Once a Virginian Invaded Britain

John Paul Jones Was Little Fellow, a Sailor at 12,
the Friend of Great Men Before 30 and He Feared Nothing

By John T. Goolrick

The two officers in the practically unknown uniform of the Continental Navy sat in the little French cafe sipping rumpunch and looking at no one. There were only a few casual wine drinkers who strayed in to look at them, because all Brest had gone to the dock to gaze in astonishment at a British man o' war brought in captive by an American ship, a strange sight, indeed, when England in actuality ruled the sea.

Of those who turned their eyes toward the table, each saw a small man, resplendent in a gold embroidered uniform and lace, and gangling Yankee first mate whose furbishings were as sea worn as his face. All present, including the landlord, stared in amazement when the small man arose, overturning the table, and with no preliminaries set terrier like upon a great hulk of a fellow who had just come in, striking viciously, knocking the big man down, and throwing him out, afterward returning to a table to which he carefully brought other glasses of punch for himself and his companion, which they sipped quietly.

"The man he beat" afterward wrote the first mate, Nathaniel Fanning of Connecticut, "was of large dimensions, weighing 200 pounds, and whom he accused of spying. I have never seen a man hit so hard or so fast. He could do more damage in a second than another man could in a minute."

Brest Awed by His Pirate Reputation

The captain and Mate Fanning pushed later through the crowd at the docks near His Majesty's ship, the Drake, and onward to the Ranger. Captain Jones walked erect as a man who had pride and cared not who knew it. He was slender, well build, five feet seven inches tall, with dark brown hair and darker eyes and he wore a three-cornered blue hat with a gold hand about it, a blue coat faced with red, slashed cuffs, a linen collar from which there cascaded a white silk stocking, and on his shoes silver buckles. Upon his shoulders were gold epaulets and at his side hung a gold trimmed sword scabbard. Even the buttonholes of his coat were embroidered with gold thread.

As he passed, puzzled onlookers said: "It is Paul Jones, the Pirate" and whispered tales of him, and of how had had harried British shipping and taken the Drake in a desperate battle in which the odds were against him. They wondered at him, for over Europe already stories of him were being told, and always he was a swashbuckler, a ship suttler with a knife in his mouth and a red handkerchief about his forehead. All of Europe was in time to hear, the tales of his piracy and some of it was to be amazed at his appearance.

Perhaps that night it was that Jones told something of his past, for Fanning afterward knew much of him, as did Benjamin Franklin to whom he wrote in a curious letter the story of his life, in part. No one ever knew it all.

Born in Arbigland, Scotland in 1847, at 12 this son of a gardener was a sailor before the mast, ignorant and poor. It happened that his ship came to America and, deserting on the lower Rappahannock, so tradition says, he made his way to Fredericksburg in Virginia--"The country of my fond election"--, where he found a home in the humble place where lived his brother, William Paul the tailor, for whom John delivered clothes and stitched garments.

There he met such men as George Washington, George Mason, Fielding Lewis, Hugh Mercer, George Weedon, and the Lees, when they came up from the Northern Neck to get William to make them clothes, and although this ignorant little boy in a new land must have stood far off from them his quick mind learned much. Probably there were sown in him the seeds of the love of liberty that made him later the greatest American sea fighter.

But the tall spars of the ships which lay in the river opposite Mrs. Washington's farm called to him, and at 17 he was away to sea again. Two years of his time were as first mate of a slaver, and aboard this ship in the harbor of Scarborough on the Island of Tobago he killed Mungo Maxwell, a sailor whom he said was mutinous, a crime that hung over him until long afterward, when he was tried and cleared. Back in the same harbor again, two years later he drove his sword through another sailor whom he claimed was mutinous and whom, he related strangely, assaulted him and drove him back until an open hatch behind him stopped his retreat, when the sailor rushed upon the sword and impaled himself. Two men killed in port, even in Tobago, was too much, and Paul's friend, Governor Young, advised him to "retire to the continent of America and remain incog." There was a lapse in his life history from now on for some time, when he was again found resident at his brother William's house in Fredericksburg, being now, however, "Mr. J. P. Jones."

