John Paul Jones: one of America's earliest naval heroes

Portrait by Charles Wilson Peale

John Paul Jones, the most famous American naval commander of the Revolutionary War, was born on this date in 1747 in Kirkbean, Scotland. As the Naval History and Heritage Command says on its web site, Jones “went to sea as a youth, and was a merchant shipmaster by the age of twenty-one. Having taken up residence in Virginia, he volunteered early in the War of Independence to serve in his adopted country's infant navy." 

Jones “took the war to the enemy's homeland with daring raids along the British coast and the famous victory of the Bonhomme Richard over HMS Serapis," according to the web site. "After the Bonhomme Richard began taking on water and fires broke out on board, the British commander asked Jones if he had struck his flag. Jones replied, ‘I have not yet begun to fight!’ In the end, it was the British commander who surrendered.”

"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast for I intend to go in harm's way," Jones once said.

Less well-known are the facts surrounding Jones’ death and burial.

Jone settled in Paris in 1790, where he died in his apartment on April 18, 1792. He was buried in a Paris cemetery that was later sold and forgotten. Fast forward to 1905, when the U.S. ambassador to France, Gen. Horace Porter, finally found Jones’ remains following an exhaustive six-year search.

“Remarkably, his corpse, which had been wrapped in a winding cloth and placed in straw and alcohol in a tightly sealed lead casket, was nearly perfectly preserved,” the U.S. Naval Academy reports on its web site. “He was taken to the University of Paris where a complete autopsy was performed. There the head of the corpse was compared to the sculptured portrait bust of Jones executed in 1780 by Jean Antoine Houdon, who had taken a plaster impression directly for his subjects's head. The autopsy and forensic study proved conclusively that the body was John Paul Jones. He had died of the kidney ailment nephritis, complicated by pneumonia.” 

Jones returned to the United States aboard the USS Brooklyn, which was escorted by three other cruisers. As the Brooklyn approached American waters, several American battleships joined the squadron. His remains are now interred in an imposing crypt in the chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

The sarcophagus weighs 21 tons and is surrounded by columns of black and white Royal Pyrenees marble, the Naval Academy explains on its web site. The tomb “is supported by bronze dolphins and is embellished with cast garlands of bronze sea plants. Inscribed in set-in brass letters around the base of the tomb are the names of the Continental Navy ships commanded by John Paul Jones during the American Revolution: Providence, Alfred, Ranger, Bonhomme Richard, Serapis, Alliance and Ariel.”