Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (5 page)

John Paul Jones and the Birth of the US Navy

Every year, in June, a United States Navy man-o’-war drops anchor outside the gray harbor walls of a quiet little town on the northwest corner of England. Then a delegation of her sailors, their milk-white dress uniforms as dazzling as freshly capped teeth against the gunmetal tones of their surroundings, boards a smaller vessel that brings them through the harbor mouth and up to a sheltered berth. They are expected, and no paperwork or payment is required by the harbormaster for their stay. From the quayside above comes a cheerful call of “Welcome to Whitehaven” from a smiling local dignitary. The sailors mount the worn stone steps and are accompanied to a ceremony held in their honor. Usually, weather in that part of England being what it is, a gentle, steady rain falls throughout the formalities, drumming a soft tattoo on the specially erected canopy above their heads. On behalf of the people of the United States of America they hear that they are welcome friends and guests and that they enjoy “the freedom of the harbor.” The first time this ceremony was held, in 1999, the assembled Marines listened while a proclamation was read out. It formally forgave the US Navy for a raid on the town carried out by a few hundred of their ancestors in 1778 (the intention that evening, in fact, had been to raze the place to the ground, leaving nothing but charred embers). The document was then signed by representatives of both sides and copies were sent as far as the desk of President Bill Clinton and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. This little town, with a population today of around 25,000 souls, therefore has good reason to remember the American Revolutionary War (or the American War of Independence, as it’s still known by most people in these parts). For the conflict that gave birth to a nation was brought to Whitehaven on the night of April 23, 1778, by one of its own sons—a man remembered in America as Commodore John Paul Jones, father and founder
of the US Navy—and in Great Britain as a gardener’s son, traitor and pirate from Arbigland Estate, Kirkbean, southwest Scotland.

“I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.”

John Paul Jones

The mortal remains of the rebel warrior are interred in the chapel at Annapolis within a magnificent marble sarcophagus modeled on that of Emperor Napoleon of France himself. But the near-mythical figure named and remembered there with every conceivable honor as Commodore John Paul
Jones
was born plain John Paul, the son of the head gardener on the quiet Scottish estate of Arbigland, in the parish of Kirkbean. The explanation for his decision to add that extra surname lies tangled amid the knot formed of the many interwoven threads of this still enigmatic man.

He was born on July 6, 1747, the fourth of seven children for John Paul senior and his wife Jean Duff. His elder brother William emigrated to Fredericksburg, Virginia, as a young man, and so by the time young John set about traveling the world as an apprentice seaman, there was already a family connection to the New World.

John Paul began his life before the mast in 1761, at the age of 13, when he boarded the local coastal sloop at the nearby port of Carsethorn, bound for Whitehaven, 25 miles further south round the coast. Once there, he signed on for seven years’ service with the
Friendship
, and his early voyages took him to Barbados, and also to Virginia. There he was able to meet and spend time with his brother, who by then had established himself as a tailor and gentleman’s outfitter of some esteem.

No allowance whatsoever was made for ship’s boys like young John in the seafaring world of the 18th, or indeed of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Like the British Royal Navy’s greatest hero
Admiral Horatio Nelson, John Paul could rely on no proud family name to ensure a leg-up or special treatment in time of need. Nelson was the son of a country parson and as boys both he and the gardener’s son Paul would have experienced much the same in the way of grinding physical hardship and exposure to lethal danger. There was no comfort to be had for lost and lonely little boys, no quarter extended for seasickness or homesickness, or fear—or any other of the host of miseries attending those teetering on the brink of manhood. They either learned the ropes, quite literally, finding ways to take care of themselves, or fell by the wayside. If they survived and flourished, though, then they were often imbued by the experience with a self-reliance that would serve them well.

The
Friendship
was a brig weighing 179 tons and crewed by 28 men. Ongoing war with France and, therefore, the ever-present threat of piracy by French privateers, made it essential for merchant vessels of all kinds to be able to defend themselves, and she bore a total of 18 guns. Paul sailed with her on numerous voyages—back and forth across the Atlantic to Barbados (surely unimaginably exotic for a boy from rainy southwest Scotland) and up and down the eastern seaboard of the Americas—spending weeks and months at a time at William’s home in Fredericksburg. Paul’s love of the fledgling nation seems to have started at once. In later years, he would write that America was “…my favourite country from the age of 13 when I first saw it.” He was learning his trade all the while. (Nelson, too, spent time on a merchant ship in his youth and said he learned more there than on any ship of the Royal Navy.)

But by 1764 John Paul was back in Whitehaven and out of work. The
Friendship
had been sold to a new owner and, for whatever reason the boy parted company with her then. Later that year he joined a slave ship—a so-called “black-birder” named the
King George
—as third mate. Unspeakable conditions aboard such vessels, with their living cargo left to wallow helplessly for weeks in their
own filth, meant they could be smelled by the crews of other ships in open water from miles off. Nonetheless Paul stuck with it, spending two years with the
King George
before taking the post of first mate aboard a second slave ship, the
Two Friends,
sailing out of Kingston, Jamaica. Just 50 feet in length, she transported nearly 80 captive and chained Africans at a time. Sometime around the middle of 1767 Paul parted company with the
Two Friends
—and the slave trade—forever. In later years he would write about his revulsion at what he called “that abominable trade.” Abominable or not, he made his living at it for at least three years, suggesting that at the very least he had within himself the will to overlook the suffering of his fellow human beings when he deemed it necessary to his goals.

