John Paul Jones Archives - 250 and Counting

John Paul Jones (Mike would have me note it’s not the guy from Led Zeppelin) led a relatively short life, but it was certainly eventful.

Jones was born in Scotland and became a sailor at age 13, where he served on multiple merchantmen, including a few slave ships. Jones fled to the Virginia colony to avoid arrest after killing a mutinous subordinate and joined the Continental Navy in 1775. Less than a year later he was the captain of the USS Alfred, which is the subject of today’s episode.

After Jones’ successes in France, he harassed British merchant ships in the Irish Sea, and he made a couple of attempts to deeply sabotage the ships in Whitehaven, but his efforts weren’t successful.

In 1779, while still in Europe, Jones took command of the Bonhomme Richard and continued to give the British a hard time in their own waters, sometimes with mixed results. This was the ship he was commanding when he was said to have uttered the phrase “I have not yet begun to fight!”, which is pretty gung-ho, but unfortunately apocryphal.

Jones was left without a command in 1787, so he entered in o the service of Empress Catherine of Russia. He experienced some successes, but was undercut by an ambitious underling who deliberately mis-translated his letters to the Empress. Two years later, Tadeusz Kościuszko, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, suggested that he leave Russia and serve another nation. Not long thereafter he was accused of raping a young girl and left the country despite the evidence being rather thin. He returned to Paris but couldn’t get a foothold in society.

In 1792 Jones was appointed the US Consul to negotiate with Algiers for the release of American captives. Unfortunately before he could do this, he was found deat at home. The cause of his death was interstitial nephritis, an inflammation of part of the kidney which is sometimes symptomless. Nowadays it’s most often caused by reactions to certain medications but is easily treated. Jones was 45 when he died and in significant debt, largely because he hadn’t been paid for some of his endeavors. He was buried in a cemetery specifically for Protestants who weren’t native Frenchmen, but the grave was either unmarked or the marker stone was taken. It took until 1905 to locate his coffin. Today his remains are interred in a sarcophagus at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

The post New Command for John Paul Jones–October 27, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The career of John Paul Jones, or Captain Jones, as he became on this day, is marked by both brilliance and controversy.

Jones was born in Scotland and sailed on merchant ships before coming to America and joining the nascent navy here. Through the Revolutionary War, he was involved with several key battles, many times off the English coast rather than on this sise of the pond. This led to his having an international reputation.

But in 1787 he was left without a command, so he took on a position with the Imperial Russian Navy, rising to the rank of rear admiral. Unfortunately, he was forced to leave after being accused of raping a 10-year-old Russian girl. (He admitted to having sex with her, but not raping her, and he also claimed that he was not the one to have taken her virginity. Neither of these claims really helped his case.) The whole thing turned into a mess and Empress Catherine eventually exiled him for a minimum of two years.

Captain Jones moved to Paris and was eventually appointed as the US Consul to Algiers, but he died before he could begin that position. After his burial, the records were lost and so his specific location was unknown for many years. What was known was that his body had been preserved in alcohol and that he had a lead coffin. In 1905 he was located and an autopsy completed, which confirmed the original suspicion that he’d died of interstitial nephritis.

Captain Jones’ body was returned to the United States and he was re-interred in a bronze and marble sarcophagus at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

The post Captain Jones–August 8, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

John Paul Jones was born in Scotland as John Paul and began his maritime career at 13 when he was hired as an apprentice.

In 1770 he was involved in an incident wherein a crew member was flogged after a failed mutiny. The crew member later died, and it was clear that his reputation had taken a big hit. So John Paul left Scotland and took command of a British vessel. Again, however, he put down a mutinous sailor, this time killing him with a sword in Tobago. Before he could be tried, however, he fled the area and essentially disappeared for 18 months.

In the meantime his brother, who lived in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, area, died. John Paul went to America to settle his brother’s affairs. It was at this time that he appended the last name “Jones” to his name. Shortly thereafter he joined the American Navy. During his time as an American naval officer, it doesn’t appear that he killed anyone, but in his later years, he sailed for the Russian Navy, where he was derailed by the accusation of rape of a ten-year-old Russian girl. It was only because of the murkiness of some of the details that gave the Empress Catherine some leeway to have him exiled rather than beheaded.

But as an American sailor, he did shine. And he shone for the first time on this day in 1775.

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