John Paul Jones (July 6, 1747-July 18, 1792) became famous during the American Revolutionary War (1777-1783) as a captain in the American navy, winning several victories against British ships, notably the HMS Serapis. Despite his impressive fighting record, Jones never became an admiral in the American Navy. Seeking glory, he served as an admiral in the Russian Navy of Catherine the Great during her war against the Turks. However, glory eluded him and he died in obscurity in Paris.

Contents:
Early Life
American Revolution
Ranger
Bonhomme Richard
Serapis
Peace
Russia
Final Years
Related Movies
Further Reading

Early Life
John Paul Jones was born on July 6, 1747 at Arbigland, Scotland, the son of a Scottish gardener named John Paul who had been hired to design the gardens at a huge estate. Although Paul Sr. also managed the hundred people who made up the estate's staff, he was still considered a servant, just a higher-ranking servant. Furthermore, there were persistent rumors that John Paul Jr. was actually the lord's son, which was not uncommon at the time, but there is no real prooof, and he was actually the fourth child of Paul Sr.

Even though Jones had grown up by the sea and had wanted to join the Royal Navy since he was a child, John Paul Sr. lacked the necessary connections to win him a position as a midshipman, so he had to settle for a position on a small merchant ship in early 1761 when he was thirteen. Life aboard a merchant ship was harsh and dangerous, since climbing slippery ropes during a raging storm to change a sail was not for the weak of heart. Fresh food was rare and hygiene levels were low because men were frequently too sick to leave their sleeping area to relieve themselves. Only the daily ration of alcohol made this life bearable but Jones stood out among the rest of the crew in not drinking grog because he quickly realized that sailing under the influence of alcohol decreased your life-expectancy. Aside from the danger of falling off a mast, the work was exhausting and the most common injury was a hernia.

Realizing that his only hope of escaping the life-threatening drudgery was to become a second mate, he threw himself into learning how to navigate. He had signed a seven-year contract as an apprentice seaman, but was released from his contract in 1764, when the post-war depression hit the shipping business. A careful, diligent sailor, Jones was hired as a third mate on a slaver but quit after three years. Since he often sailed to Fredericksburg, Virginia, he was able to meet his older brother who had emigrated there and introduced him to the local society.

While traveling as a passenger back to Scotland from Jamaica during the summer of 1768 both the captain and the first mate died of fever, but Jones navigated the ship safely to port. The owners made him captain even though he was only twenty-one, which was quite an achievement. As master of a small merchant ship, Jones had a heavy responsibility, since he had to navigate the ship, sell the cargo and control the crew. He was a strict disciplinarian who would not hesitate to have a man flogged if he was disrespectful. One man was flogged and died from a fever after he had left the ship. The dead man's family was wealthy and it took some effort for Jones to prove his innocence.

Aware that he lacked social connections, he joined a Masonic lodge, which was a popular method for the growing middle class to climb the social ladder. Upward mobility was vital since even a successful merchant captain was not considered a gentleman.

By 1773, Jones was a merchant captain with a share of the profits, which enabled him to accumulate enough money to think about retiring as a gentleman farmer in Virginia. However, he killed one of his sailors during a dispute over pay. Although he claimed it was an accident he feared that his life would be in danger from the dead man's friends in Tobago, since he was a local. Fleeing to North America, he added a new last name, becoming John Paul Jones, instead of John Paul. He had hoped to join his older brother in Virginia but his brother had passed away and Jones had left most of his money in England.

American Revolution
Revolutionary fervor had swept through the American colonies but society in Virginia had an entrenched caste system, so Jones' Mason membership was invaluable. A year later, his savings had run out but he was saved by war when Minutemen prevented British soldiers from seizing a store of ammunition at Lexington, thus starting the American Revolution. Having grown up watching the harsh British repression of the Scottish Highlanders following the defeat of the Jacobite rebellion at Culloden in 1745, he sympathized with the rebels and enlisted.

The rebel army formed up quickly but the navy was a bit slower and no one hoped to do anything more than annoy the British, since the British navy was the most powerful navy in the world. The rebels planned to build frigates but in the meantime, they armed merchantmen and sloops. Through Masonic connections, Jones was offered command of a sloop but chose to serve as the second-in-command of a larger ship, the Alfred, a converted merchantmen, so he became First Lieutenant Jones, Esquire, and thus a gentleman, on December 7, 1775. The Alfred was part of the rebels' early navy of five small ships, and Jones trained his crew hard during the winter.

