Jones, John Paul (1747–92), American naval officer, born at Kirkbean, Galloway, son of John Paul, gardener on the Arbigland estate. At the age of 12 he sailed as a cabin boy to Virginia, where his elder brother had settled as a tailor, and in 1766 obtained work as chief mate aboard a ship involved in the slave trade. He returned home two years later and was appointed a master, making voyages from the Solway Firth, London, and Africa to the West Indies and Virginia. In 1772 he bought a ship in the West Indies, but having killed a mutinous seaman in self-defence, he changed his name to John Jones, and fled to Virginia in 1773. When fighting broke out between England and the thirteen colonies, and Congress formed the Continental Navy, John Paul Jones, as he now called himself, was commissioned as first lieutenant, and distinguished himself in action against the British, capturing several prizes and sinking several others.

In 1777, after promotion to captain, he was appointed to command a sloop. He sailed to Nantes and then visited Paris, where Benjamin Franklin, commissioner of the American colonies in France, judging him to be a brave fighting man, took him under his wing. On receiving orders to cruise about the British Isles to ‘distress’ the enemy, Jones launched a series of shore raids. On the night of 22/23 April 1778, he raided Whitehaven, hoping to destroy with incendiaries the large number of ships in the harbour. However, the landings were bungled and little damage was done, but the moral effect was immense.

Then, on the morning of 23 April Jones landed with a boat's crew on St Mary's Isle, intending to abduct the owner, the fourth Earl of Selkirk, so as to obtain the release of several hundred American sailors who had been captured in battle and were in English jails with indictments for treason hanging over them. The earl was not there and Jones's men, who disliked profitless raids, seized the family silver, but afterwards Jones apologized, bought back the silver from his men, and returned it. A more satisfactory exploit, on 24 April, was the sloop's battle off Belfast Lough with HMS Drake which, after an hour of close combat, surrendered. Jones eventually got his prize safely into Brest, together with 200 prisoners of war who were exchanged for the American sailors in English prisons.

Jones's next command was a squadron comprising the new USS Alliance, three French vessels, a frigate, corvette, and cutter, all flying the American ensign, and Jones's flagship, an East Indiaman bought for him by the French government and renamed Bon Homme Richard as a compliment to Franklin. With infinite difficulty Jones got the Bon Homme Richard converted, gunned, equipped, and manned, and the squadron sailed from Lorient on 14 August 1779. It was soon weakened—the cutter got lost, the Alliance went off prize-taking on her own account—but on 23 September 1779 Jones bravely intercepted a Baltic convoy of 44 vessels escorted by two Royal Navy warships, HMS Serapis and HMS Countess of Scarborough. What ensued was one of the bitterest naval encounters of the century, known as the battle of Flamborough Head. The two naval escorts, after covering the escape of the convoy, closed with the squadron. The Serapis grappled the Bon Homme Richard, in an attempt to board her, and a desperate fight ensued which caused heavy casualties on both sides, but eventually the Serapis caught fire and was forced to surrender. The losses in each ship were high, 128 killed and wounded in the Serapis, 150 in the Bon Homme Richard.

Jones's flagship was so badly damaged that she sank two days later, and Jones transferred with the remains of his crew to the captured Serapis. With the rest of his squadron, he then sought refuge in the Texel on 3 October; and after delays, caused by repairs, neutrality complications, and a British blockade, he sailed for Corunna on 27 December, now flying his flag in the Alliance which had rejoined him. After sailing to Corunna, he reached Lorient on 17 February 1780 and proceeded to Paris where he found himself a hero. After some weeks he returned to America in the sloop Ariel, where Congress gave him command of the America, the only 74-gun ship in the country, then being built at Portsmouth, NH. However, after working hard to get her completed and launched, he lost her in 1782 because Congress, unwilling to support a peacetime navy, presented her to France.

