John Paul Jones: America's First Sea Warrior (review)

A recent British writer labeled John Paul Jones a "pirate" and classed him with "career criminals" (Bicheno, Rebels and Redcoats, p. 227). Admiral Callo will have none of that. And quite rightly. Although dead, white, and male, John Paul Jones was a true hero whose exploits were celebrated by contemporaries of all stripes in story and song. If the author goes overboard now and then, for example, claiming excessive strategic significance for commerce raiding by the Continental Navy, and asserting that Jones's dramatic victory aboard Bonhomme Richard over HMS Serapis "was to the naval component of the American Revolution what the battle of Saratoga was to the land campaign—it changed everything" (p. 86), it does not detract from this otherwise solid work.

The author's crisp narrative takes us from Jones's youth in Scotland to his sad end in Paris forty-five years later, and beyond, to his body's voyage home aboard USS Brooklyn in 1905 and its final interment in 1913 in the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel. Along the way Admiral Callo is an excellent guide, and he catches the spirit that made Jones stand out among his contemporaries, a spirit best expressed by Jones himself, when he wrote, "I wish to have no Connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm's way" (p. 62).

John Paul Jones was a fighting sailor, and in all of his encounters with the enemy, from his voyage with Ranger during the Revolutionary War to his two encounters with the Turkish fleet while serving under Russian colors, Jones never flinched, indeed, presented himself front and center in desperate actions. The slugging match against Serapis, that epic three to three and one half hour fight that made him famous throughout Europe and America, was, in its final stages, won on guts. Yet he was not just a slugger. He was a superb naval tactician, and throughout Admiral Callo's account makes this clear. And his successes came despite subordinates who either betrayed or intrigued against him, and civilian superiors who failed him time and again by leaving his authority as commander of American squadrons and a Russian fleet ambiguous.

Jones also probably had it in him to be a naval strategist, but he was never given the opportunity, and on this point I disagree with Admiral Callo that Jones revealed a gift for strategy while serving as an admiral and, for the first and only time, a fleet commander in the Russian navy. Once again, it was his tactical sense that made possible the Russian victory over the Turks. But he was outmaneuvered in court intrigue and never got the credit he deserved.

Here we enter an area where John Paul Jones did not excel. At sea he was magnificent, ashore, if I may, he was at sea. Women loved him and he returned their favors with enthusiasm, but he was basically a loner with a monumental ego that prevented him from operating adroitly in the political world of America or France, and his ineptness at the Court of Catherine the Great turned into a disaster. This sad end to an illustrious career is recounted well and with feeling by the author.

Admiral Callo's book does not supercede Samuel Eliot Morison's biography of Jones published in 1959, but his analysis of actions from a U.S. Navy man's point of view is necessary reading for students of the Revolutionary War at sea and for historians of the war who are more familiar with the land campaigns. Five valuable appendices include three eyewitness accounts of the Bonhomme Richard–Serapis fight, the Congressional Committee Report on the Promotion of Officers, and John Paul Jones's Complaints to Congress.