It was of inestimable advantage to Paul Jones to have had the opportunity of inspecting at such close range, much less get drawings of, one of the best and most modern ships of the French navy. It is not strange that the American frigate _Alliance_, built some time later, followed closely the same general lines as _La Terpischore_; that she mounted the same battery--twenty-eight long 12-pounders on the gun deck, and ten long 9-pounders above. Was this merely a coincidence? Or, on the other hand, did the young Scotchman have a hand in the matter?
At a meeting of the Continental Congress on May 10, 1775, the Naval Committee invited Paul Jones to lay before it such information and advice as might seem to him useful in assisting the committee in discharging its labors. Paul Jones felt strongly on the subject of establishing a navy, and thought that the only way to start was to offer prizes to the crews of privateersmen. In a letter to Joseph Hewes he observed:
"If our enemies, with the best established and most formidable navy in the universe, have found it expedient to assign all prizes to the captors, how much more is such policy essential to our infant fleet? But I need no argument to convince you of the necessity of making the emoluments of our navy equal, if not superior, to theirs."
In this appeal to Congress there was good common-sense. Paul Jones was not actuated by a love of gain; he was in the struggle because he thought it a righteous cause. Yet he knew that while he had the profits of his plantation for the past two or three seasons--some 4000 pounds--to fall back upon when his Government allowances should fail to meet expenses, the average Colonist did not. The wives and children of the latter must be fed and clothed while he was away fighting. Unless he could be promised ample revenue from prizes, Paul Jones knew that Jack would fight half-heartedly and in the dumps, even though he loved his country in every fiber of his being. His pitifully inadequate Government allowance of eight dollars a month was surely no attraction.
On November 15, 1776, Congress improved this situation somewhat, but did not meet Paul Jones's wishes in the matter, by resolving "that a bounty of twenty dollars be paid to the commanders, officers, and men, of such Continental ships or vessels of war as shall make a prize of any British ships or vessels of war, for every cannon on board such a prize at the time of such capture; and eight dollars per head for every man then on board and belonging to such prize."