Jones spent much of the rest of his life in France, going through the tiresome business of collecting prize money due to his squadron, and endeavouring without success to obtain a command in the French Navy. Eventually, he obtained the rank of rear admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy, and was given command of a squadron of nine frigates on the Liman of the Dnieper, where Russia was trying to capture Ochakov from the Turks.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet was a scratch collection of shoal draft vessels manned by impressed serfs, Cossacks, Volga boatmen, and Levantine pirates, officered in part by adventurers of six or seven nations. The Empress Catherine felt that only an outstanding naval officer from another country could weld this motley collection into a real fighting force. Possibly Jones could have done so had he not got into the ill graces of Prince Potemkin, the commander-in-chief after whom the battleship Potemkin was later named. Potemkin resented having another foreign officer of flag rank on his hands, but Jones got to fight the Turks and won the two battles of Liman, on 6 and 17 June 1788. But Prince Nassau-Siegen, commander of the light flotilla, received all the credit from Potemkin, and Jones was left out of the list of honours. He won the respect and loyalty of the Russian naval officers under him, but that did not help him with the commander-in-chief who relieved him of his post and sent him to St Petersburg to await orders.

Jones waited there through the winter of 1788–9. In the spring an important personage, probably Prince Nassau-Siegen, arranged to have him falsely charged with rape. Jones now had little alternative but to leave Russia and between 1790 and 1792 he lived in Paris and spent his time writing letters to anyone who might find him a post at sea or in the diplomatic service. Eventually, two commissions from President Washington, dated 1 and 2 June 1792, appointed him American consul in Algeria and plenipotentiary to negotiate with the Dey of Algiers for the release of American prisoners. It was too late, for on 18 July 1792, before the commissions reached France, Jones died from an attack of bronchial pneumonia, complicated by jaundice and nephritis.

The Legislative Assembly gave him a state funeral, and he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Protestant cemetery on rue Granges-aux-Belles. In 1905 the lead coffin was exhumed, and the body identified. It was then carried across the Atlantic in an American cruiser escorted by three others, and was met off Nantucket by seven battleships, and his remains were laid to rest in a marble sarcophagus in the crypt of the Naval Academy chapel at Annapolis.

The diminutive Jones was egotistical, extremely ambitious, and an aggressive self-promoter. He wanted most to be an admiral, and when that was not forthcoming in American service, he readily went elsewhere. Nevertheless, he proved himself to be a superb fighter, an impeccable seaman, and a thoughtful and forceful writer on naval education.

Bibliography

Morison, S. E. , John Paul Jones (1959).

John Paul Jones

John Paul Jones (1747-1792), American Revolutionary War officer, was a great fighting sailor and a national hero.

Like any master mariner in the 18th century, John Paul Jones was in the fullest sense the captain of his ship. He ruled by authority as well as by skill and personality. The rigging, the navigation, the ordnance, and the internal discipline were all his concerns. He was a proud man, slight and wiry, intellectually alert, and as tough with rowdy seamen as he was suave and urbane with Parisian women.

Becoming a Mariner

Born in Scotland as John Paul, he was a seafarer by the age of 12. He turned up in Virginia and took the surname Jones, for disguise, after killing a mutinous sailor in self-defense in 1773. Because he was already a veteran merchant captain, the Continental Congress commissioned him a lieutenant in 1775 and promoted him to captain the next year. Cruising as far north as Nova Scotia, he took more than 25 prizes in 1776.

It was in the European area, however, that Jones won lasting acclaim. In 1777 he sailed to France in the Ranger, and in Paris he found American diplomat Benjamin Franklin sympathetic to his strategic objectives: hit-and-run attacks on the enemy's defenseless places and abduction of a prominent person to compel the British government to exchange American seamen rotting in English jails. If this master of a single cruiser was scarcely able to alter the course of the war, he was able to bring the impact of the struggle home to the enemy's civilian population. Early in 1778 Jones sailed boldly into the Irish Sea and also assaulted the port of Whitehaven, Scotland—not since 1667 had a British seaport suffered such humiliation; a second raid on St. Mary's Isle failed to bag Lord Selkirk as a hostage, for Selkirk was away from home.

