Commodore Paul Jones

Of the three great captains whose magnificent fighting has added such glorious chapters to the history of our naval campaigns, but one, George Dewey, the last of them all, is purely an American by birth and generations of ancestors. Farragut, the greatest of the three, was but one remove from a Spaniard. John Paul Jones, first of the group in point of time and not inferior to the others in quality and achievement, was a Scotsman. Only the limitation in means necessitated by the narrow circumstances of his adopted country during his lifetime prevented his surpassing them all. He remains to this day a unique character among the mighty men who trod the deck and sailed the ocean--a strange personality not surpassed by any in the long line of sea fighters from Themistocles to Sampson. In spite of, nay, because of his achievements, he was among the most calumniated of men. What follows is an attempt to tell his story and to do him justice.