by Neil Oliver
“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 mortal remains of the rebel warrior are interred in the chapel at Annapolis within a magnificent marble sarcophagus modeled on that of Emperor Napoleon of France himself. But the near-mythical figure named and remembered there with every conceivable honor as Commodore John Paul Jones was born plain John Paul, the son of the head gardener on the quiet Scottish estate of Arbigland, in the parish of Kirkbean. The explanation for his decision to add that extra surname lies tangled amid the knot formed of the many interwoven threads of this still enigmatic man.
He was born on July 6, 1747, the fourth of seven children for John Paul senior and his wife Jean Duff. His elder brother William emigrated to Fredericksburg, Virginia, as a young man, and so by the time young John set about traveling the world as an apprentice seaman, there was already a family connection to the New World.
John Paul began his life before the mast in 1761, at the age of 13, when he boarded the local coastal sloop at the nearby port of Carsethorn, bound for Whitehaven, 25 miles further south round the coast. Once there, he signed on for seven years’ service with the Friendship, and his early voyages took him to Barbados, and also to Virginia. There he was able to meet and spend time with his brother, who by then had established himself as a tailor and gentleman’s outfitter of some esteem.
No allowance whatsoever was made for ship’s boys like young John in the seafaring world of the 18th, or indeed of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Like the British Royal Navy’s greatest hero Admiral Horatio Nelson, John Paul could rely on no proud family name to ensure a leg-up or special treatment in time of need. Nelson was the son of a country parson and as boys both he and the gardener’s son Paul would have experienced much the same in the way of grinding physical hardship and exposure to lethal danger. There was no comfort to be had for lost and lonely little boys, no quarter extended for seasickness or homesickness, or fear—or any other of the host of miseries attending those teetering on the brink of manhood. They either learned the ropes, quite literally, finding ways to take care of themselves, or fell by the wayside. If they survived and flourished, though, then they were often imbued by the experience with a self-reliance that would serve them well.
The Friendship was a brig weighing 179 tons and crewed by 28 men. Ongoing war with France and, therefore, the ever-present threat of piracy by French privateers, made it essential for merchant vessels of all kinds to be able to defend themselves, and she bore a total of 18 guns. Paul sailed with her on numerous voyages—back and forth across the Atlantic to Barbados (surely unimaginably exotic for a boy from rainy southwest Scotland) and up and down the eastern seaboard of the Americas—spending weeks and months at a time at William’s home in Fredericksburg. Paul’s love of the fledgling nation seems to have started at once. In later years, he would write that America was “…my favourite country from the age of 13 when I first saw it.” He was learning his trade all the while. (Nelson, too, spent time on a merchant ship in his youth and said he learned more there than on any ship of the Royal Navy.)
But by 1764 John Paul was back in Whitehaven and out of work. The Friendship had been sold to a new owner and, for whatever reason the boy parted company with her then. Later that year he joined a slave ship—a so-called “black-birder” named the King George—as third mate. Unspeakable conditions aboard such vessels, with their living cargo left to wallow helplessly for weeks in their own filth, meant they could be smelled by the crews of other ships in open water from miles off. Nonetheless Paul stuck with it, spending two years with the King George before taking the post of first mate aboard a second slave ship, the Two Friends, sailing out of Kingston, Jamaica. Just 50 feet in length, she transported nearly 80 captive and chained Africans at a time. Sometime around the middle of 1767 Paul parted company with the Two Friends—and the slave trade—forever. In later years he would write about his revulsion at what he called “that abominable trade.” Abominable or not, he made his living at it for at least three years, suggesting that at the very least he had within himself the will to overlook the suffering of his fellow human beings when he deemed it necessary to his goals.
Before returning to Scotland aboard the merchant vessel the John in mid-1768, he spent the best part of a year in Jamaica. Among the many facets of the myth surrounding him is the rumour that he spent those months in Kingston employed as a Shakespearean actor! The truth of the matter is lost to history, but it’s known that in later years, John Paul the sea warrior was able—and happy—to quote from memory large chunks of Shakespeare’s plays.
The voyage home aboard the John was blighted by disease. Both ship’s master and mate, together with an unknown number of the crew, died of yellow fever. Rather than completing the trip as a passenger, John Paul had to take command of the vessel and see her safely home to the Scottish port of Kirkcudbright, not far from his own home port of Whitehaven. The John’s owners were impressed with their stand-in skipper and he was promptly given formal command of the vessel for its next voyage to America. Paul was just 21 years old—and yet he was now the captain of a trans-Atlantic merchant ship.
What he lacked in physical size—he was just five-foot-three-inches tall and slightly built—he seems to have made up for in charm, charisma and steel-hard determination. It was said by contemporaries that he could carry himself in any company, that he was self-educated to a high standard, and that he was particularly well-liked by the women whose paths he crossed. As well as his likeable qualities, he was also possessed of a fiery temper—which in the long run would do him nearly as much harm as good. Like Nelson (11 years his junior) he had shown his leadership abilities at an early age—and won responsibility as a direct result. Also like Nelson, his ambition knew no bounds.
