Today's A&E Classroom may be taped solely for instructional use and may be retained
until September 30th 1999. Thereafter, you must erase or destroy the recording. No other
use is authorized by A&E. In the spring of 1775, a young man traveling incognito as John
Jones appeared in Philadelphia and petitioned for a command in the Continental Navy. He
claimed he wanted to fight for liberty as citizen of the world. During the next few
years, he would take on nearly single-handedly the most awesome war machine on earth at that
time, the Royal British Navy, and he would win. The mere rumor that his ship might be in the
vicinity would provoke panic in seaports throughout the British Isles. He was the flesh-and-blood
model for an Errol Flynn character. At sea, he rivaled Blackbeard in notoriety. Assured,
he was the darling of Paris society. He showed us how, with sheer guts and refusing to consider
the possibility of defeat, we can emerge victorious from the most desperate of circumstances.
He is an inspiration to every sailor. Captain John Paul Jones. He was born John Paul in
Kirkbean, Scotland, a parish of the Lordship of Galloway, on July 6, 1747. He was the fourth
child to John Paul Senior, a gardener in the service of William Crake, a landowner. His
mother was Jean McDuff. The cottage where the Paul family lived is only a brisk walk
from the Firth of Solway. England can be seen on the opposite shore. A freckled, sandy-haired
little boy, below average height with hazel eyes, John Paul grew up speaking the strong
Scot dialect like everyone else in Galloway. He probably never traveled 20 miles from his
birthplace until he went to sea. Daily, young John would go fishing in the Solway. Sloops,
schooners, and brigs passed by abound for Belfast, or Liverpool, or the New World. By the time
John Paul was 13, he knew what he wanted in life. He was already an admiral in his imagination.
Where Jones's home was, was right on the Solway Firth, and not only the town of Dumfries,
but Whitehaven on the other side of the Solway Firth, was not one of the large maritime ports,
but certainly it was a busy one. And as a result, surely the young man was able to see
the sea, see what was going on, and the lure of the sea, no doubt, was in his mind very
early on in his life. John Paul's family lacked the social connections which could have secured
him a commission as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. The merchant marine was the next best
thing. Early in 1761, at the age of 13, John Paul received his parents' blessing and a
handshake from Mr. Craig, and boarded a packet for Whitehaven. Here, he signed articles of
apprenticeship, binding him for seven years to a merchant ship owner, during which time
he would learn the mariner's trade. When John Paul Jones went to sea, he signed an apprenticeship.
He agreed to serve under this captain for seven years. In return, the captain was going
to teach him the arts of seamanship, how to navigate, how to operate a ship in those days.
It was quite a complicated business, and bringing a sailing ship in and out of a harbor, for
instance, was very, very tricky. So there was a lot to learn, and Jones was an apt,
very eager pupil. From Whitehaven, John Paul embarked as ship's boy in the brig friendship
bound for Barbados in Virginia. For the next three years, he learned to sail and navigate
and bargain for goods in port. The friendship plied the triangle trade, carrying English
goods to the West Indies, exchanging for rum and sugar, then to the colonies, where that
cargo would be traded for tobacco and lumber and pig iron for England. After three years,
John Paul's merchant master went broke, and released the young man from service. For the
next three years, John Paul served aboard slave traders operating between Kingston and
the windward coast of Africa. Not only did this business offend his sense of humanity,
but the trips across the Atlantic were revolting, in that the wretched slaves, literally jammed
into the hold without sanitation, raised a stench that could be detected 20 miles downwind.
Not only was it morally offensive, and Jones was very, he was a very intelligent man, and
he was aware that these people were human beings, and they were being reduced to the
lowest level, chained to the bottom of the, in the hold of the ship. But also, it was
very dangerous. They lost in the slave trade as many as one out of every three seamen from
the incredible diseases from the lack of sanitation on these ships. At last, John Paul quit in
disgust with what he termed the abominable trade. Now 21 years old, with seven hard years
of sea experience behind him, John Paul fell into a bit of luck. He was sailing back to
Scotland when both the captain and mate of the brig John became ill with fever and died.
Since no one in the small crew knew how to navigate, John Paul took command and brought
the little vessel safely home. The owners were so pleased with his performance, they appointed
John Paul master for the next voyage to America. He was now the master of his own ship.
