The first naval hero makes a long voyage home
Every schoolchild knows the story: An embattled captain of a
sinking ship is called upon to surrender. He whirls to see his deck
littered with the bodies of seamen and his sails in tatters, then
roars his answer.
”
Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight!
”
The first naval hero makes a long voyage home
Every schoolchild knows the story: An embattled captain of a sinking ship is called upon to surrender. He whirls to see his deck littered with the bodies of seamen and his sails in tatters, then roars his answer. “Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight!”
Two hours later John Paul Jones accepts the sword of the commander of The Serapis, and moves his crewmen aboard as The Bonhomme Richard sinks. The United States Navy is victorious in its first major battle.
John Paul Jones offered his experience as a ship’s officer to the Continental Congress when the American Revolution started and won a lieutenant’s commission.
John Paul (the Jones was added later while seeking a new identity following a mutineer’s death) was born on July 6, 1747 in Scotland, the son of a gardener. From early childhood he was adventurous and at 12 ran away to sea.
His new career fitted him perfectly. He was brave and a quick learner and by 21 commanded his own vessel. In quelling a mutiny in Tobago, he ran a sailor through who was advancing on him with a bludgeon.
He fled to Virginia and added the name Jones to avoid detection. When the colonies seceded from England, Jones got a lieutenant’s commission and commanded several ships before the fight with The Serapis at Flamborough Head off Yorkshire.
The Serapis raked his ship with cannon fire but even while The Bonhomme Richard was on fire and sinking, Jones grappled it to the other ship and fired at its masts until the English captain surrendered.
He commanded other ships but was often in disputes with junior officers. After the Revolution, Commodore Jones offered his services to Catherine II and became a rear admiral in the Russian navy. He repelled the Turks at the Battle of Liman and won much glory but made an enemy of a Russian prince who put an end to his career.
Jones next went to Paris where he died on July 18, 1789 even as a commission to make him US Consul at Algiers was on its way.
For more than a century his adopted country largely forgot him until American Ambassador Horace Porter became obsessed with finding his burial place. After several years, Porter was successful and the body was exhumed.
President Theodore Roosevelt saw it as a wonderful opportunity to show off the Great White Fleet and a convoy of American ships sailed to France and brought him home. On April 24, 1906, at Annapolis, the President, most Cabinet members and scores of senators and representatives gathered to pay him honor.
For nearly seven years the coffin sat on two sawhorses in Bancroft Hall while the tomb was under construction. Then a reporter scandalized the nation with a story about the neglect of the naval hero, and funds were hastily appropriated to finish it. He was re-interred in special ceremonies at Annapolis where today sailors stand constant vigil around the first great hero of the American Navy.
