New Command for John Paul Jones–October 27, 1776

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.

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