Birth of John Paul Jones
John Paul Jones was born on this day in 1747 in Kirkbean, Kirkcudbrightshire, on the southwest coast of Scotland. His father was head gardener at the Arbigland estate, and the boy grew up within sight of the Solway Firth, watching ships come and go from the nearby port of Carsethorn. At thirteen he was apprenticed to a merchant shipper and sailed out of Whitehaven, on the English shore opposite, bound for Barbados and Virginia. He rose quickly. By twenty-one, after both captain and first mate of a homeward-bound vessel died of fever, he navigated the ship safely to port and was given command. But in 1773, while captaining a merchant vessel at Tobago, he killed the ringleader of a mutiny over unpaid wages. He fled to Virginia and added “Jones” to his name.
When the American Revolution broke out, Jones offered his services to the infant Continental Navy. It was a navy that barely existed — a handful of converted merchantmen against the largest fleet in the world — and Jones became its most daring officer. In the Ranger he raided the British coast and captured a Royal Navy warship off Ireland; in the Bonhomme Richard he fought and won one of the most famous single-ship actions in naval history, against HMS Serapis off Flamborough Head. A Scottish gardener’s son had humiliated the Royal Navy in its own waters.
The Stately Southerner, also known as “The Yankee Man-of-War,” follows the Ranger as she outsails and outfights a British warship off the Old Head of Kinsale. Paul Jones recounts the Flamborough Head action broadside by broadside, from the opening hail to the striking of the British colours.
