The old St. Louis Cemetery—measuring 120 feet by 130 feet, now under an area off the Rue Grange aux Belles that consisted of a garden, a grain merchants’ courtyard, a building, sheds, a laundry, a wagon-house, a cesspool, and a well—had come into existence in 1724 and was officially closed in 1793. Burials continued there for more than a decade until it was finally abandoned altogether. But what of the dead? Porter was concerned that corpses might have been moved, and he investigated the records of the old catacombs, where remains would have been buried, but found no evidence of Jones’s body being transferred to any.
Finally, Porter considered the possibility that John Paul Jones’s lead casket had been melted down to make bullets during the French Revolution. No, he was told. Even in revolt the French would not disturb the holy resting places of the dead.
Porter’s investigation had been thorough. He was convinced that if the remains of John Paul Jones still existed, they were right there in Paris in the old cemetery of Saint Louis. An excavation was the next step, but Porter could not foresee what would happen next.
The Serapis sailed broadside of the Richard . Her camions were roaring. The Richard was firing back, but her damage was more serious. There were fires on both ships.
The success of Ambassador Porter’s preliminary investigation became publicly known, and those in the area of the old St. Louis Cemetery, needy people no doubt, thought they stood to gain substantial sums in exchange for the rights to dig on their properties. As Porter wrote, “Self-constituted agents immediately began to busy themselves with circulating fantastic stories regarding the fabulous prices that were to be paid for the property, the whole of which it was said was going to be bought by a rich government, at any cost, as the only means of getting access to the cemetery and making the excavations necessary to find the body of its great Admiral.” In fact, the entire investigation and excavation to follow were being paid for by Porter from his own personal funds. Unable to meet these additional financial demands, Porter had to hold up his search for John Paul Jones’s body for two years.
Jones’s vessel took the wind to the Serapis ’s bowsprit. The ships smacked into each other, Pearson’s stern to Jones’s bow. Their yards became tangled, one enemy’s cannons rubbing the other.
Porter maintained a low profile, and the commotion attending the sale of excavation rights finally died down; those demanding payment gave up. On February 3, 1905, digging began with the sinking of a shaft under a laundry. Here’s Porter on the challenges:
The project presented serious difficulties from the fact that the filling of the earth above the cemetery was composed of the dumpings of loose soil not compact enough to stand alone, and the shafts and galleries had to be solidly lined and shored up with heavy timbers as the excavations proceeded. The drainage was bad in places and there was trouble from the water. The walls of one of the buildings were considerably damaged. Slime, mud, and mephitic odors were encountered, and long red worms appeared in abundance.
Workmen sunk shafts and shoveled long underground tunnels, galleries, through the submerged cemetery. They knew they were looking for leaden coffins, so they made “soundings” between the galleries with iron bars.
Burrowing through the sunken graveyard was an unpleasant, if not revolting, task. The laborers continuously dug into bones and skeletons and skulls. Piled every which way, they were a horrific sight. In the darkness underneath the earth, remnants of the dead popped out to greet the workmen.
The Richard was leaking badly. Her twelve-pounders were decimated; their firing crews had abandoned them. The eighteen-pounders on the lower gun deck were also disabled. Virtually all the men who operated them had been killed when the Serapis first fired on the guns. Some seamen on the poop were also killed, and the French officer in charge abandoned the station. Only Jones’s nine-pounders on the quarterdeck remained intact, but some of the men there were seriously wounded.
Horace Porter, seated on the far left, appears with members of his team in this photo taken in 1905 at the site of discovery of Jone's coffin. The man kneeling at the far right holds his pickax over the spot where Jone's coffin was found and unearthed.
Nineteen days after excavation began, the first leaden coffin was found. It bore an inscription plate revealing a name and date of death. The remains were not those of John Paul Jones. Not until after another month of constant burrowing in the subterranean trenches did the workmen turn up a second leaden coffin. This one, too, had an inscription plate, and it also revealed that the remains were not Jones’s.