When Jones became a captain, then his real personality became more visible. The inner
toughness of the man, a very young man, was demonstrated repeatedly. On one of his voyages,
he took a young man named Mungo Maxwell, I love his name incidentally, as a seamen, and
he was the son of a fairly well-to-do man in the neighborhood, and Jones knew the family
and so forth. Well, this guy thought he was out for a sea voyage, sort of a vacation,
and didn't really do much work, or want to do much work. So Jones quickly informed him
that he was going to work his way across, and when he didn't cooperate, he tied him
to the main mast and gave him a bit of the old lash.
When the ship arrived at Tobago, Maxwell charged John Paul with cruelty before the Vice Admiralty
Court, exhibiting his scarred back as evidence. Captain Paul responded that Maxwell had been
incompetent and disobedient. The court ruled that Mungo's injuries were neither mortal
nor dangerous, and the case was dismissed. But on Maxwell's return voyage to Scotland
on another ship, he became ill with fever and died. When John Paul docked in Scotland,
he was met by the local sheriff and charged with murder.
And the father accused Jones of murdering his son. He claimed that the son was so sick
from the beating he took that he died on his return voyage and never recovered. And it
was absolutely a bum rap, and Jones got all kinds of witnesses, and from the West Indies
and on the ship, which said he even got a doctor's report. The marks of the lash had
long since healed, and he seemed in perfect health when he left the West Indies. So it
was just bad luck and fate.
With affidavits from Tobago, John Paul was able to clear his record in the Maxwell affair,
and he was released from bail. But the story that he had flogged a sailor to death was
to follow him the rest of his life.
John Paul Jones was impatient. He was a man also with a temper. He had no patience whatsoever
for people who he believed were incompetent, lazy, and as a result, I think he came across
some troubles at times with crews who may have not behaved or operated a vessel to his
standard.
Being on board ship was ever right enough for Captain Jones, and too few officers and
men received the encouraging word, the pat on the back that builds shipboard morale and
make a commanding officer beloved. Samuel Elliott Morrison, Jones' biographer.
By the time he was 26, John Paul had learned nearly everything there was to know about
rigging, loading, and handling a full rigged ship. He could navigate across the ocean by
dead reckoning in noon latitudes of the sun. He was an experienced super cargo, which meant
training agent for the ship owners. He was already half merchant ship owner and in a
position to pyramid his profits every voyage.
John Paul had toiled on the sea for 13 years and was looking toward the day when he could
take his earnings and settle down on a farm in Virginia, the fascinating land he had seen
between voyages. But his next voyage would dramatically change his luck. Destiny had
a much bigger role in store for John Paul. It would begin with a shipboard brawl that
became a mutiny.
John Paul, in command of the merchant ship Betsy, arrived in Tobago in the fall of 1773.
The voyage had been long and difficult. The young captain sold off his cargo and was in
the process of buying another one for the return home when members of the crew revolted,
demanding to be paid advance wages to spend in port. Paul refused. He wanted to use the
cash to buy more goods to be sold back home.
This was probably unwise on Paul's part because many of the crew were natives of the island
who wanted the money to spend with family and friends ashore. One seaman, whom Paul
later described in a letter as the ringleader, had been a troublemaker on the outward passage,
now stirred up the crew to demand payment at once. When Paul refused, the ringleader
and a party of men began to lower a boat to go ashore without leave. Paul tried to stop
them, but the ringleader, a big man who towered over the Bantam captain, chased them into
his cabin.
He wanted to keep as much money in his sea chest as possible to buy the best possible
amount of cargo, and then they'd all make more money at the end. But he was dealing
with a bunch of morons, basically. The average guy that went to sea was not an intellectual,
to put it mildly. And a lot of these fellows also were from the island, Tobago, where he
was tied up. And they wanted to go ashore and have a good time, as every sailor has
done since the time of the memorial. So they got into quite a quarrel with Jones. And one
of them, who was a bruiser, and Jones, we should remember, was a very small man. He
was only about five foot five, slight chiseled features. He was a commanding guy in spite
of his short stature, but he wasn't about to slug it out with this gigantic character.
John Paul grabbed his sword and came back out on deck, just as the ringleader and his
party of mutineers were climbing into the boat. Far from intimidated, the giant crewman
grabbed a bludgeon and rushed Paul. The captain retreated backward to the hatchway and made
a stand. His assailant was in the very act of striking Paul with a lethal blow when the
captain ran him through the body with his sword. The ringleader fell dead upon the deck.
