GASSAR State Info - Historical Portraits

twenty miles from his birthplace until he went to sea at the age of thirteen. Boys of his class, in the age before bicycles and other inexpensive transportation, never had a chance to wander very far. John Paul was determined at a young age to better his station in society. He did not intend to be a gardener, farmer or fisherman. For a boy who was no scholar and whose family refused to let him seek his fortune in London, there was always the sea.

Early in 1761, at the age of thirteen, John packed a sea chest, received his parents' blessing, and went on board a packet sloop or fishing vessel which took him to Whitehaven. There, articles of apprenticeship were signed, binding John Paul, Jr. to serve Mr. Younger for seven years, receiving next to no pay but learning the mariner's profession. And there he embarked as ship's boy in the brig FRIENDSHIP of 179 tons, outbound for Barbados and Virginia. In 1764, due to a depression in merchant shipping, the owner of the FRIENDSHIP went broke and retired. Mr. Younger, as a result, releases young John from his obligation to serve out the rest of his seven years as apprentice seaman.

Far more important to Jones after his apprentice were his Virginia contacts. According to a letter that he wrote in 1779, John fell in love with America at first sight and was determine to make his home there. His brother, having settled in Fredericksburg as a tailor gave him social contacts. It wasn't that tailors enjoyed a great social status in Virginia, but the "best people" frequented William Paul’s shop and between voyages, John had ample opportunity to meet gentlemen and listen to their conversation and imitate their manners and speech. In practice of his own maxim, “a warrior is always ready," his resourcefulness and skill won him the position as master of a merchantman, the JOHN at the age of 21. It was during this period that John Paul became John Paul Jones.

During a mutiny and threat on his life while in the Caribbean he killed a seaman. Jones fearing for his life, because the seaman was a popular and well know individual did not stick around for a trial. He disappeared for about twenty months and when he surfaced he was being addressed as John Paul Jones. It was very difficult for the United States Navy to acquire men in those days. There was one other element competing for the services of able bodied men and that was the privateers. The privateers were given a greater percentage of the spoils than were the U. S. Navy sailors

In December 1775, he received his commission in the Continental Navy as first lieutenant on the frigate ALFRED, on which he hoisted the Continental flag, the old Grand Union. He served as commander on the sloop of war PROVIDENCE and ALFRED. During this period he captured valuable British merchantmen and destroyed important fisheries and vessels. His skill in harrying the enemy was widely noted, and in February 1777, the Marine Committee directed its secretary, Robert Morris, to place the Continental fleet in his hands. But the jealousy of others foiled this opportunity for Jones.

His abilities recognized by John Hancock, president of Congress and Robert Morris, he was given command on June 14, 1777 of the new sloop of war RANGER. The RANGER was one of the first naval vessels to fly the Stars and Stripes. Jones sailed the RANGER to the very shores of England, where he tried to burn the shipping at Whitehaven. This was an exceptional feat. Jones and other crew members actually boarded long boats and landed on the shores of England. The strategic effect was minimal because of a desertion by one of Jones crew members who went ashore at Whitehaven and warned the citizens of the pending attack. By the time Jones arrived the citizens were alarmed and Jones only succeeded in setting one ship on fire which was quickly extinguished. However, the psychological effect was enormous.

On April 24, 1778 he captured the DRAKE, the first victory of a Continental vessel over a British warship. He eventually received command of a converted merchantman named BONHOMME RICHARD. The RICHARD, although armed with 42 guns, was old and slow, and ill suited to fight or escape.

Off Flamborough Head, however, the RICHARD pursued and challenged to battle, two British ships of war -- the SERAPIS, carrying 50 guns and the COUNTESS OF SCARBOROUGH with 22 guns. On September 23, 1779, Jones started the grim struggle between the RICHARD and the two British ships of war. As the RICHARD maneuvered into position, two of the eight old 18-ponders burst at their first broadside and killed or wounded many of the seamen. It soon became clear to Jones that he would have to outwit Richard Pearson, the captain of the SERAPIS. An initial attempt to board the British frigate and win by sheer desperate fighting failed. In a second effort he managed to lock the two ships together. The SERAPIS was beating in one of the RICHARD's sides and blowing out the other. Most of the guns on the American vessel were broken and silent. The RICHARD was on fire and taking water. A gunner, thinking that Jones had been killed tried to surrender the RICHARD. Pearson asks loudly, "Do you ask for quarter?" At that moment Jones appeared hurling his two pistols at the head of the gunner and made his memorable reply, "I have not yet begun to fight!" A grenade thrown from the RICHARD caused a disastrous explosion of ammunition on board the British warship. After 3 1/2 hours of fighting in full moonlight the SERAPIS struck its colors. Jones and his crew boarded the British ship and saw the BONHOMME RICHARD sink with the stern uppermost with its colors flying. Jones escaped in the SERAPIS to Holland, accompanied by the captured COUNTESS OF SCARBOROUGH.