Before returning to Scotland aboard the merchant vessel the
John
in mid-1768, he spent the best part of a year in Jamaica. Among the many facets of the myth surrounding him is the rumour that he spent those months in Kingston employed as a Shakespearean actor! The truth of the matter is lost to history, but it’s known that in later years, John Paul the sea warrior was able—and happy—to quote from memory large chunks of Shakespeare’s plays.

The voyage home aboard the
John
was blighted by disease. Both ship’s master and mate, together with an unknown number of the crew, died of yellow fever. Rather than completing the trip as a passenger, John Paul had to take command of the vessel and see her safely home to the Scottish port of Kirkcudbright, not far from his own home port of Whitehaven. The
John
’s owners were impressed with their stand-in skipper and he was promptly given formal command of the vessel for its next voyage to America. Paul was just 21 years old—and yet he was now the captain of a trans-Atlantic merchant ship.

What he lacked in physical size—he was just five-foot-three-inches tall and slightly built—he seems to have made up for in charm, charisma and steel-hard determination. It was said by contempo
raries that he could carry himself in any company, that he was self-educated to a high standard, and that he was particularly well-liked by the women whose paths he crossed. As well as his likeable qualities, he was also possessed of a fiery temper—which in the long run would do him nearly as much harm as good. Like Nelson (11 years his junior) he had shown his leadership abilities at an early age—and won responsibility as a direct result. Also like Nelson, his ambition knew no bounds.

He continued to work as a ship’s captain and while in port around the Americas would undoubtedly have come into contact with officers of the British Royal Navy. What he made of any such encounters is not known, but by 1775 Paul had made a greater personal journey than would have been possible between any two points on the globe.

During his years as a captain he had caused—either by accident or design—the deaths of two crewmen. The killing in Tobago in October 1773 of the second—a mutinous “prodigious brute of thrice my strength” while captain of the
Betsy
—prompted him to make himself a fugitive from British justice. How he filled the intervening months and years is not clear, but at some point during his time on the run he made the British colonies of North America his adoptive home. It seems to have been during 1774 that he adopted the now famous “Jones” as his surname, and it was as John Jones that he witnessed the descent into war by his foster-brother colonists and their erstwhile masters in Great Britain. In any case, records show that it was in December of 1775—with the gunfire at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill still echoing around the world—that he accepted a commission as a lieutenant in the newly formed Continental Navy.

It is at this point in the story that perceptions of John Paul Jones, on either side of the Atlantic, begin sharply to diverge: in the USA a patriot and hero; in Britain a rebel at best and downright traitor
at worst. Perhaps, though, no such clear distinction is either required or deserved. Perhaps Paul Jones, as we must now call him, had not decided to split with the land of his birth or to turn his back on the Britain that bore him. Maybe his argument was not with anything as specific as the person of King George, his government or its soldiers and sailors, but with the broad and unbearable yoke of tyranny itself. Men of passion and principle down through the ages—and Scots hardly the least among them—have always bridled at the oppression of men by other men. Perhaps John Paul Jones took up arms in the oldest and noblest of causes—that of liberty for all.

The Continental Navy was not the first seagoing force employed by the colonists. None other than George Washington himself had seen the need for ways to challenge the might of His Majesty’s Royal Navy—and created the Army’s Navy in mid-1775 from a handful of commandeered fishing boats and merchant vessels. This slight force was replaced by the Continental Navy the following year—and Paul Jones soon demonstrated his abilities as a leader of its fighting men. To his bitter regret, however, he was routinely passed over for the senior positions he felt he deserved—and furthermore believed he had earned. Perhaps the fact that he was, after all, a foreigner by birth—a Brit—counted against him. Whatever the reason, his continued exclusion from the inner circle was to rankle with him for all of his life.

In August 1776 Paul Jones was awarded the rank of captain—the first recorded after the signing of the Declaration of Independence itself. In June 1777 he was given command of a 320-ton, 110-foot long sloop-of-war named the
Ranger.
In November he sailed her out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, en route to Europe and a place in history. He sailed first to France, then from the port of Brest up the Irish Sea—between the east coast of Ireland and the west coast of England—where he captured four merchant vessels.
But by April 23rd the
Ranger
was lurking in the darkness off the coast of Whitehaven. He was back.

There has never really been any suggestion that Paul Jones bore any kind of grudge against the town in which his apprenticeship as a seaman had begun all those years before. It seems most likely that he chose the port—at that time a rival to any on the west coast of England in terms of its importance to trade—simply because he knew it well and could penetrate the harbor with ease. Paul Jones was focused and determined—determined to cause as much damage and morale-sapping alarm as possible. His problems began and ended with the fact that his crewmen lacked his determination and his strength of character. Little better than mutinous, and motivated only by money, they had to be cajoled and threatened by Paul Jones before he could get them moving at all. This has often been the challenge for manly men—the need to lead those with no appetite to be led, and to do so by willpower alone.

A full trading fleet was moored in Whitehaven harbor that night, many of the ships heavily laden with coal. It was Paul Jones’s plan to attack the harbor with two raiding parties, overpower any defenses and set the flammable cargoes ablaze.