Captain Paul immediately went ashore and turned himself in to the justice of the peace. Although
Jones had a perfect right to kill him, he was the captain and there was an obvious mutiny.
Yet it took place in the harbor and this man had a lot of friends on the island. Had there
been an admiralty court available to try his case, John Paul would certainly have been
found innocent, considering this was a real mutiny. But faced with a civil trial, a jury
sympathetic to the mutineers and the real likelihood he'd be hung for his actions,
just fled. For the next twenty months, John Paul disappeared from sight. His movements
and whereabouts between October 1773 and the summer of 1775 when he surfaced in Virginia
are a complete mystery. Historians and fiction writers have attempted to fill in these missing
pages from his life with speculation, romantic yarns, and sundry adventures. Some claim John
Paul was a pirate captain during this time. Others place him on a stage as an actor in
Jamaica. We do know that at some point, fearing extradition to Tobago, John Paul became John
Jones. With his name changed, John was starting all over again. His fortune was tied up in
Tobago in the form of credits and in a London bank. Neither town would be safe for a man
under indictment for murder. There was no way for John to get to his money. He fled
the West Indies with fifty pounds that would have to last him nearly two years.
Jones, with his new name now, surfaces at his brother's home in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
This was an elder brother who had emigrated to the colonies and became a tailor in Fredericksburg.
However more Republican in spirit the colonies were compared to the old world of Europe,
the colonies were still run by influence. And John Paul Jones needed some influence
in order to achieve what he wanted, that is, a commission in the new Continental Navy.
And here is where he used his ties as a mason. Back in Scotland, he became a mason and one
of the men who sponsored him as a mason ended up to have a brother who was a partner to
a North Carolina congressman. So with this connection, Jones wrote to the congressman
from North Carolina who used his influence to get a commission for him in the new Continental
Navy.
John Paul, now John Paul Jones, arrived in Philadelphia in the fall of 1775. The United
States has not declared its independence, but it's acting more and more independent.
There has been a clash of arms at Lexington and Concord. The United States is getting
ready to invade Canada, attack Fort Ticonderoga, and talking about forming a navy. And Jones
shows up and offers his services. There were very few people from the middle colonies or
the south offering their services. Virtually the entire captain's list of the early navy
when these appointments are being made in the fall and winter of 1775 and six are from
New England, most of them are related to members of the Continental Congress. And I think Jones
got the appointment in part because there were not many rival claimants from the south.
And that provided the opening for Jones. Jones is a man without family contacts in America.
He is a man without deep roots in America. He had merely his own abilities and his own
record to go on.
Through an acquaintance, Jones met and courted Dorothea Dandridge, the daughter of a prominent
Virginia landowner. No matter how stricken the couple was with one another, marriage
was out of the question. Her parents would never accept an out of work ship master, brother
to the local tailor into the family. Dorothea married Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia
and bore him nine children. Women would continue to find Jones fascinating, especially after
he became a famous sea captain. Yet he would never marry. When John Paul Jones accepted
his commission on December 7, 1775 as lieutenant in the Continental Navy, he believed he was
fighting not for independence, but for the principle of liberty, the right of a free
people to determine their destiny without coercion by a misguided king in corrupt ministry.
The Continental Navy, little more than a ragtag collection of merchant ships, could well use
the talents and experience of the young lieutenant from Scotland by way of Virginia.
In fact, it was not easy in those days to put together good men for the Navy because
we had the problem of the privateers. When the Navy captured a ship, quite a bit of the
proceeds from the sale of that ship or the goods it was carrying went to the government.
Whereas if you served aboard a privateer, you kept all the booty when the ship was sold
and the goods were sold and so forth. And it was divided among the crew. Of course,
the officers got a little more than the seamen, but it was certainly much more profitable
to serve aboard a privateer than it was the Continental Navy.
Lieutenant Jones was given a choice of assignments, master of the sloop Providence or first mate
on the Alfred, the flagship of the new Navy. Here he would serve under Commodore Essex
Hopkins, the new commander in chief and Captain Dudley Saltonstall. In perhaps an uncharacteristic
move, Jones opted for the Alfred. Though a superb sailor by this time, he had no experience
in combat as yet and hoped to learn from Hopkins and Saltonstall.
