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Biographical Notes
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John Paul Jones
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Pierre Landais, a French citizen, captained the Alliance, a frigate attached to Jones squadron. Landais and Jones disagreed as to the objective of their mission. Landais favored taking prizes and Jones favored attacking Royal Navy ships and the British homeland. Command relationships and the mission objective were not clearly delineated in their orders and the two men quarreled from the very start of the cruise. From that point on the Alliance operated independently of Jones. Two other ships in his squadron were also captained by French officers and were only marginally more willing to follow orders. On September 14, 1779, Jones attempted to attack the city of Leith, near Edinburgh, but was driven off by unfavorable weather. On September 23, Jones and his small squadron engaged HMS Serapis, a forty-four gun frigate accompanied by the armed sloop Countess of Scarborough. Jones' squadron played no positive role in the ensuing battle and Landais even fired into the Bonhomme Richard during the height of the engagement. It was a bitter fight during which the captain of the Serapis, Richard Pearson, asked Jones if he would surrender. Today no one knows for certain the exact words of Jones' reply, but legend has it that he said "I have not yet begun to fight." In the end it was Pearson who surrendered. Bonhomme Richard sank soon after the fighting ended and Jones transferred his command to the Serapis. He eluded British ships sent out to capture him and succeeded in reaching the neutral port of Amsterdam safely on October 3.
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Once again Jones and his crew were received as heros, but after vigorous British diplomatic effort, the Dutch demanded that the Americans leave Amsterdam. All of the ships under Jones' command were placed under French flag except the Alliance. Jones was given that ship and ordered to sea where a British squadron led by a seventy-four gun ship-of-the-line waited for him. On December 26, 1779, he managed to elude the British ships and make his way back to France. In France he spent a great deal of time trying to get his men properly fed, adequately clothed, and paid their prize money. He was feted as a hero, but was notably unsuccessful in meeting the needs of his crew. On May 1, 1780, he joined the prestigious Masonic Lodge of Nine Sisters in Paris. Its members included Voltaire and Franklin. He was honored by King Louis XVI and had a bust sculpted by Houdon. Although he never married he was interested in women all of his life, but never more so than during this period in Paris. He was the darling of society and is thought to have had intimate liaisons with a number of prominent ladies. During this time he also ran into Captain Landais who challenged him to a duel, but Jones dodged and refused to accept the challenge. The crew of the Alliance felt that Jones had abandoned them and in July 1780 sailed for America with Landais as their captain. Jones was in a position to have blocked the Alliance from leaving France, but he did not act.
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In the fall, Jones was given a small French frigate - the Ariel, and ordered to carry badly needed supplies to America for Washington's army. He sailed in early October, 1780, but a severe storm nearly wrecked the ship off the coast of Brittany and he was forced to return to port. The Ariel was severely damaged, but no one had been lost and Jones was credited with having saved the ship and their lives. He refitted the Ariel and, on December 18, sailed once again for America. In January, in the West Indies, Jones forced the British privateer Triumph to surrender, but was unable to keep her from escaping him. He arrived in Philadelphia on January 18, 1781. In Philadelphia he was accused of delaying delivery of vital military supplies, but he successfully shifted the blame to Landais, who had gone mad during his voyage from France in the Alliance. Jones lobbied hard for promotion to admiral and command of America's first ship-of-the-line - the seventy-four gun America. He irritated a number of influential people and was ultimately unsuccessful in both endeavors. In October 1781, General Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown. Unable to get a ship of his own before the war was over Jones, with the permission of Congress, volunteered to pilot a French fleet in the Caribbean, but the war ended before they were able to attack the British. Jones returned to Philadelphia as a hero, was inducted into the Society of Cincinnati, but was unable to convince a Congress strapped of funds to let him build a strong navy.
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On November 10, 1784, Jones sailed for Paris in an attempt to obtain the funds due him for prizes captured by the Bonhomme Richard five years earlier. On the way to Paris he made a brief clandestine visit to London to deliver secret dispatches to Minister John Adams even though the British were still eager to capture the "pirate" John Paul Jones. In Paris, in December, he was well received and met with King Louis XVI, but was unable to obtain the funds that he sought. The French government, approaching the revolution, was close to bankruptcy. About the only thing that he was able to accomplish was the return of Lord Selkirk's silver. He attempted to get a naval command in the French Navy, but failed and eventually decided to return to America. In New York in 1787 he was recognized as a great patriot, but was still unable to satisfy his naval aspirations. At the end of the year he returned to Paris where Minister Thomas Jefferson suggested that he join the Russian Navy. Catherine, the Tsarina of Russia, was preparing to go to war with Turkey and wanted Jones to command a fleet in the Black Sea. In 1788 Admiral Jones participated in a clash between the Turkish and Russian fleets but had not been given overall command. Jones and his fellow commanders did not get along well and the overall commander, Potemkin, eventually had Catherine transfer Jones out of the way. As a face saving gesture he was given command of the Northern Fleet which was icebound in the Baltic. Jones went to St. Petersburg to lobby with Catherine. Soon thereafter he was accused of having raped a ten year old German girl.
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In 1789 Jones cleared himself of the accusations of rape, but was unable to regain Catherine's favor. He was placed on two years leave and encouraged to leave Russia. For the next several years he traveled widely and in 1790 was back in Paris. The ancien regime had been destroyed and Louis XVI was under house arrest, but the Marquis de Lafayette was still in favor. Lafayette and the rest of Paris ignored Jones. The American Minister in Paris, Gouvenor Morris, found Jones a burden. Jones became despondent and ill. On July 18, 1792, Morris helped Jones make his will. Jones died that night. Members of the French National Assembly quietly buried Jones in a Protestant cemetary on the outskirts of Paris. In the early twentieth century his remains were moved to an elaborate tomb beneath the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, Maryland.
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