The laborers, the supervisors, the engineer of mines of the Department of the Seine, Porter—all participating in the search were disappointed but went on with their work. It was more than a century earlier that Jones was supposedly interred in the cemetery, and anything could have happened to the coffin and its remains in the interval. At times the search seemed futile, ridiculous.
On March 31 another leaden coffin was found. This lacked identification and had such a pungent alcoholic smell about it that opening it in the gallery was impossible until air could be directed in through another tunnel.
It was curious that an old coffin such as this would have such an emanation. Workers dug and dug, and a week later there was proper ventilation so the coffin could be opened.
Down in the gallery, Porter and the engineers and many of the laborers gathered around the leaden coffin. The light was dim. The top of the coffin had been fused tightly and was removed with some effort. The coffin had apparently been filled with alcohol at the time of burial. The liquid had evaporated through a small opening in the lid, but the odor was still strong.
The Serapis and the Richard were locked together. French sharpshooters atop the Richard caused the British seamen to abandon the deck. Guns were fired from the Serapis from the below deck. The casualties aboard the Richard were heavy, and the ship sustained serious damage.
Inside the coffin was a body wrapped in a winding sheet and packed snugly in straw. The sheet was slowly unwrapped in the dark, stuffy gallery. Excitement ran high at the possibility that this was the body of one of the greatest naval commanders ever to have lived. But given that John Paul Jones had been dead for more than a century, a positive identification would undoubtedly require extensive investigation.
The last sniper atop the Serapis’s masts was shot by a contingent of Jones’s men. This set the stage for a crushing setback for the British. A seaman on the Richard crawled out on a yard with a supply of grenades. One hit a powder magazine on the Serapis , causing a major explosion.
As the sheet was removed, the witnesses huddled around the coffin with flickering candles, breathing the musty thin air below the city of Paris, anticipating the viewing. And what they saw shocked them, gave them chills, for before them was something they could not even have dreamed. Lying in a coffin with soft skin and hair intact—only the tip of the nose was damaged, obviously from the coffin lid—was the remarkably well-preserved body of someone they could not mistake. They held medals bearing the admiral’s portrait near the face and looked back and forth from the flesh to the inscribed image. Let Porter tell you the reactions of the witnesses at this incredible moment:
We instinctively claimed, “Paul Jones!” and all those who were gathered about the coffin removed their hats, feeling that they were standing in the presence of the illustrious dead—the object of the long search.
The corpse was removed to the Paris School of Medicine where it was scientifically examined. In fact, the organs were so well preserved that physicians performed an autopsy.
During this time Ambassador Porter’s eleven-year-old nephew, John Gilbert M. Stone, was in Paris. The lad received a message to come to the medical school to catch a glimpse of the legendary seaman.
Stone, who went on to become a captain in the U.S. Navy, held the right hand of the dead admiral and found it soft and pliable. In a letter he wrote sixty years later, Stone noted, “There was a feeling of awe in the room. Here were the almost lifelike r
emains of a man who died in July 1792.” It might be said that the last person to see John Paul Jones, to gaze into and study his face, to hold the hand and feel the soft flesh of the Revolutionary War hero, lived until 1983, the year Captain Stone died.
The battle off Flamborough Head in the North Sea raged on under the light of the moon. Flames were out of control in several areas of both the Serapis and the Richard . Smoke funneled off to the leaden sky. On the Richard , crimson blood was flowing across the deck.
A complete medical examination of the corpse was made by the most eminent physicians, pathologists, anthropologists, and scientists of the day, and the results correlated with the extensive reports made on Jones when he was alive. From these alone there was no doubt that the body was Jones’s. In the room during the examinations were busts made of the admiral by the renowned sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, and the resemblance was uncanny. There was an ornament sewn into Jones’s hair, which measured two and one-half feet long. It was the letter J in one direction, and P when turned over. No, there was not the slightest uncertainty whatsoever that this was the body of the great John Paul Jones.
Bust of John Paul Jones by Jean-Antoine Houdon.