When I applied for a lieutenancy, I hoped in that rank to gain much useful knowledge
from men of more experience than myself. I was, however, mistaken for instead of gaining
information, I was obliged to inform others. John Paul Jones.
On May 10th, 1776, John Paul Jones was given his own command, the sloop Providence, with
orders to proceed on a cruise against our enemies. For the first time since he had fled
Tobago three years before, John Paul Jones had a ship to command. This time he would
be sailing against his former homeland in the name of liberty. He was an American now.
He turned the page on John Paul Merchant Seaman. Unimaginable adventure and fame lay before
him.
In the spring and early summer of 1776, Captain Jones and his crew of the Providence forayed
up and down the American coastline playing havoc with the British fishing and merchant
fleet. He took 16 ships as prizes. Eight of them he ordered burned because he didn't have
enough men to get them into port. Within months, Jones was the most successful captain in the
Continental Navy.
Promoted to command of the Alfred, Jones put to sea and in a six-week voyage captured seven
more prizes, including the most important capture in the war to date, the arms transport
Melish. The Melish carried in its cargo 10,000 winter uniforms destined for the British Army.
Now instead, they would clothe George Washington's ragged Continental Army, a gift from Captain
John Paul Jones.
You can imagine what this did to Jones' reputation. One of the chief motivations for individuals
to serve in the Navy at that time or to go to sea was to make profits. And captains had
great difficulties in rolling crews and enlisting people. Jones had none of these difficulties.
Captains were always complaining that privateers men are getting all the good sailors. We can't
get any. Jones didn't have any problems. I mean, Jones may not have been a popular captain,
but if you signed on with Jones, you knew you were going to see action and that meant
you might make some money.
In October 1776, Congress drew up a list of captains in the Navy by order of seniority
and assigned a ship to each. The first 13 captains were each to command one of the new
frigate warships built that year in shipyards from Baltimore to Portsmouth. Jones, by far
the most successful officer in the Continental Navy, finds himself listed as 18th on the
seniority list. He slipped down a dozen places. He's not happy about this.
Jones traveled to Philadelphia to lobby for a higher place on the seniority list and assignment
to a new frigate. But the Marine Committee would not budge. Jones would not get his frigate.
Faith had other plans for them. One by one, the American frigates were bottled up in port
or captured and destroyed by the blockading British Navy.
The British had spies all over the place. They just parked two of their frigates at
the mouth of these rivers and these ships never got to sea. It was really kind of pathetic
in a way. And Jones slowly realized that the British had really the upper hand in terms
of naval strategy. They had a huge Navy, you know, and they could afford to keep a Navy
at home and they could have this big Navy in American waters and they were just going
to blockade the American Navy to death. So Jones said there's no point in trying to fight
the English fleet in home waters. There's too many of them and we'll just get bashed
around. He proposed to raid the British in their home waters. He knew that this would
really drive them wild and this might force them to withdraw some of their ships from
the American station.
In June 1777, Congress resolved that John Paul Jones be appointed to command the Sloop
Ranger. That November, he sailed off on a northwest wind bound for Europe. He was taking
the war to the British.
There was no way possible that the American Navy could ever defeat the British Navy. But
it could be embarrassing to the Royal Navy to have some rebel ships sailing around the
British Isles conducting some raids, taking innocent merchant vessels. So taking the war
then to British waters was not going to win the war for the United States, but it was
the best possible way, I think, and John Paul Jones was the most successful man in doing
it.
Upon his arrival in Europe, Captain Jones was summoned to Paris for a meeting with America's
brilliant diplomat, Benjamin Franklin. The two men found a shared philosophical and strategic
views and immediately became fast friends.
Franklin was 100% in favor of Jones for two reasons. One was because he wanted Jones to
capture merchant ships and take prisoners because the British Navy had been busily capturing
these privateers. So they had hundreds of American sailors in British jails and they
were treating them horribly because they considered these privateers as pirates. Franklin wanted
Jones to go out there and capture British seamen that he could exchange for these people.
But another even more important idea, and this is where I think Franklin and Jones really
hit it off and were a brilliant pair, they decided they would read British ports.
I think he hit it off with Benjamin Franklin immediately and I think he and Franklin saw
much of life in the same way. They both liked parties, they're both very popular with women,
they both worked to learn to speak French, for example.
