up, however. The French had ceded the body to Ambassador Porter, who was now a private citizen, so it was no longer France's body to turn over to Loomis. And there were legal and diplomatic uncertainties over whether Porter, as a private American, could
hand over the body to the new US ambassador—the kind of tempest that would seem to roil only a diplomat's teapot. The solution: President Roosevelt appointed Porter a temporary and special ambassador to France, in addition to McCormick and Loomis. Porter was once again an official representative of the United States, but with a very narrow portfolio.
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The squadron came together June 7 at the US Naval Frontier Base at Tompkinsville, Staten Island, in New York, under Sigsbee's command. The flagship was the USS
Brooklyn,
an armored cruiser under Captain John M. Hawley, accompanied by three other cruisers, each only about two years old: USS
Tacoma
, the USS
Galveston,
and the USS
Chattanooga.
As the ships were being provisioned, crews built an oak stage on the deck of the
Brooklyn
just outside Sigsbee's midship quarters. It was protected by a canopy and curtained with both US and French flags and a silk ensign provided by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The organizers hoped it would be a fitting place to secure Jones's coffin for the journey back.

The departure was delayed a few days as more logistics were worked out on the French end. There were concerns that Cherbourg, the planned port for transferring the body to Sigsbee's squadron, might not be large enough to handle the number of people and ships expected. By June 11 the decision was made to send the ships to Le Havre instead, because it was larger and closer to Paris.
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Le Havre also lies at the mouth of the Seine, and the initial plan was to float Jones's body by river barge for the transfer. For reasons that remain murky, though, the French decided that Cherbourg would work after all, and the plans shifted back. That made it impossible to send Jones's body by river barge, so fresh plans had to be made for moving him by train.
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While the organizers and diplomats wrangled, Sigsbee and his ships sat at anchor off Staten Island, the naval version of twiddling their thumbs, before finally getting the word to proceed, and the squadron steamed out to sea at 1 P
M
on June 18. “Because of the recently reported icebergs and floes well to the southward of the Great Bank,” Sigsbee later reported, “I chose the most southerly steamship route for the passage.”
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It was an uneventful crossing, marked by clouds, a mix of rain and mist for most of the trip, and moderate seas. The squadron encountered several ships along the way, mostly masted schooners that were duly noted
in the log.
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They came within sight on June 26 of the eastbound
Deutschland
and, a few hours later, the westbound
New York,
both steam-powered passenger ships.

Some of the crew aboard the
Brooklyn
were part of an experiment in wireless telegraphy. Only three years earlier radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi had sent the first wireless message across the Atlantic, and two years earlier President Roosevelt sent a message via a new station in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, across the sea to England's King Edward II, the first transatlantic wireless message to originate in the United States. The
Brooklyn
was taking part in more experiments in that vein, and the crew reported receiving a wireless message 1,040 miles into the voyage, and again some 1,000 miles west of Poldhu station in southwest England.
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Yet they couldn't get an answer out of either the
Deutschland
or the
New York
, though they could hear transmissions from the two ships.

“I asked the captain of the
Deutschland
to let me know what weather he had had,” Sigsbee later reported. “He paid no attention to my message, but informed the other vessel, the
New York,
of the weather conditions. It is possible that this was done in order to give me my information indirectly…. I understand that vessels having the Marconi wireless apparatus are not allowed to communicate with vessels having other apparatus.” Sigsbee saw the obvious problem with observing such exclusivity. “One result of the adoption of the Marconi apparatus is to set aside the ordinary helpful amenities of the sea, which is greatly to be regretted.”
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Around 1 P
M
on June 29, the squadron steamed within sight of Bishop Rock, the remote lighthouse marking the eastern end of the North Atlantic steamship route. As they pressed on, the ships were enveloped by a thick fog off the tip of Bretagne, which lasted through the night. The weather disrupted their radio transmissions, and Sigsbee reported he had trouble moving a squadron of four ships in formation at 11 knots when they couldn't see each other or the approaching coast and had to make repeated and sudden stops to take soundings and make course corrections. “I have had much experience with squadrons in fog,” Sigsbee said, “but this was by far the most difficult case within my experience.” The ships used gun fire to signal one another, and an unintended benefit was that the blasts alerted the French port officials that the ships were near. “No landmarks were seen,
nor any whistle heard, until we sighted the breakwater fort at the western entrance to Cherbourg, about two miles distant, and saw the pilot boats coming out.” They had found the harbor at Cherbourg with pinpoint accuracy. “John Paul Jones himself would have applauded such an example of excellent navigation,” wrote shipboard chronicler Henri Marion, a French-speaking history professor at the US Naval Academy who had come along to record the events and act as an interpreter for Sigsbee.
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Sigsbee finally got a wireless message through to shore that the squadron had arrived, and asked that the embassy and other American officials be sent wires announcing their arrival. After exchanging cannon salutes with French military detachments ashore, the American ships dropped anchor.