Sailed First Stars and Stripes Across Atlantic

William died in 1773, leaving nothing to John, who erected a stone over his brother's grave, and who later was described by the courts that settled the estate in Norfolk as "A citizen of Virginia and a resident of Fredericksburg." His brother having left him nothing, Jones went North where, after rebuffs enough, he was appointed a lieutenant in the Continental Navy, among the first, and the first to raise the original flag with the coiled snake and "Don't Tread on Me." Nevertheless, favorites were placed ahead of him until he stood last on the list of lieutenants. When he protested, John Hancock asked Jones to leave his commission with him to be shown the committee, and then lost the commission, and Jones remained eighteenth. He was a subordinate with no real command. Sent to sea with three ships the best of which hadn't a quarter deck fit for a sailor's feet, he sailed to Canadian waters, burned shipping in two harbors, drove a small British fleet from American waters, burned a British transport, captured 10,000 British uniforms, sank two brigs of war, and was back in America in 60 days. Were it not of record it would be unbelievable.

Despite which he was left in port idle and fuming, now a captain, the highest rank America ever gave him, until 1777, when the politicians, possibly to get rid of him, gave him the little Ranger, over which he hoisted the first Stars and Stripes and sailed for foreign waters with no authentic orders. He crowded on sail through a battering sea, stopping to sink two British ships, and when he crew demurred at his recklessness he answered, "She'll carry this sail in or carry it down." In 32 squally days he was in France, flying the first Stars and Stripes that ever crossed the ocean.

George Washington later said that John Paul Jones was not only a sea genius, but that he understood diplomatic relations. The captain exhibited this, long before Washington said it, of course, by sailing for the Bay of Quiberon where he demanded and received from the French Admiral La Motte Piquet the first salute to the American flag. Satisfied, Jones swept now along the British coast, took the British ships Dolphin and Lord Chatham, and on April 2 1778, landed on British soil at Whitehaven, the first foreigner in centuries to put hostile foot on British shores. He fired the shipping and docks, captured the English soldiers on sentry, and reached his ship, unharmed, with his landing crew. Next day he was ashore at Arbigland, the place where he was born, upon the estate where his father the gardener for Lord Selkirk, whose place he raided, seizing the silver plate, setting the docks afire, burning the shipping. The shadow of the smoke reached England and she sent out the best of her fleet to seize him, but before it arrived Jones had put into port in France.

Little Fleet Deserts Bon Homme Richard

This was what, in part, lay behind John Paul Jones the day he engaged in fisticuffs with the Englishman he called a spy. Much more lay before him.

France, and Benjamin Franklin, who wrote of him; "When face to face with him neither man nor I am told, woman, can resist the strange magnetism of his presence, the indescribable charm of his manner," knew his qualities better than America. It was the King of France, who gave him a gold sword of which, Jones later said "I am the only man who wears a gold sword given to him in person by the King of France," who also gave him a ship and procured funds to remodel it. When this was done, when she was ready for sea and the workmen had laid down their tools and the riggers had gone home, she was christened the "Bon Homme Richard" after Dr. Franklin, and set sail for the sea.

The Bon Homme Richard was no beauty and she went upon a mad quest, with madmen in the fleet accompanying her and deserters and mutineers aboard. The crew were French, American, Malay and Portuguese wharf rats. With the Bon Homme sailed the little ships Cerf, Pallas, Monsieur, Gambrille, Vengance, and the more fit Alliance, whose captain was a traitor, Jones started for Liverpool upon the project, wild except that Jones had done things as reckless, of seizing the docks and burning the shipping. But he captured two prizes and with these the Monsieur and Cerf deserted back to France. The British seamen on the Bon Homme stole the captain's barge and put off, and when the Pallas was sent to take them she sailed over the horizon never to return. The Gambrille tacked away and disappeared, and behind her the best of the smaller ships, the Alliance, also took off. She was to return, with bad results for Captain Jones.

A lesser man might have been discouraged, but when near night the sails of two man o' war loomed against the sky and the lookout made them out to be His Majesty's Serapis and Countess of Scarborough, Captain Jones sailed cheerfully into them. Either was equal or superior to the Bon Homme Richard but the little captain was untroubled. "I want tall spars" he had said when the Richard was remodeled "because I intend to go in harms way."