He continued to work as a ship’s captain and while in port around the Americas would undoubtedly have come into contact with officers of the British Royal Navy. What he made of any such encounters is not known, but by 1775 Paul had made a greater personal journey than would have been possible between any two points on the globe.
During his years as a captain he had caused—either by accident or design—the deaths of two crewmen. The killing in Tobago in October 1773 of the second—a mutinous “prodigious brute of thrice my strength” while captain of the Betsy—prompted him to make himself a fugitive from British justice. How he filled the intervening months and years is not clear, but at some point during his time on the run he made the British colonies of North America his adoptive home. It seems to have been during 1774 that he adopted the now famous “Jones” as his surname, and it was as John Jones that he witnessed the descent into war by his foster-brother colonists and their erstwhile masters in Great Britain. In any case, records show that it was in December of 1775—with the gunfire at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill still echoing around the world—that he accepted a commission as a lieutenant in the newly formed Continental Navy.
It is at this point in the story that perceptions of John Paul Jones, on either side of the Atlantic, begin sharply to diverge: in the USA a patriot and hero; in Britain a rebel at best and downright traitor at worst. Perhaps, though, no such clear distinction is either required or deserved. Perhaps Paul Jones, as we must now call him, had not decided to split with the land of his birth or to turn his back on the Britain that bore him. Maybe his argument was not with anything as specific as the person of King George, his government or its soldiers and sailors, but with the broad and unbearable yoke of tyranny itself. Men of passion and principle down through the ages—and Scots hardly the least among them—have always bridled at the oppression of men by other men. Perhaps John Paul Jones took up arms in the oldest and noblest of causes—that of liberty for all.
The Continental Navy was not the first seagoing force employed by the colonists. None other than George Washington himself had seen the need for ways to challenge the might of His Majesty’s Ro
yal Navy—and created the Army’s Navy in mid-1775 from a handful of commandeered fishing boats and merchant vessels. This slight force was replaced by the Continental Navy the following year—and Paul Jones soon demonstrated his abilities as a leader of its fighting men. To his bitter regret, however, he was routinely passed over for the senior positions he felt he deserved—and furthermore believed he had earned. Perhaps the fact that he was, after all, a foreigner by birth—a Brit—counted against him. Whatever the reason, his continued exclusion from the inner circle was to rankle with him for all of his life.
In August 1776 Paul Jones was awarded the rank of captain—the first recorded after the signing of the Declaration of Independence itself. In June 1777 he was given command of a 320-ton, 110-foot long sloop-of-war named the Ranger. In November he sailed her out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, en route to Europe and a place in history. He sailed first to France, then from the port of Brest up the Irish Sea—between the east coast of Ireland and the west coast of England—where he captured four merchant vessels. But by April 23rd the Ranger was lurking in the darkness off the coast of Whitehaven. He was back.
There has never really been any suggestion that Paul Jones bore any kind of grudge against the town in which his apprenticeship as a seaman had begun all those years before. It seems most likely that he chose the port—at that time a rival to any on the west coast of England in terms of its importance to trade—simply because he knew it well and could penetrate the harbor with ease. Paul Jones was focused and determined—determined to cause as much damage and morale-sapping alarm as possible. His problems began and ended with the fact that his crewmen lacked his determination and his strength of character. Little better than mutinous, and motivated only by money, they had to be cajoled and threatened by Paul Jones before he could get them moving at all. This has often been the challenge for manly men—the need to lead those with no appetite to be led, and to do so by willpower alone.
A full trading fleet was moored in Whitehaven harbor that night, many of the ships heavily laden with coal. It was Paul Jones’s plan to attack the harbor with two raiding parties, overpower any defenses and set the flammable cargoes ablaze.
Paul Jones wrote: “Not a single ship of more than 200 could have escaped and the whole world would not have been able to save the town.”
There were forts on either side and each would have to be taken and silenced, the guns spiked to ensure no shots could be fired upon the Ranger as she made her escape after the raid. The captain’s party landed successfully on a nearby beach and did their job to the letter. The other team, however, made straight for a harbor-side tavern and started drinking rum and ale with the locals! Though Paul Jones managed to start a fire in one of the collier brigs, the townspeople were alerted in time and extinguished it before any harm was done. In any event, the greatest testament to the captain was in his ability to get his recalcitrant men back aboard their ship and away before the local militia could attempt any kind of retaliation.
