The jolly drinking song “Wasp Stinging Frolick” is another text of the tune group relating to Decatur’s Victory. The opening lines clearly reflect the opening of Paul Jones’s Victory, a further clue that they were all intended for the same tune. This text was printed in two songsters with “Paul Jones’s Victory” as its indicated tune, and collected by the compiler of the Stevens-Douglass manuscript who copied out all ten verses; the text appeared in a total of eight songsters between 1813 and 1816 (Judicious Collection of Naval Songs 8-9; Columbian Naval Melody 21-23; H. Thompson 120-21).
According to Commander Martin:
[T]his song is remarkably accurate with regard to the facts of the incident it relates. USS Wasp, an eighteen-gun sloop of war under the command of Master Commandant Jacob Jones, sailed from the mouth of the Delaware River on October 13, 1812, and on the seventeenth met HM war brig Frolic (twenty-two guns, Captain Thomas Whinyates). The two fought a short, vicious action at short range, each seriously damaging the sails and rigging of the other. The contest was decided when the Americans, led by Lieutenant James Biddle, boarded their foe and swept all before them. Frolic had suffered fifteen killed and forty-seven wounded to Wasp’s five killed and a like number wounded.
Jones hoped to bring his prize back to port with him, and so both vessels lay to making only the necessary repairs (which, in themselves, were extensive). They were thus engaged the following day when HMS Poictiers, a seventy-four-gunner, appeared and required both to surrender before Jones could attempt escape. Both ships were taken to Bermuda, from whence, in accordance with the practice of the time, the Americans soon were paroled home. Wasp was taken in to the Royal Navy as HMS Peacock, but lost in 1813.
This bittersweet victory obviously was well received in the United States. The Congress voted Jones, soon promoted to Captain, a gold medal with silver copies for his commissioned officers and $25,000 to be shared by all the crew. To get slightly ahead of our chronology, when the frigate Macedonian was taken into the US Navy a few months later, Jones was placed in command. The name Jacob Jones has since been carried by three units of the US Navy. (Maclay, History of the Navy; Roosevelt).
