Books: The Difficult Hero

JOHN PAUL JONES (453 pp.)-Samuel Eliot Morison-Little, Brown ($6.50).

He was an unlikely sort of hero, a brownish-haired little (about 5 ft. 5 in.) Scot with a murderous temper, the boudoir morals of a tomcat, and a colossal ego. He toadied to his superiors, fought with his peers, and would never give credit to his juniors when he could claim it for himself. He fancied himself as a freedom-loving “citizen of the world,” yet ended up drawing his sword for a despot. But John Paul Jones could certainly do one thing: he could fight a ship as have few men before or since—and Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, U.S.N.R. (ret.), dean of U.S. naval historians (13 volumes so far of the History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II), can write as few men before him of fighting sailors.

“In Harm’s Way.” Born John Paul, the man who won fame as John Paul Jones went to sea at 13, by 21 was master of a merchant ship in the West Indies trade. But at the port of Scarborough, Tobago, in 1773, he got into a savage shipboard brawl with mutinous seamen, ran one through the body with his sword, and fled for his life. He assumed the name of John Jones, sailed to America, and at the outbreak of the Revolution, under the name John Paul Jones, offered his services to the Continental Navy.

For an obscure Scottish sailor newly arrived in America, Jones did well enough: he successively commanded the sloop Providence, ship Alfred and sloop of war Ranger. But Jones was far from satisfied: infuriated at being placed No. 18 on the captains’ seniority list, he flailed out in all directions, made enemies in high places, goaded his men to the point of mutiny.

In 1777, perhaps as much to get rid of him as anything else, Congress authorized Paul Jones to sail Ranger to France and there seek a ship more to his liking. While searching, Jones in Ranger conducted raids on the English and Scottish coasts and became the terror of the British Isles. After more than a year, Jones found a ship in which he could, as he put it, “go in harm’s way”: Le Due de Duras, a twelve-year-old East Indiaman renamed Bonhomme Richard after the Poor Richard of his friend Benjamin Franklin.

A Taste for Shot. In writing of Jones’s shoreside activities, Historian Morison is sometimes nearly as lubberly as was Paul Jones himself, e.g., he is positively precious in describing Jones’s squalid love life, once wonders romantically about a Jones bastard: “Did the little fellow die in infancy? Or did he grow up and fight Napoleon under the English flag, or what?” But Samuel Eliot Morison has no peer in writing of war at sea, and nowhere is he finer than in his description of the meeting on Sept. 23, 1779 of Bonhomme Richard and H.M.S. Serapis.

As commodore of a squadron including Bonhomme Richard (40 guns), frigates Alliance (36 guns) and Pallas (26 guns), and brig Vengeance (12 guns), Jones was cruising off Yorkshire’s Flamborough Head when at 3 o’clock one afternoon he sighted a Baltic merchant fleet, escorted by frigate Serapis (50 guns) and sloop of war Countess of Scarborough (20 guns).

When the ships were within pistol shot, Serapis’ Captain Richard Pearson, R.N., hailed: “What ship is that?” Came the reply: “The Princess Royal!” Called Pearson: “Where from?” The answer, if ever made, was not heard. Paul Jones raised the red, white and blue ensign of America —and the two ships fired broadsides.

Jones quickly realized that a gun-to-gun fight would finish him. He tried to grapple and board Serapis and was driven off. Serapis tried to cross Richard’s bow to rake her; Jones foiled the maneuver by ramming Serapis’ stern. It was at that point—not later, as popularly supposed—that Pearson called: “Has your ship struck?” The answer placed John Paul Jones in history’s books forever:

“I have not yet begun to fight.”

Next, Jones tried to cross Serapis’ bow. The two ships collided, and were locked together. This was just the close-up situation that Jones wanted. “Well done, my brave lads,” he cried. “We have got her now!” For two hours, writes Morison, Bonhomme Richard and Serapis remained in a fatal embrace, “spitting fire at each other, pivoted through a half-circle, for all the world like one of those macabre dances of death in a medieval engraving . . . The Englishman wants to break off but cannot, the American clings desperately to him, knowing that only by maintaining the clinch can he survive.”

“I Will Never Strike.” While the two most powerful ships fought, Pallas engaged and defeated Countess of Scarborough, little Vengeance stayed out of the battle, and Alliance, under the command of a half-mad Frenchman named Pierre Landais, who loathed Jones, sailed around deliberately firing broadsides at Bonhomme Richard. At one point Jones was so exhausted that he sat down on a hen coop to rest. A sailor rushed up to him, crying: “For God’s sake, Captain, strike!” Jones rose to his feet. “No,” he said. “I will sink, I will never strike.” Again Richard’s chief gunner panicked, ran aft to haul down the ensign. Jones pulled a pistol from his belt, threw it, and knocked the gunner flat. Aboard Serapis, Pearson shouted: “Sir, do you ask for quarter?” Replied John Paul Jones: “No, sir, I haven’t as yet thought of it, but I’m determined to make you strike.” About 10:30 p.m., Pearson did strike. Jones transferred to Serapis—and 36 hours later, Bonhomme Richard, winner of the battle that made her and her captain famous, sank beneath the sea’s surface.

Paul Jones’s entire life had been a buildup for that one day—and his life afterward was anticlimactic. Most of it was spent in Paris, except for one ludicrous interval, when he served Russia’s Catherine the Great as Kontradmiral (Rear Admiral) Pavel Ivanovich Jones. On July 18, 1792, Paul Jones entered his chamber in a Paris apartment, lay face down on the bed, and died, aged 45. It was more than 100 years before the U.S., belatedly grateful to its difficult hero, removed his body to a place of honor at the U.S. Naval Academy.