When the ships finally did set sail, Commodore Esek Hopkins, the commander of the fleet, ignored his orders to attack the ships commanded by Lord Dunmore, the loyalist governor of Virginia, that had been raiding the coast of Virginia and North Carolina. Hopkins did not worry about repercussions because his brother was the chairman of the Naval Committee. Unwilling to face the Royal Navy, he decided to sail to the Bahamas to find gunpowder for the army. Lacking a garrison, the local fort was quickly captured, but the sailors decided to rest for the night, giving the British governor time to hide the powder. However, the rebels managed to seize a large quantity of urgently needed cannon and cannon balls. On the way back to America the flotilla ran into a twenty-four-gun British cruiser on the early morning of April 6. Commodore Hopkins, like almost everyone in his fleet, was inexperienced and forgot to signal that the ships should attack one after the other in line. Instead, the individual captains attacked as they felt and the ships quickly ended up getting in each others' way. The British warship eventually fled, but only after badly damaging two of the five rebel ships, so it was hardly an overwhelming victory.

Since neither Jones nor his captain was willing to take the blame for the poor performance of their ship during the battle, Jones solved the uncomfortable situation by accepting command of the sloop Providence on May 10. After escorting ships past the British blockade for the summer of 1776, he was ordered to hunt British merchantmen around Bermuda, which gave him the opportunity to restore his finances since he would receive a portion of the profits from any ship that he captured. Early into his cruise he was almost caught by a British frigate after a lengthy chase but he smoothly outsailed her. After catching one richly laden merchantman, he feared the approaching hurricane season, and headed up to Nova Scotia to raid the British fishing fleet. When he returned to the American colonies in early October, he had captured a total of sixteen ships, although only six reached port.

After a brief rest, Jones was sent to rescue American prisoners toiling in a coal pit in Cape Breton, and he was given two additional ships, the Alfred and the brigantine Hampden, thus making him a commodore. However, it proved difficult to recruit sailors because men would rather sail on a privateer than a naval ship since there was less discipline and the sole purpose of a privateer was to make money. The Continental Congress sponsored a total of two thousand privateers during the war because it needed the money raised from the sale of captured ships more than it needed a navy. Along the way to Nova Scotia he caught a British transport carrying thousands of winter uniforms that were intended for General John Burgoyne's planned Saratoga campaign but ended up being worn by General George Washington's men when they fought at Princeton and Trenton in late December.

Unfortunately, the horrible weather around Nova Scotia caused the crew of the Providence to force their captain to disobey his orders and return to America. The sailors had a point, since sailing in winter is extremely dangerous. On November 24, he captured a ship carrying coal to the British in New York and learned that the prisoners he was supposed to rescue had already joined the Royal Navy in order to escape their misery.

While his cruise was not a total success, Jones had proven to be a steady, effective captain but he was told to stay with his sloop, even though less-experienced captains with much better connections were receiving command of frigates. Worse, he learned in January 1777 that he had been placed number eighteen on the seniority list of captains in the American Navy. The low seniority may seem blatantly unfair, but the captains above him had been assigned to command ships that were built in their hometowns, since they could oversee the construction and were better able to recruit crews. Jones was not one to accept such an injustice and the Maritime Committee was flooded with a torrent of reports and recommendations. Among his repeated complaints and increasingly unsubtle lobbying for promotion were insightful strategic suggestions, essentially the proposal of hit-and-run warfare, realizing that the rebels could not face the British navy on equal terms. Unlike the majority of his fellow captains, who preferred to hunt defenseless merchantmen, Jones accepted the dangers of war but wanted to improve the odds.

Ranger
Unfortunately, his abrasive personality and the inefficient naval bureaucracy ensured that Jones did not receive a command until June, when he was given a new twenty-gun sloop, the Ranger, and sent to France to take command of a Dutch-made frigate. It was a long wait for someone with a powerful tendency to brood but he still resisted the temptation to seek command of a privateer and make his fortune.

Before leaving for France, he had used half of the money from his prizes to buy a small estate in Virginia in order to achieve his goal of becoming a gentleman, and he had even designed a coat of arms for himself.

