JONES, JOHN PAUL (1747–1792). Born in Scotland, John Paul went
to sea as an apprentice at age twelve. After inheriting property in Virginia,
he added “Jones” to his name and became a lieutenant in the Continental
navy in 1775. His was the first vessel to fly the Continental flag. After reporting to the commissioners at Paris, Jones raided British ports, harried
British shipping, and captured ships, including the warship Drake. Given a
worn-out merchantman, he renamed it Bonhomme Richard* in honor of
Benjamin Franklin and captured seventeen prizes off the coasts of Ireland
and Scotland in 1779. His attack on a large British convoy escorted by the
frigate Serapis* and a smaller warship began a famous naval battle. He refused to surrender even when his outclassed ship was on fire, uttering a line
that became famous: “I have not yet begun to fight.” Finally victorious, he
took enough prisoners to exchange for all the Americans then in British
prisons.
After the Revolution, Jones worked to get his crew and himself paid for
the prizes they had taken. With Thomas Jefferson’s blessing, he briefly commanded the fleet of Catherine the Great in the Russo-Turkish War of 1788–
1789. He had just been appointed to negotiate for the release of Americans
captured by Algerian pirates when he died in Paris. Jones appears as a character in James Fenimore Cooper’s* novel The Pilot* (1824) and in Herman
Melville’s* novel Israel Potter (1855).
Cooper’s biography of Jones, written with the aid of Jones’ niece, was
printed in his Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers (1846). Samuel
Eliot Morison’s 1959 biography ignored Cooper’s work and reproduced
errors coming from the work of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie* (1841), commander of the Somers.* Other biographical material is found in Anna De
Koven, Life and Letters of John Paul Jones (1913), F. A. Golder, John Paul
Jones in Russia (1927), Lincoln Lorenz, John Paul Jones (1943), and Gerald
W. Johnson, The First Captain (1947).