Battling the Serapis

France became America's ally, but Jones had to be satisfied with a good deal less than he had hoped for in men and ships. With an old, clumsy vessel renamed Bon Homme Richard (in honor of Franklin) as his flagship, in the summer of 1779 Jones led a small squadron around the coasts of Ireland and Scotland, taking several small prizes. Then, off the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head on September 23, he fell in with a large British convoy from the Baltic, escorted by the Serapis (50 guns) and the Scarborough (20 guns).

The most spectacular naval episode of the Revolution followed—a duel between the decrepit Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis, a sturdy, new, copper-bottomed frigate. After each captain, in standard tactical fashion, sought unsuccessfully to get across his opponent's bow to deliver a broadside, Jones managed to lash his ship to the Serapis in order to grapple and board. Jones's sharpshooters soon drove the enemy from the Serapis's deck with their rain of musket and grenade fire, but below the deck the enemy cannon roared on, wrecking the Bon Homme Richard's topsides. The English captain's nerve gave way when his main mast began to tremble, and he struck his colors. Jones abandoned the sinking Richard, took over the Serapis, and along with the Scarborough, which had fallen to his other vessels, sailed to Holland.

Back in France, Jones was the toast of Paris. His personal life seems to have scandalized John Adams, who was shocked at Jones's suggestion that the taking of a French mistress was an excellent way to learn the language. Whatever his personal life, Jones's naval conquests were over.

Postwar Life

Most of Jones's postwar life was spent in Europe. He made a final visit to the United States in 1787, when Congress unanimously voted to award him a gold medal for his outstanding services. He was the only naval officer of the American Revolution so honored. Soon afterward he accepted a commission in the Russian navy and was put in command of a Black Sea squadron with the rank of rear admiral. That rank, which he had eagerly but unsuccessfully sought in America, was the bait that had lured him to Russia. He fought in the Linman campaign against the Turks, but the jealousies and intrigues of rival officers limited his effectiveness, and in 1790 he returned to Paris.

In 1792 U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote to tell him that President George Washington had appointed Jones a commissioner to negotiate with Algiers for peace and the release of imprisoned American citizens. Jones, whose last years were pathetic, never lived to receive the letter. With few friends because he was a colossal egotist, Jones saw his health steadily decline before his death on July 18, 1792. He was buried in Paris. His remains were finally found in 1905 and brought to Annapolis, Md., where they are entombed in the crypt of the Naval Academy chapel.

Further Reading

Most biographies of Jones are filled with myth and misinformation; the first to set the record straight is Lincoln Lorenz, John Paul Jones (1943). But the character of the master mariner is best seen in Samuel E. Morison's Pulitzer Prize-winning John Paul Jones (1959), a magnificent book by a distinguished sailor-historian. Recommended for general historical background are Gardner W. Allen, A Naval History of the American Revolution (2 vols., 1913), and Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Major Operations of the Navies in the American War of Independence (1913). □

John Paul Jones 1747–92, American naval hero, b. near Kirkcudbright, Scotland. His name was originally simply John Paul.

Early Life

John Paul went to sea when he was 12, and his youth was adventure-filled. He was chief mate on a slave ship in 1766 but, disgusted with the work, soon quit. In 1769 he obtained command of the John, a merchantman that he captained until 1770. In 1773, while Jones was in command of the Betsy off Tobago, members of his crew mutinied and he killed one of the sailors in self-defense. To avoid trial he fled. In 1775 he was in Philadelphia, with the Jones added to his name; Joseph Hewes of Edenton, N.C., obtained for him a commission in the Continental navy.

Revolutionary War Hero

In 1777, Jones was given command of the Ranger, fresh from the Portsmouth shipyard. He sailed to France, then daringly took the war to the very shores of the British Isles on raids. In 1778, he captured the Drake, a British warship.

