John Paul Jones

The Father of the U.S. Navy

Our longtime readers will recall that we occasionally look beyond our regular topic of World War II and write about something more general that relates to American military history. Two years ago, we celebrated the official birthday of the U.S. Navy (October 13) with an article about the origins of World War II ship classes. (Read our earlier article) This article celebrates the same event with a biography of the Scottish-born American naval commander John Paul Jones (1747-1792), "the father of the U.S. Navy." (The moniker is sometimes also given to John Barry.) Jones's life was full of less-than-uplifting chapters: fleeing from the law, a brief detour to the Russian Imperia court ending in disgrace, an accusation of rape, and a death in poverty and obscurity. And yet, the raw natural tactical talent of this seaman, who has received little formal training in naval combat, elevates him among the greats of U.S. naval history and earned him a final resting place at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.

John Paul (not yet bearing the family name "Jones") was born in Arbigland along the southwest coast of Scotland and embarked on a maritime career at the age of 13, first sailing out from the town of Whitehaven in northern England. His older brother William crossed the Atlantic and settled down as a tailor in Fredericksburg in the Colony of Virginia, a place young John often visited during his voyages.

Jones initially served in the British Merchant Navy, steadily climbing the ranks on various merchantmen until he became first mate on a slaver brigantine (a relatively small two-masted ship) in 1766. Growing disgusted with what he described as "an abominable trade", he abandoned a profitable slave ship in Jamaica in 1768, made his way back to Scotland and sought a different position.

On his next ship, a brig (a common small merchant vessel or warship), the captain and the ranking mate both died of yellow fever, and the crew voted Jones to pilot the ship to a safe port. The ship's owners rewarded him by promoting him master of the ship and giving him 10% of the cargo.

John Paul got into trouble with the law on his second voyage as the brig's captain. A crewman tried to start a mutiny about early payment of wages, and Paul had the man flogged. The man later died of Yellow Fever, and suspicion arose that he might have been killed by Jones' unduly harsh punishment. To make things worse, the man was not a regular sailor, but an adventurer from an influential Scottish family. John Paul was arrested but later acquitted and encouraged by a sympathetic local governor to leave the area and change his name.

He took command of another vessel, a West Indianaman, a large cargo ship sufficiently armed to protect herself, and engaged in commercial speculation in Tobago in the Caribbean. Once again, he got in trouble; once again, he killed a mutinous crewman (this time with a sword); and once again, it was over a wage dispute. John Paul later claimed he acted in self-defense, but he wasn't keen on being tried at an admiralty court, since the family of his previous victim was influential there. Instead, he fled and eventually adopted the new surname Jones. (North Carolina tradition holds that Jones adopted the name in honor of Halifax statesman and plantation owner Willie Jones, but there's no solid evidence to the effect.) Some historians speculate he might have spent the next year and a half as a pirate, but we don't know this for sure. What is certain is that he resurfaced in Fredericksburg to take care of the affairs of his brother, who died without immediate family.

Jones settled down in the colonies, which he later described as "the country of his fond selection." He courted the future bride of Patrick Henry, one of the future Founding Fathers, and has met several revolutionary leaders in 1775, deciding to join the newly formed Continental Navy to fight Britain. Jones was noted for being unlike most merchant captains in that he was well-dressed, carried a sword and acted with decorum. His first posting was as 1st lieutenant aboard the 24-gun frigate Alfred, formerly a merchant vessel. Jones became the first man ever to hoist the Grand Union Flag, the first U.S. ensign, on a naval vessel.

The Alfred participated in a raid on the British port of Nassau with the objective of taking gunpowder, sorely needed by Patriot forces, from the English. The defenders of Nassau managed to evacuate most of the gunpowder stored in two forts, but the raid still acquired 38 casks and as much other war supplies as could be loaded on two frigates and six smaller ships. The raid was initially considered a success, but crew complaints, the failure to stop the British ship taking most of the gunpowder out of Nassau, and the failure to later capture another outnumbered British vessel prompted an investigation and led to the court-martial and dismissal of several captains. Jones distinguished himself on the voyage and was awarded command of the sloop-of-war Providence, one of the raiding ships whose captain was relieved of command.

The Providence also came with a promise that Jones would later get a far more prestigious command, one of the Continental Navy's first thirteen frigates, once they're built. While serving as captain of the Providence, Jones rescued a brig carrying valuable military supplies that was being pursued by a superior British frigate. On a subsequent voyage, he took sixteen (some sources claim eight) prize ships and caused significant damage to British fishing and whaling trade in Nova Scotia.

In November 1776, Jones took command of Alfred, the ship he already served on as a lieutenant, on a mission to liberate hundreds of American prisoners laboring in British coal mines in Nova Scotia. The mission was foiled by winter weather, but Jones did manage to capture a British ship that was carrying vital winter clothing for British troops in Canada.

Jones had a tendency to quarrel with his superiors, and it was only a matter of time before one such quarrel would jeopardize his career. That quarrel occurred in Boston in December 1776 with Commodore Hopkins, his former superior aboard the Alfred. Jones believed that Hopkins was deliberately hindering his career by arguing against his campaign plans. This argument, along with other similar ones, led to Jones losing command of the Alfred and being a far smaller ship for his next voyage: the newly built sloop-of-war Ranger.  Through coincidence, he received the assignment on June 14, 1777, the same day the Stars and Stripes was adopted as the flag of the United States.