Franklin's issued instructions to Jones gave him wide latitude. He was ordered to distress
the enemy as he felt best.
And so Jones took off on his first cruise in the Ranger and it was really great. I mean
he started capturing ships right there off the British coast and then finally he sailed
into the harbor of Whitehaven, ironically the very port from which he left as a young
ships boy and he leveled his guns and said, I want money, I want this, I want that, I'm
going to burn the town and so forth. Oh God, it was just incredible chaos.
So he didn't really burn the town, although he threatened to, but it was almost as good
as burning the town because the impact on the British ministry was absolutely horrendous.
They went berserk. They dispatched every ship they could find into the North Sea, into the
Irish Sea. They didn't know where Jones was, of course.
While the British Navy hunted for the man they called the American pirate, John Paul
Jones had a plan he hoped would free American sailors held in British prisons. Jones believed
that if he captured a member of parliament, the Earl of Selkirk, he could force the British
to trade prisoners. But the Earl was not home when Jones and his boat party came to call.
The Countess of Selkirk delivered up the family silver to them and they took this back as
loot, as booty of war. When they get back to France, this will be sold, Jones will buy
it and he'll send it back to the Countess of Selkirk. That's the way the men got their
money, the Countess got her silver back and Jones felt that he had defended his honor.
The day after missing the Earl of Selkirk, Jones crossed the Irish Sea where he knew
the British warship, the Great, was stationed and purposely challenged it to battle.
He goes out on a ranger and takes on a 20-gun British ship and slugs it out and forces them
to strike its collars, which was incredible. The French couldn't believe it. An American,
a Scotsman with a crew that wasn't even English, a lot of them were French and God knows what
that he scraped them together. That he could beat a British ship, it was just incredible.
They just weren't used to losing the British work. And there was all kinds of explanations
cooked up, you know, how this could have happened. But the short run, in the short run, Jones
became enormously popular in France and famous in England.
But along with the elation of victory came disappointment. His crew had by then been
away from America months longer than they had signed on for. Reluctantly, Captain Jones
had to allow the ranger to sail back to America. Suddenly, America's most effective sea captain
found himself in the frustrating position of being without a ship. He petitioned Franklin
to procure one for him from their French allies.
Jones is very frustrated. He's not sure how hard people are looking. But this is the time
when the French have just gone to war with the British. They're taking every action they
can to build up the French fleet and certainly finding the ship for Jones is not particularly
high on their list of priorities. Luckily, a ship is found, an old East Indian, not very
good condition.
Then John Paul Jones would spend months arming and refitting the old merchant ship. He named
it in honor of his dear friend and patron, Benjamin Franklin, whose collection of common
wisdom for Richard's almanac was popular in France, translated as Les Maxime du Bonhomme
Richard. In command of the Bonhomme Richard, John Paul Jones would face his greatest challenge.
I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go
in harm's way. John Paul Jones.
The Bonhomme Richard was the largest ship Jones had commanded. She was getting old, and
even with all her sails rigged, was still slow. But she would have to do. Jones had
armed her heavily. She mounted six 18-pound cannons, 28 12-pounders, and six 9-pounders.
On August 13, 1779, Jones sailed with a ragged fleet of seven vessels under orders to create
as much havoc as possible in the British Isles. His immediate problem was that most of his
ships were privateers who didn't recognize Jones' authority and soon sailed off to look
for prices on their own. One who stayed was Captain Pierre Landay of the Alliance, a Frenchman
of erratic temperament who envied Jones' reputation.
Now Jones is an old merchant man, and he knows that the Baltic convoy should be due sometime
in mid-September to early October. The Baltic convoy, a group of merchant vessels
laden with vital strategic goods for the British Navy, was bound for Scottish ports.
They will be protected by the Serapis, a brand new British frigate, copper-hulled, making
its first voyage in the Countess of Scarborough. Both of these ships would, by almost anyone's
account, be superior in force to the Bonhomme Richard and the Alliance.
The Bonhomme Richard and the Alliance waited for the convoy off Lamburrow Head on the central
East Coast line of England. As the British ships arrived, they're in a
rather strung out condition. Richard Pearson, the captain of the Serapis,
spotted Jones. He doesn't know who they are. He doesn't know if they're Americans. He
doesn't know if they're French. He knows they're danger.