It was, however, only after long delay that he was given another ship, an old French merchantman, which he rebuilt and named the Bon Homme Richard ( "Poor Richard" ), to honor Benjamin Franklin. He set out with a small fleet but was disappointed in the hope of meeting a British fleet returning from the Baltic until the projected cruise was nearly finished. On Sept. 23, 1779, he did encounter the British merchantmen, convoyed by the frigate Serapis and a smaller warship. Despite the superiority of the Serapis, Jones did not hesitate.

The battle, which began at sunset and ended more than three and a half hours later by moonlight, was one of the most memorable in naval history. Jones sailed close in, to cut the advantage of the Serapis, and finally in the battle lashed the Bon Homme Richard to the British ship. Both ships were heavily damaged. The Serapis was afire in at least 12 different places. The hull of the Bon Homme Richard was pierced, her decks were ripped, her hold was filling with water, and fires were destroying her, unchecked; yet when the British captain asked if Jones was ready to surrender, the answer came proudly, "Sir, I have not yet begun to fight." When the Serapis surrendered, Jones and his men boarded her while his own vessel sank. He was much honored in France for the victory but received little recognition in the United States.

Later Life

After the Revolution Jones was sent to Europe to collect the prize money due the United States. In 1788 he was asked by Catherine the Great to join the Russian navy; he accepted on the condition that he become a rear admiral. His command against the Turks in the Black Sea was successful, but political intrigue prevented his getting due credit. In 1789 he was discharged from the Russian navy and returned to Paris. There in the midst of the French Revolution he died, without receiving the commission that Jefferson had procured for him to negotiate with the dey of Algiers concerning American prisoners.

Although he is today generally considered among the greatest of American naval heroes and the founder of the American naval tradition, his grave was forgotten until the ambassador to France, Horace E. Porter, discovered it in 1905 after the expenditure of much of his own time and money. The remains were removed to Annapolis and since 1913 have been enshrined in a crypt at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Bibliography

See his memoirs (1830, repr. 1972); A. De Koven, Life and Letters of John Paul Jones (1913); F. A. Golder, John Paul Jones in Russia (1927); L. Lorenz, John Paul Jones (1943, repr. 1969); G. W. Johnson, The First Captain (1947); S. E. Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959, repr. 1964); E. Thomas, John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy (2003).

Jones, John Paul (1747–92), Scottish‐born naval adventurer, served in the West Indian slave trade before he entered the Revolutionary navy (1755). He was highly successful in destroying British ships, harassing the Nova Scotia fisheries, and capturing a British transport. Franklin procured for him an old French vessel, renamed the Bonhomme Richard, with which, accompanied by a small fleet, he fought the most important naval engagement of the war (Sept. 23, 1779), which resulted in the capture of the British warship Serapis. “I have not yet begun to fight” is said to have been Jones's reply to the question of Captain Pearson of the British ship, “Have you struck?” The Bonhomme Richard sank within a few hours after Jones transferred his crew to the Serapis. In 1788 he entered the Russian naval service, but resigned the following year to reside in Paris. A dashing figure, he and his exploits appear in a poem by Freneau and several historical romances, notably Cooper's The Pilot, Melville's Israel Potter, Sarah Orne Jewett's The Tory Lover, Winston Churchill's Richard Carvel, and James Boyd's Drums.

Jones, John Paul (1747–92) Scottish-born American naval officer. In 1775 he joined the American Continental Navy and carried out a daring series of attacks on shipping in British waters, his best-known exploit being his engagement and sinking of the naval frigate Serapis while in command of the Bonhomme Richard (1779). In 1788 he joined the Russian navy as a rear-admiral.

Jones, John Paul (1747–92) American naval commander during the American Revolution. Born in Scotland, he joined the Continental navy in 1775 and raided British coasts and merchant ships.