At 9:30 P.M. the Alliance came into close range. But instead of assisting the Richard , she fired into her stern. The crew of the Richard shouted out to stop, but the Alliance continued to fire, and her volleys killed several men. The full moon provided sufficient light, and the design of the Richard was markedly different from that of the Serapis . Jones was being attacked by his own men!*
The corpse of John Paul Jones had been in excellent condition when unearthed, but after exposure for a few days it started to deteriorate rapidly. After the autopsy, the sections cut away were placed back in the body. Jones’s body was chemically treated and the shirt he had been found in put back on. The corpse was then wrapped in its winding sheet and placed back in its coffin, which was itself then encased in a wooden coffin.
Jones’s master-at-arms freed all the prisoners below deck. They were directed to operate the pumps, but some cut down their captors. Although both ships were sustaining serious damage and injuries, up to this point it appeared the Richard would defeat her opponent. Now her situation, as Jones later wrote, was “deplorable.”
John Paul Jone's head, more than a century after his death. (The photograph was taken on April 11, 1905, after an autopsy was performed on Jones.)
With the spectacular discovery of the corpse of John Paul Jones, after a search that consumed six years of Ambassador Porter’s life, it was now time for the ceremonies. The United States sent a fleet of warships to France to bring back the body of its old hero. On July 6, 1905, after a service in the American Church of the Holy Trinity, Jones’s coffin was carried through the streets of Paris and over the Seine, as thousands of spectators watched the grand parade of French and American soldiers and sailors. It was a spectacular send-off. The coffin was to be put on a train to Cherbourg, where the American Naval Squadron awaited.
A shout from Captain Pearson aboard the Serapis : Would the Americans like to strike her colors? Would the Commodore like quarters? John Paul Jones became livid. He responded, “I have not yet begun to fight!”
Jones wouldn’t give up. His men who hadn’t been killed or injured continued fighting fiercely. The main mast of the Serapis began to quiver.
On the morning of July 23, 1905, the American Naval Squadron, in double column formation, cruised into Annapolis and anchored. The next day, John Paul Jones’s casket was transferred to another vessel that steamed to shore between the two columns as the ships fired a salute. There wasn’t much fanfare at this point, as preparations were under way for a proper ceremony.
Officials of cities throughout the United States had written to President Theodore Roosevelt, asking if Jones’s body could be brought to their cities, but Roosevelt thought the proper resting place for Jones could only be at the U.S. Naval Academy, where the nation’s future naval officers are educated. A newly planned chapel was under construction at the time, so the casket was placed in a temporary vault across the street. On April 24, 1906, Jones’s casket was carried into the armory, and an elaborate ceremony was held. Addresses were given by President Roosevelt, the French ambassador to the United States, and Ambassador Porter to an overflowing crowd of U.S. senators, congressmen, sailors, and citizens, as well as a number of French naval officers, as France had dispatched a fleet to America for the occasion. After the ceremony the casket was carried to Bancroft Hall, which at the time was a brand-new midshipmen’s dormitory. It was put on biers under the grand staircase.
This photo of John Paul Jone's body was taken after doctors autopsied it.
There was less firing coming from the Serapis . The British could be near defeat. The crew of the Richard stepped up their firing.
For seven years Jones’s body remained in the dorm until Congress decided to appropriate additional funds to finish the crypt in the Naval Academy chapel. (Congress also reimbursed Porter for the monies he had personally laid out to find Jones, and Porter donated the sum to a memorial for Jones.) Finally, on January 26, 1913, Jones’s body was moved in. His double casket was placed inside a handsome marble sarcophagus, built at the academy by the French sculptor Sylvain Salières (1865-1920), with marble donated by the French government. Embedded into the marble floor around the sarcophagus, in metal letters, are the names of the ships Jones commanded during the American Revolution, and nearby is a gold-hilted sword given to Jones by King Louis XVI.