Jones sailed for France in November 1777 with orders to aid the American cause in whatever way he could. The three American commissioners in Paris, one of whom was Benjamin Franklin, listened to his strategic ideas and promised him the 40-gun frigate Indien, which was being built for the Patriots in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Unfortunately for Jones, Britain pressured the Netherlands to sell the ship to France rather than to the American revolutionaries. France had not yet allied itself with America at the time, so the ship fell out of the commissioners' and Jones's reach, leaving Jones stuck with the Ranger. It was probably around this time that Jones became close friends with Franklin.

France allied itself with America in February 1778, and Jones's Ranger became the first American ship to receive a formal salute from a French vessel eight days later. Jones sailed on April 10, 1778, to raid on British merchant shipping in the Irish Sea. He soon persuaded his crew to go beyond their mission and launch an assault on the English town of Whitehaven, which he knew well, since it was where he started his maritime career as a young teenager. Bad winds intervened, however, blowing the Ranger away from England and toward Ireland. Jones also started having problems with his officers, whom he considered poor, and who, according to Jones, encouraged disobedience in the men. The crew was recruited with offers of an opportunity to make a fortune, and expected to be treated like privateers rather than soldiers, getting a cut of whatever plunder was taken – and they were getting gradually ever more disgruntled as the expedition didn’t end up taking many prizes.

He planned to attack a British sloop-of-war, but his disobedient crew refused to comply, a detail he graciously left out of his official report. He settled for a nighttime attack, instead; that, in turn, was foiled when a sailor dropped the anchor too early, preventing the Ranger from coming to a stop right next to its target during the attempted sneak attack. Jones was forced to cut the anchor cable and flee.

The winds were shifting, and Jones turn back toward Whitehaven. He had a grand plan: landing at night with 15 men, he would burn all of the vessels in port, some 200 to 400 in number, comprising a merchant fleet and many coal transporters. The plan did not come to fruition. Shifting winds and a strong ebb tide slowed down his landing boats, his lanterns ran out of oil so he couldn't light fires, and some men sent to raid a quayside pub decided to stay there for some drinks. Jones was eventually forced to flee at dawn, after his attempt to torch a ship raised a fire alarm, and only escape unscathed because he had the foresight to spike the town's gun soon after arrival.

Jones sailed north to his native Scotland, where he planned to capture the Earl of Selkirk, who lived not far from Jones's place of birth, and whom he intended to exchange for Americans impressed into the Royal Navy against their will. Once Jones and his men entered the earl's estate, they learned he was away, and only his wife and son were present, along with the servants. Without Lord Selkirk, the crew had to settle for looting the place. The butler filled a sack half with coal and topped it off with the family silver to trick the looters. The riled-up crew wanted to pillage, burn and plunder, but were eventually calmed down by Jones, and only took a silver plate decorated with the family's emblem. Later, once the crew sold off the plate in France, Jones bought it back and returned it to the Earl of Selkirk after the war. The two men continued to exchange letters later, and Lord Selkirk even protected Jones’s understandably negative reputation in the British press by ordering the publication of a newspaper article to set the record straight on what happened at his estate.

Jones sailed back to Ireland to pick a fight with HMS Drake, the sloop-of-war he already tried and failed to capture once, and which was still anchored in the same spot. On April 24, just 4 days after their first meeting, the two roughly equally powerful ships met each other in what became known as the North Channel Naval Duel. Jones had captured the Drake's reconnaissance boat earlier in the day, and learned that the Drake was carrying an extra contingent of soldiers. Any boarding action would have almost certainly meant defeat for the Ranger, so Jones engaged in an hour-long gun battle fought at close range, but always staying too far for grappling.

The British ship was at a disadvantage. Not only was the wind against her as she sailed out of harbor, but she was also a converted trading vessel, and was significantly more sluggish than the Ranger, which was built as a combat vessel. To drive home his mobility advantage, Jones ordered his gun crews to concentrate fire on the Drake's mast, rigging and sails, further immobilizing her. Even small details came to matter: the Drake's magazine lacked cartridge paper, so when musketeers on board ran out of cartridges, they had to reload their weapons by slowly and carefully pouring powder down the barrel, sharing only two powder horns among the crew. There was also no efficient way of distributing musket balls, so they had to be handed around in the armorer's hat.

After an hour of fighting, the Drake's captain was hit in the head by an American musket shot and killed, prompting the crew to surrender shortly after. The British ship was so heavily damaged that it took three days to make her seaworthy again, after which the two sloops started limping home to France. News of Jones's exploit reached the continent before he did, and he arrived to a hero's welcome. The obscure colonial commander became an international celebrity overnight, with both the French and British press reporting on his actions. Britain learned a bitter lesson from Jones's expedition: the Royal Navy could not protect British civilian shipping, Britain's coastline, or even its own ships from American raiders right on Britain's doorstep. Militia regiments were hastily deployed to coastal areas, ports were equipped with artillery, and the local gentry formed volunteer battalions, all to protect the heart of the British Empire from one American captain.

Our article will continue in the second part with John Paul Jones's finest hour, fall from grace, and eventual slide into poverty and obscurity.

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