When Jones arrived in France he discovered that the Dutch had given in to British pressure and had decided to not sell the ship to the Americans. Although discouraged, he traveled to Paris to explain his strategy to the American commissioners, Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee and Silas Deane, and to lobby for additional ships. The timing was excellent since he arrived just after news of Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga reached Paris, causing the French to seriously consider an alliance with the rebels. Jones forged a strong friendship with both Benjamin Franklin and Edward Bancroft, Franklin's diplomatic secretary, but never realized that Bancroft was a British agent. The commissioners gave him orders to follow his own judgment and harass the enemy. He also found a patron, Jacques-Donatien Leray de Chaumont, a merchant prince who arranged most of the rebels' supplies out of a desire to humble the British and gain access to the American market. Jones was eager to hit the British in their home ground, both to gain revenge and because he thought it would undefended.

In April 1778, Whitehaven, a port on the west coast of England, was selected as a target because he had operated out of it as a young man and was familiar with the area. It also symbolized his previous life when he had been a nobody. The grand plan to sail in and capture the Earl of Selkirk who would be ransomed in exchange for American prisoners was postponed after he had to repress a mutiny by his worn-out crew who wanted to go home. Lacking people skills, Jones had unwisely made no efforts to win friends among his officers, so it is a tribute to his judgment that he recognized that the New Englanders who made up his crew were accustomed to a more democratic style of leadership and did not punish the ringleaders.

England had not known an enemy attack in more than a generation, so a landing on the British coast would be an impressive feat, but the attempt to raid Whitehaven at night was not as successful as hoped. The landing party was divided into two groups but while one group was spiking the guns of the local fort, the other group had found a tavern and was busy drinking instead of burning ships. When he had finally got them organized enough to start torching ships, one of crewmen deserted and started waking up the townspeople, so Jones and his men had to beat a hasty retreat after having burned only one ship instead of two hundred as originally planned. Worse, the attempt to kidnap the Earl of Selkirk the next day was a failure because the earl had gone to England to take the baths, although his officers forced him to take the earl's family silver.

Refusing to give up (or sleep for that matter) until he had one unqualified success, he ignored the increasingly audible mutinous mutterings and made one last try to destroy a British sloop sitting at anchor nearby. The third time was apparently the charm because he simply sailed into the harbor, lured her out to open seas and forced her to surrender after an hour-long battle. This was a stunning victory since the two ships had been evenly matched. The Royal Navy had a long history of invincibility while almost of none of Jones' crew had ever been in a battle before. On the way back to France, he captured several more prizes but it was the British warship that he towed behind him that was the real prize.

For the first time in a century, an enemy had successfully broken through the wooden wall of the Royal Navy to raid England. Strangely enough, the British paid more attention to Jones than the French, and he did not recieve the hero's welcome that he had expected. However, when Franklin arranged for him to receive command of the Dutch frigate that he had been initially promised, Jones was happy to say good bye to the Ranger and its argumentative crew. Once again Jones was disappointed because the Dutch still refused to give the ship to the Americans and French promises of a ship also came to nothing.

Bonhomme Richard
Tired of waiting for ships that never appeared, Jones persuaded the French Navy to purchase an old French East Indiaman for him. Renamed the Bonhomme Richard in honor of Benjamin Franklin, it seems likely that the ship was purchased primarily to get rid of a brave yet increasingly annoying captain. Given the track record of the Continental Navy one would think that Jones would have been treated better. He had beaten a British warship of equal power in a fair fight while nine American frigates had been sunk or captured by the British that same year. Jones must have really gotten on people's nerves if no one in the American navy was willing to give him a ship.

While it may not have been a frigate, Jones still threw himself into outfitting the ship, arranging for it to have forty guns, as well as swivel guns and blunderbusses (really large shotguns) for close-action work. He was then assigned four more ships: the Alliance, a thirty-six-gun American frigate; the Pallas, a thirty-two-gun former French merchantman; the Vengeance, a twelve-gun brigantine; and the Cerf, an eighteen-gun cutter. Aside from the Alliance, all of the ships were paid for and outfitted by the French navy. Unfortunately, while the ships had been assigned to his command, their captains would prove to be either disloyal or grossly incompetent. Pierre Landais, the French captain of the Alliance, was so afraid of mutiny that when bad seamanship brought the Bonhomme Richard too close to the Alliance, he thought that Jones' crew had mutinied and were attacking so he went to his cabin to get his pistols instead of simply giving the necessary orders to avoid a collision.