Sigsbee's squadron had been in harbor less than a day when word reached Europe of Secretary Hay's death in New Hampshire. Shock and grief spread among those who had known the secretary of state, including Porter and McCormick. That was followed quickly by discussions about how the Embassy and American expatriate community should respond. The new ambassador was planning to continue Porter's tradition of hosting a massive party for American expatriates to celebrate the Fourth of July; Hay's death made that seem inappropriate. “Conceiving it to be the best expression of the sentiments of Americans in Paris over our country's great loss, I have closed my house on the Fourth of July, abandoning usual reception,” McCormick cabled to Washington. But there were too many moving parts to the transfer of Jones's body to add a delay now, he believed. “Pending instructions and believing it to be in accordance with the wishes of the president,” he cabled, “I have suggested no change in the functions in connection with the turning over of the remains of Admiral Paul Jones by special ambassador Porter to special ambassador Loomis, on account of the lamented death of Mr. Hay.”
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So the party would go on.

The ceremonies marking the dispatch of Jones's body would be a binational affair, and on the morning of July 1, a contingent of three French naval ships arrived at Cherbourg to represent the French role in Jones's life and
his death. American sailors granted shore leave mingled with French sailors and local residents excited by the surprise role they were playing in what they saw as a historic moment. There were garden parties and theatrical programs, impromptu celebrations and navy-versus-navy rowing and boating contests. On the Fourth of July itself, ships from both navies anchored at Cherbourg were ablaze with lights in celebration. Mixed in with the celebrations, though, were visits to a quiet cemetery that held the bodies of American seamen who had died in the June 27, 1864, Civil War naval battle off Cherbourg between the Union sloop of war
Kearsarge
and the Confederate cruiser
Alabama,
a battle won by the North.
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Rear Admiral Sigsbee missed most of the Cherbourg parties. Around 5 P
M
on July 1, Sigsbee and a contingent of ten officers (including the captain of each of his ships) boarded a train for Paris, arriving a little after midnight, and headed directly to the small but exclusive Hôtel Brighton, across Rue de Rivoli from the Jardin des Tuileries. Hours after Sigsbee and his men left for Paris, Loomis arrived in Cherbourg on the steamship
Philadelphia.
A dispatch boat collected him and took him to the
Brooklyn,
where he spent the night before taking a morning train for Paris, arriving in midafternoon.

The American representatives spent the next few days bouncing among parties and diplomatic duties. They met with McCormick and Porter at the embassy, and French premier Maurice Rouvier and President Loubet in their offices. Loubet also hosted a Fourth of July reception at the Élysée Palace for the Americans, a fete that was more subdued than originally planned out of deference to official US mourning of Hay. Every movement by the Americans, who were invariably in their navy dress uniforms, was a small parade, complete with crowds along the streets to watch and applaud their passage. And they were accompanied everywhere by contingents of French cuirassiers, soldiers in dress uniform atop decorated horses.

Parties and receptions gave way to even grander ceremonies on July 6. A detachment of some five hundred US sailors and marines boarded a special train in Cherbourg at 3 A
M,
disembarking at the Gare des Invalides on Paris's Left Bank at 11:40 A
M
. As they left the station, they met a squadron of French infantry, with whom they exchanged salutes and then national anthems, and joined in a march to the nearby École Militaire, drawing
cheers from a thickening crowd. After a luncheon, the two military contingents marched to the American Church for the 3:30 PM ceremony.

The church was decorated as though for a state funeral, with masses of flowers and plants filling the air with a light scent. The coffin had already been reclaimed from the basement cloister and placed on a stand at the head of the church, in front of the altar.
Huissiers,
French men in formal clothes and wearing large silver chains, served as ushers, and the church quickly filled with dignitaries, all present by invitation only. Throngs of the curious, without invitation, gathered on the street outside, growing to a large crowd by the time the ceremony began.

Inside the church, on the left side of the aisle, sat Premier Rouvier and most of the French Cabinet (Loubet was not present), as well as most of the foreign diplomats assigned to the French capital, each wearing the formal regalia of his home country. The right side was reserved for the Americans, including Sigsbee and the commanders of the ships in his squadron; US senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who happened to be in Paris; and McCormick, Loomis, and Porter, who was wearing a dark suit and a thick red sash of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Morgan, the pastor, delivered a short prayer, and then Porter moved from his front-row pew to the altar and stood beside the flag-draped coffin.

“This day,” Porter began, “America claims her illustrious dead.” He went on to talk about the length of time between Jones's death and his repatriation to American soil. “It is a matter of extreme gratification to feel that the body of this intrepid commander should be conveyed across the sea by the war vessels of a navy to whose sailors his name is still an inspiration.” He thanked the Frenchmen who helped him decipher the hints of the past, thanked Sigsbee for leading the squadron to retrieve the body, thanked the French government for its support and help in honoring “the memory of a hero who once covered two continents with his renown in battling for the cherished principles of political liberty and the rights of man, for which the two sister republics have both so strenuously contended.” He reminded the audience that the US Congress in one resolution both adopted the Stars and Stripes as the national flag, and gave Jones the helm of the
Ranger.
He then quoted Jones: “The flag and I are twins; born the same hour from the same womb of destiny. We can not be parted in life or in death.” “Alas,”
Porter added from beside the flag-draped coffin, “they were parted during a hundred and thirteen years, but happily now they are reunited.”
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