Jones returned to America in February 1781, after first spending considerable time in Paris. Congress passed resolutions in his honor, recommended the award of a gold medal, and gave him the command of the ship of the line, AMERICA. This command in essence, conferred the rank of Rear Admiral to Jones. The AMERICA was still under construction and war ended soon after before Jones ever had the opportunity to put the America to sea.

Not much is known about what Jones was doing after the war ended, but in April 1788, John Paul Jones arrived in Russia and was given command of a squadron in the Black Sea. Jones' grim dedication to his professional duties resulted in victories scarcely less daring than those during the American Revolution. The reason for the Black Sea assignment was due to the British sailors of fortune refused to serve on Jones’s ship or forbade him from being a part of their fleets, because the considered him to be a pirate. So Katherine the Great give him an assignment in the Black Sea. While he won battles, however, his colleagues usurped the honors. The intrigue against him grew, both professional and personal, including a baseless charge of moral turpitude, which forced Jones to leave Russia for France.

John Paul Jones’s life after he left Russia was anticlimactic. Never again would he command a ship, much less a fleet. Never, until too late to enjoy it, would he receive a government appointment. He asks others to look into various land purchase opportunities in America but never did buy. Although, he kept saying he was going to return he never saw America again.

In 1791, America had an international problem concerning American shipping in the Mediterranean. Barbary powers of North Africa were quick to observe that the ships under the Stars and Stripes had no navy to protect them. They began capturing American ships at will and enslaving their crews. Paul Jones, always compassionate toward prisoners, had been trying for years to get something done about the piracy.

On June 1, 1792, President Washington at last acted. He signed, and Jefferson countersigned, a handwritten commission appointing "John Paul Jones a citizen of the United States, commissioner with full power to negotiate with Algiers concerning the ransom of American citizens in captivity.

If our hero could have only seen this evidence of Washington's and Jefferson's special trust and confidence in his integrity, prudence and abilities, his last days would have been far happier. However, instead of sending the documents by the first ship carrying mail to France, they were instead entrusted to Thomas Pinckney, who was going to London as American minister, and Pinckney did not sail until mid-July.

That was too late, for on July 1, 1792, at the age of 45, John Paul Jones departed this life. Jones's friends who stood by him stated that he had been suffering from jaundice for two months before he died. An autopsy performed on Jones's body years after his death, revealed that his kidneys showed signs of nephritis, and that there were bronchi-pneumonic lesions in his lungs. It is believed that although he had jaundice and nephritis, John Paul Jones contracted bronchial pneumonia which actually killed him.

The funeral took place on July 20, 1792, two days after his death. As far as the record goes, Jones had never shown any interest in organized religion or attended church; but since he had been brought up in the Church of Scotland he was considered a Protestant. According to French law, there was only one place where he could be interred, a Protestant cemetery outside the walls of Paris. As a small group of friends looked on the coffin was let down into the grave, earth thrown in, and the grenadiers at the command of their officer fired a volley. It was now 8:00 P.M. The mourners straggled back to Paris in the gathering darkness. Not much a send off for such an American hero. That would one day be rectified.

There had been several attempts by the United States to recover the remains of Jones. The Protestant cemetery of Paris is clearly marked on maps of 1775 and 1789. A hundred years later the city had sprawled out over it, and the ancient graveyard was covered by sheds and buildings. Finally in 1905 they started to excavate the site and the work continued day and night until they encountered a lead coffin where they found a remarkably well-preserved corpse whose face had an unmistakable resemblance to the portrait of Paul Jones. President Theodore Roosevelt followed these proceedings with great interest, recognizing the propaganda value for the United States Navy, which he was trying to make the strongest in the world as Paul Jones had predicted it would become. The President sent four cruisers, USS BROOKLYN, TACOMA, CHATTANOOGA and GALVESTON -- just such a squadron as Paul Jones had yearned to command -- to bring his body home. There were many groups and special interests which attempted to claim his final resting; but President Roosevelt, decided that the most appropriate spot would be a magnificent black and white marble sarcophagus (crypt), placed in the chapel at the United States Naval Academy, whose establishment Jones had urged and predicted. So on January 26, 1913, long after his body had been returned to America, the body of John Paul Jones finally came to rest. It had taken a long time, but finally it was made right and he was home.

Rear Admiral Samuel E. Morison concludes his biography with this: To every sailor, I say; not only to Americans. In one of his letters of 1780, Jones wrote, "The English Nation may hate me, but I will force them to esteem me too." This prophecy was fulfilled over a century and a half later, when the Right Honorable Albert Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, in a broadcast beamed to America, declared that Paul Jones's defiant answer to Pearson expressed exactly what England felt in the dark days of the Battle for Britain. And in the six months of tribulation for the United States that followed the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, the one sentiment in the back of every American sailor's mind was that of John Paul Jones: I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT! Adapted from information provided by the late Herman Tovey of Georgia Society SAR.