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by Bob Blythe
John Paul Jones was America's greatest Revolutionary
naval commander and founder of America's naval tradition. He was
born simply John Paul, the son of an estate gardener in Scotland
in 1747. At the age of 13, John Paul was apprenticed to a ship
owner and began his career at sea. He immediately entered into
the Atlantic trade that linked England, America, the West Indies,
and Africa. He was a crew member on at least three slaving voyages
to Africa and grew to hate the traffic in human cargo. At the age
of 21, on a voyage from Jamaica to Scotland, John Paul took command
of the brig John when her captain and first mate died from fever,
bringing ship and crew safely into port.
John Paul was well on his way to success as
a merchant sailor when disaster struck. In 1773 on the island of
Tobago, mutinous
sailors looking for advance pay attacked him. In defending himself,
John Paul killed one of the men. Convinced that he could not get
a fair trial on the island, he escaped to America and took the
name - John Paul Jones - that would make him famous. He arrived
in America at a time when the conflict with Britain over taxes
and
self-government was reaching a boiling point. Familiar from birth
with Great Britain's harsh treatment of the Scottish people, Jones
was immediately sympathetic to America's quest for liberty. After
war broke out in 1775, Jones volunteered for service in the brand-new
Continental Navy.
Having long been protected by the powerful British navy, America
began the Revolutionary War without naval power of any kind. Congress
acted quickly to convert merchant ships to ships of war and to
begin building new ships for the navy. With his sea-going background
and the support of a North Carolina congressman, Jones was quick
to see service. After a brief stint as second in command of the
Alfred, Jones in May 1776 took command of the sloop Providence,
which mounted 21 guns. Jones soon captured 16 British vessels on
a single cruise.
Promoted to the rank of captain, Jones took command of the Alfred and soon had more prizes. In April 1778, as captain of the Ranger,
he was cruising the waters close to Britain. Jones conceived the
bold plan of attacking the town of Whitehaven on the west coast
of England. He hoped to capture an important individual and then
negotiate the exchange of American naval prisoners being held as
common criminals in English jails (see sidebar). The raid on Whitehaven
did little damage, but it rattled the British to think that the
American navy could reach them at home.
Jones's greatest victory came in September 1779. He now commanded
a fleet of five ships. His flagship, a 40-gun frigate, was a converted
French merchant ship. Jones re-named it the Bonhomme Richard, in
honor of Benjamin Franklin (Bonhomme Richard being the French translation
of Franklin's Poor Richard). Jones knew that in the fall, rich
British fleets from the West Indies and the Baltic returned to
England, and he planned to take one or both. On September 23rd,
the 41 ships of the Baltic convoy came into view off the east coast
of England. As the merchant ships ran for safety, the two escorting
British warships, Serapis and Countess of Scarborough, squared
off against the Bonhomme Richard and another American ship, the
Pallas.
"Prizes" in a deadly game
At the time of the American Revolution,
when nations were at war, all of the enemy's ships,
military and civilian, were considered fair game. When
warships and privateers (privately owned ships authorized
to make war) took enemy shipping, the captain and crew
shared with their government any proceeds from the
sale of the captured ships and cargoes. A ship taken
in warfare was known as a prize, and could indeed yield
rich rewards to the victorious sailors. But, the root
of the conflict with Britain was that she did NOT consider
America an independent nation and so she refused to
grant America the customary rights of a nation at war.
Britain viewed sailors in the Continental Navy as pirates
and tossed them in jail as common criminals. It was
this policy that John Paul Jones sought to overturn
by attacking English towns. |
After three hours of maneuvering, the
Bonhomme Richard rammed the Serapis, and Jones tied the two ships
together. They poured
deadly cannon fire into each other for two hours. When the British
captain, Richard Pearson, asked if the Americans were ready to
surrender, Jones roared back, "I have not yet begun to fight!" An
American grenade then exploded below decks on the Serapis and it
was the British who surrendered. The Bonhomme Richard was damaged
beyond repair, so Jones transferred his flag to the Serapis, bringing
it and the Countess of Scarborough to Holland as prizes. Jones's
courage and resourcefulness in this fight brought him international
recognition.
American plans to provide Jones with a large new ship never materialized.
At the war's conclusion, Jones urged Congress to maintain a strong
navy as the best insurance against future conflicts. The new nation
had neither the funds nor the desire to do so, and the Continental
Navy soon disbanded. After brief but distinguished service in the
Russian navy against the Turks in 1788-1789, Jones went to Paris,
where he met old friends and made plans to buy a country estate
in America. His health declined, though, and he died in France
on July 18, 1792, at the age of 45. More than one hundred years
later, his remains were returned to the United States and placed
in a magnificent sarcophagus in the chapel of the Naval Academy
in Annapolis. His tomb has become a shrine to this founding father
of the United States Navy.
To learn more:
Norma Jean Lutz, John Paul Jones: Father
of the U.S. Navy (New
York: Chelsea House, 1999) (for young readers).
Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones:
A Sailor's Biography (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1959); reprint available from Naval Institute Press.
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