The crew was made up of men from many different countries, except for America, since they were recruited in Europe, and many came from French jails. However, he soon got rid of the worst of the lot and replaced them with roughly a hundred American prisoners freed from British prisons. Since Jones was the one who had tirelessly pressed for a prisoner exchange and the men had been harshly treated, they were both loyal and thirsting for revenge on the British. His officers were mainly American while his French marines were Irish volunteers who also were eagerly looking forward to shooting British. After six months of hard work, the squadron finally set sail on August 14, 1779.

Jones had been given a small fleet so that his raids would distract British warships from the Channel and thus weaken the Royal Navy fleet protecting England when France and Spain planned to send a huge combined fleet to transport a powerful invasion force. The British fleet was badly outnumbered, but the invasion was called off because an epidemic of typhus and smallpox had killed thousands in the combined fleet, forcing the French and Spanish ships to return to port in September.

The cruise did not get off to a good start. When the squadron was sailing through thick fog off the Irish coast, the Cerf was sent after a small party of deserters but failed to return. Whether its crew decided to desert or it sank is unknown. Shortly after, Jones and Landais had a disagreement that almost led to a duel, which greatly cooled relations between the two men. In fact, from that point on Landais no longer considered himself to be under Jones' authority. Jones had little choice but to accept the situation because he had agreed to a concordat, which emphasized "common consent" before leaving France.

After interrogating captured fisherman, Jones concluded that the city of Leith in Scotland was the best target but was unable to convince his captains until he mentioned that he planned to extract a sizeable ransom. The little fleet easily entered the port because the British patrol ship mistook the Bonhomme Richard for a British warship, but a fierce gale sprung up and prevented him from landing marines. Now that word the feared pirate John Paul Jones had arrived had spread along the coast, any more raids would lack surprise and thus risk disaster. After six weeks of sailing all he had to show were a few prizes. While his captains were happily calculating their shares, Jones wanted glory, not money. Unknown to Jones, he had succeeded in his primary purpose, which was to distract the British from the invasion fleet. All of Britain was in an uproar and the press was thundering that the navy had to capture the dangerous pirate John Paul Jones.

Serapis
The forty-four-gun Serapis and a sloop were escorting a convoy of forty-four merchantmen carrying naval stores for the Royal Navy from the Baltics to England when they encountered Jones' squadron on the afternoon of September 23. When Jones first sighted the two British warships and their convoy, he felt that the odds were in his favor. Unfortunately, the other captains in his squadron did not share his confidence and refused to follow him into battle, claiming that they had not seen the signal in the dusk. This did not come as a complete surprise since the captains had not been following his orders since the cruise had begun. Despite the drastic change in the odds, Jones held to his course.

Richard Pearson, the captain of the Serapis, was an experienced veteran. Although outnumbered he had nailed the flag to the mast to ensure that no one surrendered his ship. While the Serapis and the Bonhomme Richard appeared evenly matched, half of Pearson's cannon were 18-pounders, designed to rip through the walls of an enemy ship at close range, while two thirds of Jones guns were much weaker 12-pounders. Jones was pretending to be a British East Indies merchantman and the two ships came close enough for the two captains to hail each other, but Pearson was not easily fooled, so Jones had to put up his Continental Ensign sooner than he would have wanted.

Both ships immediately fired their broadsides, and the damage was extreme since the two ships were only twenty-five yards from each other. When one of his six old 18-pounders blew up, Jones was forced to order the remaining five 18-pounders to be abandoned and instead relied on his ten 12-pounders, which naturally put him at a disadvantage. Pearson not only had all of his cannon, but he also outmaneuvered Jones, managing to place his ship behind the American ship so that he was able to rake its stern while Jones was unable to return fire. Three broadsides savaged the Bonhomme Richard, killing a large portion of the crew and wrecking several guns. Fortunately for Jones, just as Pearson tried to finish of the enemy by moving in front of its bow and repeating the procedure, the wind died down and the Serapis was stuck off the Bonhomme Richard's bow, but in a position where it could not hit the American ship. Jones hoped to get close enough to board the British ship but was unable to get a secure connection. Jones then changed tack by trying to maneuver his ship so it was at a right angle to the bow of the Serapis but the two ships ended up tangled in each others' rigging. Realizing that his badly damaged Indiaman could not outmaneuver the warship, Jones ordered his crew to tie the two ships together. Pearson feared that the Bonhomme Richard could blow up any minute but was unable to break free.

