John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography

Few figures have entered the ranks of America's national heroes with a more mixed bag of credentials than the Scottish seaman variously known as John Paul, John Jones, Captain Paul, Captain John Paul Jones and Kontradmiral Pavel Ivanovich Jones. As the youthful master of a merchant ship in the West Indies, this short Scot with the towering temper was wanted for murder. As an officer in the Continental Navy, he became the new country's greatest naval hero. Yet he was a notorious complainer, impatient with superiors, haughty toward his peers and a tyrant among his crews (with considerable justification, it must be added). He described himself as "a free Citizen of the World" bent on defending "the violated rights of Mankind," but after the American Revolution he went on to battle Turks in the service of a Russian despot. Son of an unlettered gardener, he wrote letters which became a standard of style and deportment for generations of Annapolis middies. He was a man of powerful physical drives who, in the shrewd judgment of Abigail Adams, understood "all the etiquette of a lady's toilette as perfectly as he does the mast and sails and rigging of his ship." Yet he never married. He was, in brief, one of the most paradoxical and fascinating figures in all American history.