Jones, John Paul (Paul Jones) (1747–1792)
Scottish-American naval officer
John Paul Jones was born the son of a gardener at
Arbigland, near Kirkbean in Kirkcudbrightshire on
the Solway Firth, Scotland, on 6 July 1747. He was
christened Paul Jones, although during his life he
took the names of John Paul, John Jones, Captain
Paul, Captain John Paul Jones, and even Kontradmi-
ral Pavel Ivanonich Jones—all names documented by
historian Samuel Eliot Morison in his biography of
Jones. Apprenticed as a merchant seaman to one John
Younger, Jones went to America in 1759 to visit his
brother William, a tailor who had moved to the colony
of Virginia. When Younger released him from his ap-
prenticeship in 1766, Jones’s love of the sea led him to
enter the British navy with the rank of midshipman.
However, he soon resigned, and records show that he
then commanded a slave ship in the waters off Jamaica.
After giving up this trade, he returned to Scotland,
but during the journey home, the ship’s captain died,
and Jones, an experienced seaman, took command for
the remainder of the voyage. At sea, he was forced to
flog the ship’s carpenter for some crime, and the man
died from his injuries. When he arrived in Scotland,
Jones was arrested for murder, but he was allowed to
return to Jamaica to obtain proof of his innocence. In
Tobago, his crew mutinied, and in a pitched battle he
killed the ringleader. With two murder charges now
hanging on him, Jones decided not to return to his
homeland and, changing his name to John Paul Jones,
fled to the English colonies. Historians believe that
Jones had met Joseph Hewes, a revolutionary from the
colony of North Carolina, who convinced him that
freedom from English law could be had by helping the
American colonies fight for their independence from
England.
Jones’s knowledge of the Bahamas proved use-
ful to the revolutionaries when he was sent there in
March 1776 to help capture the port of New Provi-
dence from British forces. He was made commander
of the ship Alfred, the lead ship of the fleet that sailed
into the Bahamas under the command of Commodore
Esek Hopkins. The city was taken with little difficulty,
leaving a great supply of ordnance to fall into the
colonists’ hands. Hopkins then gave command of the
sloop Providence to Jones, and on 8 August 1776 he
was confirmed to the rank of captain by a marine com-
mittee in Philadelphia. His main mission was to cruise
from Bermuda north to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland,
Canada; along the way, he captured eight British ships
and sank eight more. Upon returning from this mis-
sion in October 1776, he was transferred to the com-
mand of the Alfred and sent back to the coast off Nova
Scotia; again, he attacked and sank a number of Brit-
ish ships.
On 14 June 1777, Jones was named by the Conti-
nental Congress to the command of the newly built pri-
vateer Ranger. He immediately sailed for France on word
of the surrender of British general John burgoyne at
Saratoga, hoping to obtain a large frigate being built in
Amsterdam for the colonists. However, Burgoyne had
not surrendered, and the Netherlands hastily transferred
the frigate to France, which refused to let Jones have
her. He received permission from the American lega-
tion in Paris to sail up the Irish Sea and attack British
shipping, and in the ensuing mission he captured sev-
eral ships, sank several more, and shelled the town of
Whitehaven. On 23 April 1778, he landed on St. Mary’s
Island in Scotland’s Solway Firth, in an attempt to seize
Lord Thomas Douglas, earl of Selkirk, and use him as
a hostage. Selkirk was away from home, so sailors from
Jones’s ship snatched a silver plate from his residence,
an item that was later returned to Selkirk’s wife with
Jones’s regrets. The following day, off the coast of what
is now Northern Ireland, he was attacked by the British
ship Drake, and in the subsequent clash the Americans
inflicted 42 casualties on the British and sailed off in
victory. Known as the Battle of Carrickfergus, this was
the first defeat of a British warship by an American naval
craft. Jones returned to France as a hero, but he was
asked to turn over control of his ship to a subordinate
and await new orders, which did not come for several
months.
In August 1779, Jones sailed from France as the
commander of the Bonhomme Richard, with a number
of smaller ships as part of his battle group, including the
Alliance, the Pallas, and the Vengeance. (Jones later wrote
that he named his ship in honor of Benjamin Franklin,
the writer of Poor Richard’s Almanack, one of the lead-
ing news journals in the colonies.) Several prizes were
taken, but an attack on the Scottish port of Leith was
abandoned because of bad weather. It was on 23 Sep-
tember 1779 that Jones entered naval and military his-
tory. Off Flamborough, England, his fleet intercepted JoneS, John pAul