By this time the two ships had been fighting for over an hour, and they had attracted an audience from cliffs a few miles away. Sharpshooters from the American ship proved to be so deadly that the British were forced to abandon the quarterdeck and retreat below decks. However, the British returned the favor by systematically destroying the majority of Jones' cannon. Actually, the two crews shared a mutual enemy, fire, since both ships were on fire and there was a brief unspoken ceasefire as each crew struggled to put out the fires.

While the captain of the Pallas may not have been brave enough to help take on the Serapis, he was willing to fight the much weaker British sloop and quickly captured it. The Alliance suddenly appeared at 9:15 pm and fired a broadside that hit both ships. There was such confusion and smoke that the gunner's mate mistakenly thought that he was the senior surviving officer and decided to surrender. He found out that the captain was still alive when Jones came cursing and swinging his sword. Pearson had heard "quarters" and shouted across the water to confirm, only to receive an extremely emphatic negative, although it is unlikely that Jones said the immortal phrase "I have not yet begun to fight!" The Alliance reappeared at 10:00 pm and fired another broadside that seemed to have no specific target.

The situation had reached stalemate but one of Jones' sailors was able to make his way through the rigging and drop several grenades on to the British ship. One of them fell into the gun deck and landed on cartridges carelessly left in the open. The explosions spread from gun to gun and the mainmast began to fall as the ship once again caught fire. They had been fighting for four hours and since half of his men were dead, Pearson surrendered. At that point, Jones led his men to try to save the Serapis, since his own ship was clearly sinking.

When it became clear that the two ships were no longer fighting, the other three ships of the squadron appeared, although the greetings must have been strained. By the evening of the 24th, Jones had the wounded shifted to the British ship, and the Bonhomme Richard sank that night.

There was no time for celebration since Jones knew that the British navy would send other ships out hunting for him. Despite the British efforts, Jones led his squadron to Amsterdam, which was a neutral port, on October 3. The British press called him a pirate who enjoyed killing but in reality Jones had succeeded in spreading terror in Britain.

Once in Amsterdam, Jones worked on his report, where he blamed Landais for deliberately firing on him, even though Landais was most likely incompetent. In Amsterdam he was treated like a celebrity. His victory stood out because the French-Spanish fleet had accomplished nothing and returned to port, while an American naval expedition against the British in American waters had been a miserable failure. When Landais and Jones encountered each other in an Amsterdam tavern, Landais reminded Jones that they had planned to have a duel as soon as they reached dry land, but Jones was aware of Landais' skill with the sword, and responded that the matter would be settled in a court martial court.

Jones' victory was also tarnished by the news that his men were suffering on the Serapis while he was strutting about Amsterdam. Worse, he was told that the Serapis would be placed under a French flag and he had to take command of the Alliance, since it was the only ship sailing under the American flag, thus demoting him back to captain. He also discovered that he had overstayed his welcome when a powerful squadron of Dutch warships arrived in port in mid-December to let him know that it was time to move on. Jones was happy to oblige except that he knew there was a British squadron waiting for him to leave the port.

Fortunately, a gale on Christmas Eve forced the British ships to abandon their patrol, giving Jones the opportunity to slip out in the Alliance. He wanted to cruise around and take more prizes but the crew was exhausted and had not been paid in months, which meant no money for women and drink. Even the officers had no stomach for another cruise and warned Jones that he risked mutiny, so he returned to France. Franklin arranged for Jones to transport weapons and uniforms to America, and Jones tried to settle his men's pay before sailing, but they would not actually receive their money until 1848, by which time they were all dead. He went to Paris to obtain the prize money and spent six weeks as the toast of the town, while finding time to design yet another coat of arms, as well as pursue and be pursued by numerous Parisian women. Jones would probably have stayed longer but Franklin ordered him to return to his ship and prepare to sail to America.

While Jones was in Paris, Landais had won over much of the crew as well as the primary passenger, Arthur Lee, by allowing him to transport his huge amount of personal baggage, which meant there would be no space for a good portion of the weapons and uniforms. Although Landais had booked passage home on the Alliance, he then declared himself captain of the ship, based on his congressional appointment, disregarding Franklin's orders. Landais was supported and encouraged by Lee, who detested both Franklin and Jones. Happy to see the last of Landais and the quarrelsome crew of the Alliance, Jones backed down and allowed the ship to leave. This was a serious issue since the Continental army was in rough shape and desperately needed those weapons and uniforms. Refusing to listen to Jones' excuses, Franklin told him that if he had paid attention to his ship he would not have lost it.

