Book Review
John Paul Jones
By SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON
Published by Little, Brown and
Company
No character in naval history,
with the possible exception of
l^rd Nelson, has inspired as much
adulation and controversy as John
•Bod Jones. Eminent writers —
*■***£ them Herman Melville and
Bodyard Kipling — have based
■ovels and poems upon the back
gjroubd of his life. He has been
oatoaEvagantly praised by his ad*
and wholeheartedly con
doned by his critics; his flam
boyant pesonality has been drama
tized on the screen and on the
stage. But not since 1841, when
Lieutenant Alexander Slidell Mae
Kenzie, USN, published a bio
graphy of Jones, has a professional
naval historian attempted to write
a factual interpretation of his life
and career.
Now Samuel Eliot Morison of
fers an authoritative, scholarly,
but immensely readable account
of Jones, the man and the hero.
Born in Scotland in 1747 and
christened John Paul, Jones went
to sea at 13. He changed his name
to John Jones after killing a sailor
in self-defense. By the time he
received a commission in the Conti
nental Navy in 1775, he had as
sumed the name by which history
knows him—John Paul Jones.
From the date of his commis
sion until the end of the War for
Independence, Jones prowled the
seas, putting to rout the proud
navy of George III, seizing his
merchant ships, invading the very
isles of Britain, and achieving im
mortality with his great victory
in the battle between the Serapis
and the Bonhomme Richard, “a
naval combat the like of which has
never been fought before or since
. . . The better man, in command
of the worse ship, won.”
Ashore he was as triumphant
with the ladies, whether at home
or aboard. Yet after American
independence had been achieved
and he was serving as a command
er in the Russian fleet of Catherine
the Great, he was accused of the
rape of a 10-year-old St Petersburg
girl. Though it is very likely that
Jones was framed, as Morison ob
serves, it is also probable that he
was not completely innocent
Undoubtedly a great patriot,
Jones was a man of colossal, ego
tism. He had innumerable friends
but few intimates, and he died a
lonely and bitter man at 45. But
as a naval strategist, and as an
example of how sheer courage, re
fusing to admit the possibility of
defeat, can emerge victorious from
•the most desperate circumstances
he is today an inspiration to werjr
sailor, even to those of the
try which during his lifetime team
ed him most.
Jones once wrote, “The Efl^iisja
Nation may hate me, bur I mil
force them to esteem me too.*' A
century and a half later, the Find
Lord of the Admirality fulfilled
this prophecy. He said that Paadi
Jone’s defiant answer fr»» the
Bonhomme Richard to the coxn*
manding officer of the Serapis,
when the British officer inquired
if he asked for quarter—“I aawe
not yet begun to fight”—expressed
exactly what England felt m 3m
dark days of the Battle of Bri&iai.
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