The propaganda effect of the abortive raid, however, far outweighed any actual damage to shipping. Panic spread around the nation faster than any blaze and in short order a total of 40 ships of the Royal Navy were recalled from active service in American waters and put on sentry duty around the British coast. No raid on that part of England had been attempted since the time of the Vikings and Paul Jones had written his name in infamy. For the British, the news was unthinkable: the American War—that had seemed so distant—had come all the way home and struck at them as they lay in their beds! After further mischief-making, striking seemingly at will around the British coast, though to little practical effect, he returned to safe harbor in France. His place in legend already assured, it was in the following year that John Paul Jones would truly show what he was capable of—and in so doing light a fire that burns still in the hearts of US Navy men.
Soon after returning to Brest, Paul Jones was given charge of a new ship, a 900-ton former French East Indiaman called Le Duc de Duras. He oversaw her conversion to a ship of war and personally renamed her the Bonhomme Richard. This detail was a tribute to Benjamin Franklin, whom Paul Jones had met and befriended in Paris. The great man had taken to the young captain at once and championed his cause for the rest of his life. It says much about the always controversial and mercurial character of John Paul Jones that one of the greatest men of his generation should think so highly and care so much about him—a young man just half his age. Franklin’s book Poor Richard’s Almanac had recently been translated into French as Les Maximes du Bonhomme Richard—and it was from this title that Captain Jones chose the name his new ship would bear.
It was aboard the good ship Bonhomme Richard that Paul Jones sailed out of Brest in the second week of August, and set a course for immortality. Accompanying him were the Pallas, the Cerf, the Vengeance and the Alliance. Later they were joined by the Monsieur and the Granville, and this flotilla of seven ships was set to conduct a full-scale raiding season on British shipping.
His crew, gathered from several nationalities, was far superior to the rascals and degenerates that had filled the hammocks aboard the Ranger. Among the officers aboard the Bonhomme Richard were men as committed to the cause of liberty as the captain himself. Even so, for Paul Jones it seemed it was always to be a matter of driving each exploit forward by the undiluted force of his own personality. Whatever the limitations of those around them—however short they might fall of the standards he needed and demanded—his was a single-minded determination that could not and would not be discouraged by any eventuality. Short and slight of stature though he was, those who knew him described a man obsessed with honor and pride, determined always to improve his status in life. Powerfully driven, at odds with himself and with the world around him, he burned with a fire that caused as much harm to himself as to those who came too near. Such men draw other men—and women—always to their sides, and must not be judged too harshly by us for the scars inflicted by their brightness.
While anchored off the Kerry coast of Ireland, 23 British crewmen deserted him. By the time he had rounded the north and eastern coasts of Scotland, his flotilla had lost all cohesion and the accompanying vessels drifted in and out of sight of the flagship in pursuit of bounty and enemy merchant ships to capture. Most worrying of all was the on-off presence of the Alliance, captained by an unpredictable Frenchman named Pierre Landais who was to prove to be, in more ways than one, a loose cannon.
Undaunted by his diminished resources, Paul Jones menaced the towns on either side of Scotland’s Firth of Forth before sailing south to contemplate an attack on Newcastle. Then, in the last week of September, he struck maritime gold. Off Flamborough Head on the Yorkshire coast of England, he ran across a Baltic convoy—41 merchant ships stuffed with bounty and escorted by two British warships, the 44-gun frigate Serapis and the 20-gun sloop-of-war the Countess of Scarborough. The action that followed, a dance of death between two ill-matched warships, was one of the most ferocious duels of the sea ever fought.
Richard Pearson, captain of the Serapis, was already on the lookout for the “pirate” John Paul Jones. He was confident of his abilities, those of his crew—and most importantly of his newly copper-bottomed warship. This process had the double bonus of protecting the hull from infestation by barnacles and weeds while simultaneously making the ship much faster through the water. Speed of maneuver might mean everything in any battle to come. His first sight of the American came at around one o’clock in the afternoon of September 23, and he immediately ordered his men to “clear the decks” for action. A ship of war needed ten times as many men to fight her than to sail her—and the gun decks were crowded as a result. When battle drew near, it was vital to stow away all the moveable stuff—hammocks, tables, personal items and the like—to give the gun crews room to work. Sawdust was then scattered over the planking to give better grip for bare-footed men and to soak up their blood.
The ships of the convoy had taken their own emergency action—beating i
nshore to take shelter under the walls of Scarborough Castle on the cliffs high above. Word of a fight quickly spread ashore and crowds of locals began to gather for a grandstand view of a battle that would long outlive them in the memories of two nations.
As was so often the way of war at sea in the days of great ships of the line, the opening feints and moves were slow as molasses—an agony both to watch and to be a part of. From first sighting the British warships, it took Paul Jones more than three hours to close the handful of miles separating him from his prey. If the Baltic convoy was to be his, he would first have to take or destroy its escort—and it was on the Serapis that he set his sights. Immaculately turned out in his uniform as always, and constantly to the fore among his men, he cajoled and bullied them by turns.