However, he also arranged for Jones to command the French frigate Ariel and transport the rest of the supplies. Despite Franklin's blunt advice, Jones spent July and August in port. Admittedly, the ship had to be refitted to be able to hold all of the cargo but much of the delay was due to Jones' politicking to win command of a ship of the line currently being built in New Hampshire and affairs with a married countess and the young wife of his agent. To be fair, he was young and life at sea could be extremely lonely, especially for a captain. By the time he was ready to leave on September 4 the good weather had been replaced by horrible storms that kept him in port for another month. When he finally sailed, he promptly ran into a fierce gale that almost foundered the ship and ripped off all the masts. The gale sent numerous less-fortunate ships to the bottom of the sea, but the ship survived to limp back to port, so Jones was once again a hero. It took some time to refit the ship but the Ariel finally sailed on December 18.

Despite trying to avoid trouble, he ran into a British privateer manned by American Tories. Although outgunned by the enemy ship, Jones still managed to outfight the privateer, but was unable to capture it. A small mutiny was quashed and then Jones was back in America on February 18, 1871, for the first time in three years.

Although the 437 barrels of powder and 146 chests of weapons were badly needed, much more had been promised and it had been expected months ago, so Jones' welcome was not as warm as he had hoped. However, Landais had lost his sanity, challenged Arthur Lee to a duel and had to be forcibly carried off his ship, which meant that Jones could blame all of the delays on Landais when he was questioned by Congress. However, several of Jones' fellow captains were jealous of his victories and ensured that he was not promoted to admiral, although he did receive command of America's first ship of the line, the America, which was still being built. Actually, it was one of the few ships left in the Continental Navy, since only two of a dozen frigates had managed to avoid being sunk or captured.

In the end, his frustration was for nothing. When a French ship of the line ripped its hull open on a ledge in Boston harbor, Congress voted to give the still not-completed America to the French in gratitude, thus avoiding the embarrassment of admitting that it lacked the money to complete the ship. In private Jones may have been frustrated but in public he spoke of his willingness to sacrifice for the common good. He still went to Philadelphia to lobby for another ship, which he failed to achieve, although he finally got his back pay.

Learning that a French fleet was sailing from Boston to capture Jamaica, Jones obtained permission from Congress to serve as a volunteer with the fleet, hoping to gain firsthand experience of handling a fleet. The situation looked favorable, since he was given a good cabin on admiral's flagship, and the French officers weere happy to share their knowledge of fleet manuvers. Unfortunately, the practical experience consisted of watching them misjudge tides and meander around for weeks try to reach a rendezvous point with the Spanish fleet only to find that the Spanish never showed up. While the French admiral was debating what to do, news of peace arrived.

Peace
While it was impossible to complain about peace, Jones was only thirty-seven-years-old and had achieved too little glory for him to settle down. He immediately began to lobby for a leading role in the building of a proper navy of warships, not converted merchantmen. However, Congress had to figure out how to pay for the war and was selling off the few surviving frigates. It is unfortunate that Jones' vision of a professional navy that could protect America's commerce was communicated in such an obviously self-serving manner. Subtlety was simply not his strong point.

Congress did agree to send him to France to settle the prize money from his previous cruises. Although he had intended to stay in France for a short time, it took three years to settle the accounts, partially because the war had pushed the French government dangerously close to bankruptcy. Jones found time for amorous pursuits and possibly fathered a son with one lover but his ambition prevented him from settling down.

Russia
Returning to New York in the summer of 1787, Jones was awarded a gold medal by Congress but no command so he sailed back to Paris in November. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin's replacement as American ambassador to France, communicated an offer from Catherine, the Tsarina of Russia, to lead her fleet in the Black Sea against the Turks. Jefferson was no fan of tyrants but he realized that America's navy would need an experienced commander and serving Catherine would enable Jones to acquire invaluable hands-on experience. Jones knew little about Russia, but Catherine's representatives flattered Jones and promised him full authority. Most important, he had come to accept that America would not build a proper navy any time soon, and he was now forty-years-old, so the glory clock was ticking, and the Russian navy was the only navy that had offered a command.