"It is probably Jaul Jones" said the British captain of the Serapis. "If so there's work ahead."

They clashed at night under the moon, with bellowing guns, at close quarters. Against the two ships Jones maneuvered for an hour, when the Alliance came in sight to cheer up the American crew. But the insane Landias only sailed the Alliance close and fired a broadside into his companion ship, the Richard, and sailed away again.

Twice Jones led boarding parties that were driven back. He grappled with the Serapis, the Scarborough now being partly disabled, and they fought across the taffrails. The hull of the Richard was riddled, the rigging fell, the hold filled with water, dead and wounded littered the decks and a traitor released an hundred British prisoners who added confusion to the will scene. Fire broke out aft and the ensign was shot down, seeing which the British captain called:

"Have you struck?"

To which Jones answered:

"No Sir. I have just begun to fight."

Muskets and cutlasses played and Jones led a last boarding party across the Serapis' taffrail, when the British ship was surrendered. Just a little later the Bon Homme Richard sunk, riddled with cannon balls. Later, at an investigation, Captain Pearson of the Scarborough said.

"Captain Jones won the victory by his will power alone."

Leaving behind a Davy Jones' locker the Good Ship Richard and 800 of his own and the British crews, Jones sailed to Texel, Holland from where the echo of his victory spread rapidly to France and over Europe. England wished to revenge the audacity of Jones and outside Texel she placed a large fleet, while neutral Holland, after a few days must order Jones out. It was his luck that a terrific gal swept down the channel, driving the British fleet into safe harbors, and into this John Paul Jones sailed with his single ship, suppers awash, past the harbor--locked English fleet, past the Downs, out to the open sea. As his craft tossed precariously through the thundering waves of the channel a British captain in the harbor looked from the port hole and said, "Mad; Quite Mad"

Congress Rewards Valor By "Investigation"

He made now a last voyage for America, capturing 12 ships which he burned. He had taken in all 60 British vessels, more than a million dollars in supplies, destroyed 10 times that amount, captured 1,500 British seamen, and four times invaded Britain, as a reward for which his country called him back for congressional investigation. Before the committee he said, "I came as a youth to Virginia, of which I am a citizen. I entered and fought in the Continental Navy. If I have done ought wrong let it be made clear."

After a single day he was cleared with honor and Congressman Varnum of Massachusetts afterward wrote: "There is a magic about his way and manner. Whatever he said carried conviction. He made himself master of the situation. At the end the committee felt honored for the privilege of hearing him."

John Paul Jones at that time was just passed 32 years old. He had served in the Continental Navy less than three years.

Found Body Under Laundry Refuse Pile

One hundred and eight years later Ambassador Porter began to look for his body and after six years found it in a leaden coffin, under the stable and refuse of a laundry. It was brought back amid fleet of warships and at Annapolis the President and great men eulogized the memory of the little sea fighter. But even then the strange fate which would have hurt him worse than all else followed the vain little man, for his coffin was placed behind a door and forgotten for several years more. Then some one remembered and his country reared above his remains a monument of marble and porphyry fit to honor any hero.

Half the world still regards him as a bold pirate. But of him the Duchess of Chartres said, "Not Bayard, or Charles le Tamaire, could lay his helmet at a lady's feet with half so knightly grace." He himself wrote to Catherine, "Far from being bloodthirsty, I am the most peaceable of men. I was no made to be a soldier or sailor, but for quiet and love."

Mrs. John Adams, whose husband was not by any means Jones' friend, wrote of him, "He is small, well proportioned, soft of voice, and vastly civil. He understands all about a lady's toilette and what perfumes she should use. Under all this he is bold, enterprising, ambitious, and a favorite among French ladies. I should sooner think of wrapping him in cotton wool and putting him to bed than of sending him out to contend with cannon balls." One begins to think that, perhaps Mrs. Adams was falling under the charm of his "indescribable manner."

His worth was gauged by one man whose star rose when Jones' star had set, On St. Helena Napoleon said:

"How old was Paul Jones when he died?"

He was told 37.

"Had he lived" Napoleon said, "He would have been Admiral of France."