John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography

The book is very interesting, well written by an author clearly concerned with facts not myths as he differentiates between tales surrounding the subject and actual events. Too bad the book is missing pages 77 thru 92. (At least my copy is, anyone else come upon a similar print? If I keep it will it turn into a collectable?)

John Paul Jones is one of those figures on the fringes of the American pantheon. Most educated people have heard the name, but few know anything about the man beyond, perhaps, that he proclaimed, "I have not yet begun to fight!" Much to my surprise, after reading this classic biography (winner of the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Biography) by Samuel Eliot Morison, the godfather of US Naval history, Jones' exploits are both relatively unknown and relatively modest. There is, however, nothing relative or modest about Morison's biography, which is an excellently structured and wonderfully written piece of history that is a pleasure to read. How did Jones attain immortality for his role in the American Revolution while other leading military figures of the period (most notably, in this reviewer's opinion, General Nathaniel Greene) have nearly vanished from history? Jones' attachment to the United States, both as a nation and a cause, were slight, even dubious. He was born and raised in Scotland and didn't arrive in America until roughly 1775 (on the run from a murder trial, no less, which also prompted him to add the alias "Jones" to his birth name of John Paul). He never owned a home or even maintained a permanent resistance in his adopted land, and instead lived with friends or at hotels at government expense. During his forty-five years of life, Jones only spent about three of them on American soil -- and that time was divided among four brief visits. His commitment to the principles of the American Revolution are a bit suspect, although he did frequently claim to be a citizen of the world engaged in the fight for liberty. Nevertheless, when Catherine II of Imperial Russia, the ruler of the most despotic of European monarchies, dangled a much coveted flag officer position before him in 1788 Jones quickly jettisoned his liberal pretensions and jumped at the offer. If Jones lacked the deep American roots of a John Adams or the strong ideological convictions of more recent immigrants like Thomas Paine, he was at least a military hero, right? Well, sort of. Jones' major military exploits during the war can be summarized as follows: a partially successful raid on his hometown port of Whitehaven, Scotland followed by a botched kidnapping attempt and then the capture of a modest-sized British warship while cruising the Irish Sea aboard "Ranger" in 1778, and then the famous defeat of the "Serapis" off Flamborough Head in September 1779 aboard the "Bonhomme Richard." Like Doolittle's Raid on Tokyo in 1942, the military value of these actions were minimal, but the psychological impact -- both at home and with the enemy -- was enormous. The British home islands had, afterall, been inviolable since a Dutch raid in 1667. Thus, Jones stands alone as the man who brought the American Revolution home to the British Isles, albeit in a way that caused little material damage. So, through a combination of moxie, luck and the general absence of anything

A hero of my youth, this book appears to tell the full story. This is a scolarly work which reads easily. I only wish I would have read this book in my twenties. There are some wonderful life lessons in this biography. If you read it you will learn his flaws, his good and fine attributes, and some mysteries. This is first-rate biography and detective work by the author. I recommend it.

It has been said that most great men are bad men. Samuel Eliot Morison's superb biography of John Paul Jones supports, if not proves, that proposition. Jones's greatness is undeniable: Although he was the son of an obscure Scottish gardener, he virtually founded the United States Navy, he won one of the most important sea battles of the Revolutionary War when he was only 32, and he later commanded ships in the service of France and Russia. But Jones also was extremely temperamental, excessively vain (after receiving an honor from France, he liked to be addressed as "Chevalier Paul Jones"), and he had mistresses in practically every port. Morison, a longtime professor at Harvard and the author of the authoritative, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Christopher Columbus, as well as a massive, multi-volume history of the U.S. Navy during World War II, reports all of this in a matter-of-fact fashion. Morison's Jones is a great sailor and a man of the world in every respect.According to Morison, Young Jones was highly ambitious and went to sea at age 13 "as a road to distinction." During the next 15 years, he learned well his trade and he also became an American patriot. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Morison writes that the American navy was "only a haphazard collection of converted merchant ships," and the Royal Navy was probably the most powerful in history. But General George Washington, according to Morison, "had a keen appreciation of the value and capabilities of sea power," and, in October 1775, Congress appointed a Naval Committee of Seven to manage the colonies' maritime affairs. In December 1775, seven months before the American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain, Jones accepted a commission as a lieutenant in the continental navy. Although Morison is primarily interested in Jones's activities during the Revolutionary War, he makes a number of more generally cogent observations. For instance, the United States government was in a state of nearly constant impecuniousness and was able to afford to build only one of the largest class of naval vessels, a ship of the line, during the conflict. In Morison's view, this was the status of the war at the time of the battle off Flamborough Head in September 1779, which secured Jones's fame: "The War of Independence had reached a strategic deadlock, a situation that recurred in both World Wars of the twentieth century. Each party, unable to reach a decision by fleet action or pitched land battles, resorts to raids and haphazard, desultory operations which have no military effect." That deadlock continued, according to Morison, until 1781. Morison also writes that Britain took the position "since the United States were not a recognized government but a group of rebellious provinces,...American armed ships were no better than pirates." Morison appears to be deeply impressed by Jones's technical competence: "One of Paul Jones's praiseworthy t

As someone who had recently seen the "John Paul Jones" movie that was made in 1959 with Robert Stack, I was curious to learn more about the man who put the U.S. Navy on the map. Of course, most know him as the one who coined the immortal, defiant phrase "I have not yet begun to fight!" This book delves beyond that, as Morison shows Jones as he really was, a human being born in obscurity in Scotland who developed a love for the sea at an early age. He was simultaneously a shrewd combatant with a quick temper (in many ways the American equivalent of the great English admiral Nelson,) and a gentleman who enjoyed the company of numerous lovely ladies ashore. Morison leaves no stone unturned as he takes the reader on a detailed, captivating journey (from page one, the reader is hooked.) He sailed the waters that bore witness to Jones's battles and drew extensively upon the naval archives of the four primary countries that figured in Jones's life. To give you some idea, the engagement with H.M.S. Serapis is fleshed out in such marvelous detail that one can almost smell the gunpowder, but Morison goes beyond that, explaining what happened before, during, and after, most of which one would not learn in history class. In fact, I would make book that at least ninety percent of what one will read in this book would not be learned in history class. Morison has included pictures, charts, diagrams, excerpts from letters (some of which are in French with English translations), and has deftly blended them and the text into a perfect biography. For anyone who wants to learn more about Jones, this is required reading.