The difficulty that Jones had experienced while navigating the intrigues of the French court was magnified in St. Petersburg. Catherine proved to be an extremely intelligent woman who pretended have liberal beliefs but was driven by a need to maintain power. She lusted to conquer Constantinople as part of her plan to forge an empire that reached to Greece. The Turks had already been forced to give up control of the Crimea, which became part of Russia, during the First Russo-Turkish War. However, the Turks still held the Bay of Odessa and had built a daunting fortress at Ochakov, at the mouth of Liman River, which prevented the Russians from entering the Black Sea. When the Second Russo-Turkish War started in 1787, Catherine realized that beating the Turks required a proper navy but she had to depend on imported foreign mercenaries.

Jones found himself seduced by Catherine's talk of embracing the principles of the American Revolution even though she would rather kill herself than see liberty take hold in her empire. Although the empress had a deserved repuation for a hyper-active sex life and a habit of promoting lovers, Jones was not one of them, since she was sixty-years-old, and he wanted glory. Furthermore, Prince Grigory Potemkin, a former lover of Catherine and her supreme commander in the war against the Ottoman Empire, ensured that he controlled her pool of lovers, who were taken from her guardsmen, in order to prevent the rise of new rivals.

Jones became a kontradmiral, a rear admiral, although Catherine's British officers were far from welcoming to their new commander. When he arrived at the Black Sea, Jones was distressed to find that there were three other rear admirals, each of whom wanted to command. The key problem was Potemkin. More concerned with satisfying his many appetites than waging war, he was a master conspirator, but an inept commander. Jones was used to mutinous crews but when he saw some of the cutthroats supposedly under his command, he wisely decided to tread carefully.

The Turkish fleet had to be defeated so that the Russian army could besiege the powerful fortress Ochakov on the north side of the Black Sea. Both his ships and cannon were so badly built that they were probably more dangerous to their crews than the enemy, especially since they were crewed by serfs with little or no training. An experienced sailor, Jones possessed the necessary vision to realize that shallow waters meant that the galleys, not the frigates, were the key to victory. Unfortunately, Charles, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, a flashy adventurer with no military skill, commanded the galleys, not Jones.

Capitan Pasha, Ghazi Hassan-Pasha, a fearsome admiral who was not afraid to fire on his own ships if they decided to retreat before he did, commanded the Turkish fleet. Since the Russians were outnumbered several times, a direct confrontation would be suicide. Jones' attempt to persuade the other captains to follow a plan failed when they became bored with the meeting. All that the captains would accept was that Jones' heavy ships and Nassau-Siegen's galleys would form a line across the Liman, just past the mouth of the Bug River. The entrance to the river needed to be defended in order to protect Potemkin's army as it crossed the river. Communication with the fleet was almost impossible since Jones did not speak Russian and the fleet did not have a signaling system, so he and his translator had to be rowed from ship to ship in order to shout commands to the captains. While Jones' ships battled an unfavorable wind, the Turkish galleys attacked and Nassau-Siegen retreated. Fortunately, the wind changed before all of the Russian galleys were destroyed or fled, so Jones was able to lead his ships to catch the Turks in a crossfire, forcing the Turks to withdraw.

Trying to win powerful friends, Jones gave much of the credit for the victory to Nassau-Siegen, saying that the prince had followed his advice, but the prince claimed all of the credit. A capable captain, Jones was unskilled at intrigue, so his reports to Potemkin became increasingly angry and bitter. This only worsened the situation since Potemkin did not believe him and Nassau-Siegen was infuriated by what he saw as attacks on his character.

Jones knew that he needed another victory, and the Turks could be counted on to oblige. Unaware that the water level of the estuary was lower than usual due to a lengthy drought, Pasha led his entire fleet into the Liman on June 16. When his flagship ran aground, the rest of the Turkish fleet refused to advance. Jones tried to repeat his previous victory by attacking the Turks from both sides, and the Turkish fleet retreated in disarray, but victory was snatched from his grasp when the captain of Jones' flagship refused to move forward out of fear of sandbars. A furious Jones had to watch while Nassau-Siegen's galleys swept in and destroyed the Turkish flagship. When nine Turkish ships became trapped on a sandbar, Nassau-Siegen left Jones' ships unguarded and launched incendiaries against the Turkish ships, which quickly caught fire, killing 2,000 men, including many Christian slaves chained to the oars. Even though the Russian navy needed the ships, Jones' recommendation that the ships be captured was ignored. Potemkin gave Nassau-Siegen and his officers lavish awards, but gave nothing to Jones and his men.

