“I have not yet begun to fight!” shouted John Paul Jones when the captain of the 50-gun British frigate HMS Serapis taunted him to surrender.
Their ships were so close their cannons scraped and masts entangled, yet his American ship Bonhomme Richard, named for Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, refused to give up.
When two cannons exploded and his ship began sinking, John Paul Jones lashed his ship to the enemy’s to keep it afloat.
After 3 more hours of fighting, the British surrendered.
This battle took place SEPTEMBER 23, 1779.
Called the “Father of the American Navy,” John Paul Jones commanded the Continental Navy’s first ship, Providence, in 1775.
With 12 guns, it was the most victorious American vessel in the Revolution, capturing or sinking 40 British ships.
In 1778, sailing the Ranger, Jones raided the coasts of Scotland and England, striking terror and panic into the British Isles.
Just after midnight, April 23, 1778, Jones raided the British town of Whitehaven, and spiked the town’s big defensive cannons to prevent them being fired.
Jones sailed to Scotland, and seized a silver plate, adorned with the family emblem, from the estate of the Earl of Selkirk, who lived on St Mary’s Isle near Kirkcudbright.
For decades, British children would be scared hearing tales of the “pirate” John Paul Jones.
After the Revolution, in 1788, Jefferson arranged for John Paul Jones to fight for Russia’s Catherine the Great in the second Russo-Turkish War, repulsing the Muslim Ottoman Turks on the Black Sea.
In his Narrative of the Battle, titled Campaign of the Liman, John Paul Jones recorded victoriously sailing his 24-gun flagship Vladimir against the Turks near the Dnieper River.
Shortly before he died, Jones was appointed as a U.S. Consul in Paris to negotiate the release of captured U.S. Navy officers held in the Muslim dungeons of Algiers.
On February 13, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote:
“The remains of Admiral John Paul Jones were interred in a certain piece of ground in the city of Paris…used…as a burial place for foreign Protestants…
The great service done by him toward the achievement of independence…lead me to…do proper honor to the memory of John Paul Jones.”
His remains were placed in the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, where they are guarded 24 hours a day.
William J. Federer is a nationally known speaker, best-selling author, and president of Amerisearch, Inc., a publishing company dedicated to researching America’s noble heritage.
To learn more about the author please visit William Federer
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