At 10:30 P.M. the British flag was struck. John Paul Jones had prevailed. Jones took his prize, the Serapis , as his own conflagrant vessel would soon sink in the murky ocean. Jones won an important victory for America, one that would enter the history books and immortalize him.
In July 1787, the itinerant Jones traveled to New York from Europe to take care of some personal and professional interests. A few months later, in the autumn, he returned to the Continent, never knowing he was saying good-bye for the last time to the country he served so well and loved so much.
With the Revolutionary War over, Jones needed work that would befit his heroic status and leadership ability. But because the navy was discontinued, there were no ships to command, and he was disappointed that he had not been given a rank and assignment appropriate for his status. So the following year, while in Copenhagen, Denmark, to try to settle accounts over ships he had captured during the Revolutionary War—it was the custom of the time that if a ship was captured it would be sent to a friendly port for an agent to sell it, with the prize money to be divided among the navy crew after the government was paid its majority share—he decided that Empress Catherine’s offer of a naval commission to help the Russians fight the Turks was serious and too alluring to pass up.
But Jones was worried that accepting the offer might jeopardize his American citizenship. The Scottish-born sailor considered himself an American citizen since the time he visited his brother in Fredericksburg, Virginia, at age thirteen—there were no naturalization procedures in those days—and always took great pride in his adopted country. On March 27, 1788, he wrote to the U.S. minister at Paris, Thomas Jefferson, who assured him that an appointment to the Russian navy would not alter the status of his American citizenship.
Health problems plagued Jones during his venture with the Russians. He became ill during the rough trip to St. Petersburg in April to pick up his commission as a Rear Admiral of the Russian navy signed by Empress Catherine. On May 26, 1788, Jones hoisted his flag aboard the Wolodimir, at the mouth of the Dnieper River, but became ill again six months later, in November, while he was engaged in the Liman campaign in the Black Sea, and the following month returned to St. Petersburg. With his relationship with the Russian authorities having also steadily declined from the beginning, Jones, after obtaining a two-year leave of absence, left Russia in July 1789 and headed for Paris.
In France Jones was something of a hero; during the war sumptuous banquets and speeches were given
in his honor, and the French people held a deep affection for him. Although his health continued to be problematic, the spirited naval commander continually beseeched the new American minister to Paris, Gouverneur Morris, for work. This finally came on June 1, 1792, when President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson appointed Jones a U.S. commissioner to treat with the Dey of Algiers for the release of captured American merchants (Algiers was one of the Barbary states that was stopping American and other countries’ merchant shipping and seizing the cargoes and ships and holding the crews for ransom). But sadly, Jones’s health had deteriorated badly, and his symptoms included signs of jaundice. The forty-five-year-old Jones died in the French capital on July 18, probably before he even received his appointment. The great war hero was buried in a Paris cemetery, paid for not by the United States but by a Frenchman as an act of homage. John Paul Jones was seemingly abandoned at his end by his country, until Horace Porter embarked on his relentless search to bring him back to America.
A remarkable 113 years after his death, John Paul Jones was home again.
LOCATION: United States Naval Academy Chapel, Annapolis, Maryland.
Footnotes
*Some license is taken in referring to John Paul Jones as the “Father of the American Navy.” At least two other early naval officers, Commodores John Barry and Thomas Truxtun, have been referred to in this way by biographers.
*This account of John Paul Jones’s most famous naval battle, which continues throughout this entry, is based mostly on his own report of the engagement. See “The Crypt of John Paul Jones” in the Sources and Bibliography section of this book for further information.
*The captain of the Alliance, Pierre Landais, was mentally unstable, not to mention professionally incompetent for his rank. Jones was infuriated that the French ship was shelling his while he was engaged with the enemy, and later, in his report to the U.S. minister to France, Benjamin Franklin, he wrote that he “must complain loudly” of Landais’s conduct, and was advised by his men to arrest the captain. It is ironic that Landais was assigned to the Alliance, named to symbolize the friendship between the United States and France and the support France pledged to give to America during the war.
Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, & Einstein's Brain Page 18