The situation worsened when Potemkin arrived with his army and his harem. Jones soon tired of Potemkin's rash orders that endangered his men against targets of little or no military value. When he complained of his treatment, Jones lost favor with Potemkin, and was given command of the Northern Fleet in the Baltic, which was a meaningless command, since it was winter, so all of the ships were in port. A private audience with the empress produced little, especially after Nassau-Siegen had his own audience two days later. Remaining in St. Petersburg, he asked a friend to deliver a letter to Jefferson, and discovered that all of his mail had been intercepted by Potemkin, who had wanted to ensure that the outside world only heard his version of the war against the Turks.

Unable to speak Russian, Jones was isolated, espcecially since the Englishmen in St. Petersburg were former Royal Navy officers, who had little interest in talking to a rebel. His only friend was the French ambassador, Comte de Segur. Jones' position became dangerous when he was accused of raping a ten-year-old girl. If proven guilty, the sentence would be either beheading or a lifetime as a galley slave. No lawyer would defend him, but Segur began looking into the matter and found that the girl was actually twelve, she had been selling her body for some time, and her mother confessed that she had been paid to set Jones up. Jones also admitted that he had paid her to pleasure him, not realizing that his tastes had left him open to blackmail by his enemies. Although he was never brought to trial, he was ostracized by society and lost the favor of the Empress. The war with the Turks was over, so she did not need him. Removed from active duty, Jones was still paid for two years to prevent him from joining the Swedish navy.

Final Years
A disgraced Jones finally left Russia in 1789, and spent a year roaming Europe, writing letters to the Empress pleading for a command, while lobbying the young American government for a position. However, Europe was changing. France was in the middle of its own revolution, and Jones was no longer a famous captain sought out for dinner parties. It also became clear to him that he had made few friends over the years and had experienced little love, despite his repeated success with women. Although aware that his prickly character had been his own worst enemy, he never really learned how to get along with people, so he spent his later years brooding.

At the same time, a life spent at sea in harsh conditions had taken its toll on his body, and he suffered repeated attacks of pneumonia. Jones died in Paris on July 18, 1792, two weeks after his forty-fifth birthday. Gouverneur Morris, American ambassador to Paris, had visited him early that day to make his will, and found him dead when he returned that evening. Although Morris refused to waste public funds on any form of burial for a man he had viewed as an irritant, the French government was more generous and organized a small funeral ceremony for him on July 20. Morris did not attend due to a previous dinner engagement. Several days after his death, a letter arrived from Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson appointing Jones to lead a delegation to negotiate with the Dey of Algiers for the release of American prisoners. Jones would have disappeared into obscurity but President Theodore Roosevelt needed a naval hero to give the rising American navy a suitably glorious history.

Jones was selected not just because of his undoubtedly astonishing victory, but because the record of the rest of the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War was so dismal. The navy had a total of fifty-seven ships, but thirty-four were either sunk or captured by the Royal Navy, four were lost at sea, fifteen were sold and the remaining four simply disappeared. When the American government finally decided to honor him in 1905, it took the American ambassador months to locate Jones' grave because it had been paved over. His body was brought back to the United States by a squadron of four cruisers, received by Roosevelt, and buried in the crypt of the chapel of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Given Jones' obsessive desire for fame, this would have made him ecstatic.

Related Movies:
John Paul Jones (1959)
Directed by John Farrow, starring Robert Stack and Bette Davis
Although Jones had won the young republic's first naval victory during the American Revolution, he is not popular with the new government and leaves the United States to serve in the navy of Catherine, Empress of Russia. (please click here to read the review)

Further Reading:
John Paul Jones: Soldier, Hero, Father of the American Navy-Evan Thomas, Waterville, Maine: Thorndike Press, 2003.

Evans has written a solid, in-depth examination of the first hero of the United States Navy, showing how Jones' bravery and superb seamanship were limited by his numerous flaws, in particular his boundless ambition and prideful nature. The author helps modern landlubbers understand not just what it is like to sail a ship but what conditions were like on ships before refrigeration and plumbing, how generous rations of alcohol enabled sailors to cope with the harsh conditions, and the complexities of fighting at sea where the victory depended on reacting to the wind. The book also contains a brief glossary of naval terms.

John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography-Samuel Eliot Morison, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1959.

It is a very good book that explains the context of Jones' exploits and compares ships to modern equivalents, usually from WWII, unsurprisingly since the author was the official historian of the US Navy during WWII. Morison justly relates Jones' numerous love affairs, since they were as much a part of him as his love of sailing and boundless ambition.


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