John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy

Jones, despite his too brisk manner, was a true success, if not genius, as a naval captain. Early in the Revolutionary War, he captured a shipload of winter uniforms destined for General Burgoyne s army in Canada, which instead warmed General Washington s troops as they swept across the Delaware to defeat British at Princeton and Trenton. Later, Jones helped formulate the Navy s plan of psychological warfare on British citizens. And Jones s strategy to cut off the British fleet via the French Navy was arguably the most decisive strategic decision of the War.

In the end, Thomas makes a good case for a renewed appreciated for Jones s role in the broader revolution, citing his many connections to the Founding Fathers and his contributions to the broader war effort. While it may be that the John Paul Jones who proclaimed "I have not yet begun to fight" never existed, the real man behind the textbook legend is every bit as compelling a figure in Thomas s hands. This temperate biography situates Jones in what will likely prove durable fashion among portraits of Adams, Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson. --Patrick O'Kelley

Product Description
John Paul Jones, at sea and in the heat of the battle, was the great American hero of the Age of Sail. He was to history what Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey and C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower are to fiction. Ruthless, indomitable, clever; he vowed to sail, as he put it, "in harm's way." Evan Thomas's minute-by-minute re-creation of the bloodbath between Jones's Bonhomme Richard and the British man-of-war Serapis off the coast of England on an autumn night in 1779 is as gripping a sea battle as can be found in any novel.

Drawing on Jones's correspondence with some of the most significant figures of the American Revolution -- John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson -- Thomas's biography teaches us that it took fighters as well as thinkers, men driven by dreams of personal glory as well as high-minded principle, to break free of the past and start a new world. Jones's spirit was classically American.

John Paul Jones is the latest "self-made man" to appear in a biography, following on the heels of Willard Sterne Randall's cumbersome yet well-rendered "Alexander Hamilton: A Life." From humble roots, the son of a Scottish gardener, Jones was determined to rise from under the oppression of the European class system. He gazed out across the magnificent gardens created by his father and saw the ocean, with its seemingly endless horizon -and that is how Jones decided to live the rest of his life: He would expand, grow himself and mold his image anew, as wide as the sea, as broad as the sky.

As much taken with sail and sea as they took him, John Paul Jones was a natural, a gifted sailor who always tried to improve himself, whether his nautical skills, or by reading books to absorb philosophy and seeking the company of men from whom he knew he could learn. Unfortunately, Jones was never able to subdue his passions sufficiently, not sufficiently enough for any self-reflection to temper his sensitivities and thin skin, nor for him to ever cultivate the necessary strengths to achieve his highest ambition: Appointment to the rank of Admiral in the United States Navy. He would have to travel to Russia near the end of his life and enter the service of Catherine the Great to achieve that rank, but as fundamentally flawed and blameful as Jones was, he was not a rank human being. He was steadfast, loyal to his adopted country, America, and never gave in to the easy profit of privateering or ever turned his back on the Stars and Stripes.

He was as big-hearted and melodramatic as he was tragic and romantic, a sometimes womanizer who barely had a head for wine and never drank hard liquor. Like Thomas Jefferson, Jones was a paragon of paradox and yet always was, in the best sense, an American patriot.

It's painful to look on, page after page, reading about Jones's exploits and ideas, tactics and tales, only to see him constantly self-destruct, eventually alienating every single person around him. Nonetheless, Jones knew how to fight in an age where most men achieved rank through connections and lineage, and even though he didn't always win, he won enough: Jones was a tonic for fledgling America, and any other person or power savvy enough to employ his courage.

Sadly, Jones was far from the best judge of character, and often found himself in an impossibly frustrating, nightmarish circumstance because of his own inability to discern veneer from character, though Jones seems to have had plenty of character, and yet constantly coveted superficial laurels of those less worthy. But no matter how badly he may have comported himself, and in spite of how myopic most of his handlers were, blinded to Jones's full potential, "Little Jones" was indeed a mouse that roared.

Whether Jones ever knew it during his life, he certainly reflected the rigid principles of honor to which he held himself and others, and Evan Thomas has written a flowing, absorbing book about John Paul Jones, a man who cherished freedom above all else, and helped bring it to so many others.


A Flawed American Hero   April 24, 2003
Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA)
52 out of 54 found this review helpful

Author Evan Thomas's account of the life of John Paul Jones is an excellent narrative historical biography that brings to life yet another colorful personality from the American Revolution. Like his contemporary, Alexander Hamilton, Jones was a vain, contentious and controversial figure of humble origins who rubbed many of those who knew him the wrong way. He also happened to be a rare and valuable commodity in Revolutionary America in that he was a man who actually knew how to fight.

As Thomas dramatically illustrates, Jones was virtually the only captain among the Americans to have any success against the Royal Navy. Jones's raids against the British home isles and his daring defeats in two diferent battles against Royal Navy battleships made him famous world wide. Thomas's detailed accounts of the naval battles are particularly gripping. And while Jones most likely never said the famous words, "I have not yet begun to fight," that does not detract from his heroic refusal to surrender his ship in what was perhaps the bloodiest naval battle of the age of sail.

Thomas tracks Jones's entire life, from his childhood as the son of a Scottish gardner, to his time as a merchant ship captain through his Revolutionary exploits to the last, bizarre chapter in his life when he became an Admiral in the Russian fleet against the Turks. Thomas is evenhanded in his descriptions of Jones, detailing his many faults in addition to his triumphs. In the end, the picture that emerges is of an essentially noble individual whose insecurities made him his own worst enemy. At just over 300 pages of narrative, the book is a relatively quick read and also has plenty of illustrations.

Overall, an outstanding historical biography that should be enjoyed by history buffs and even by more casual readers.


Great year for naval readers.   July 4, 2003
Marty Hoehn (Kent, Connecticut)
41 out of 43 found this review helpful

Get this book, and Edgar Vincent's "Nelson: Love and Fame" and Joel Hayward's "For God and Glory: Lord Nelson and His Way of War", and you have the three best books on naval warriors written in many years.


Among the very best history books of the year.   July 2, 2003
P Hodges (Port Elizabeth, South Africa)
34 out of 35 found this review helpful

In my opinion these are the best new history books of the last year (in no specific order): Evan Thomas, JOHN PAUL JONES; Simon Winchester, KRAKATOA; James Loewen, LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME; Joel Hayward, FOR GOD AND GLORY; Anthony Beevor, THE FALL OF BERLIN. Thomas and Hayward analyse outstanding warriors (John Paul Jones and Lord Nelson, and do so with all the talents one expects of writers).

Empathetically and skilfully, Thomas has portrayed John Paul Jones with much more psychological credibility and consistency than the previous "standard" biographer, the patrician Samuel Eliot Morison. We now see a new J-P-Jones: he's a real Jones, a flawed Jones; a great Jones.
The author visited Jones's birthplace in Scotland and spent time aboard sailing ships (he's an accomplished sailor, anyway); he revisited a wealth of documentation. He tried to get inside the man's mind. The resulting portrait of a ruthlessly ambitious, social-climbing naval genius with almost no fear is essential reading for anyone wondering how America's great fleets ever came to dominate the seas.


Lively account   December 2, 2003
26 out of 27 found this review helpful

This book is as good as Joel Hayward's acclaimed new work on Lord Nelson called "For God and Glory". Both say something NEW about their subjects, and both are meticulously documented and expertly and engagingly written.