Rogue History

- They had finally cornered him.

After a year of terrorizing villages, seizing merchant ships, and even an attempted kidnapping, the pirate who sent the people of the British Isles into a condition bordering on insanity was finally about to meet his fate.

Hundreds looked on from the shore as a ship that haunted their nightmares was torn to pieces by the guns of the mighty British Navy.

With half the crew dead or wounded and the ship sinking fast, most other captains would've cried uncle, but the man on board that notorious ship wasn't most other captains.

He was John Paul Jones, father of the American Navy, and he had not yet begun to fight.

I'm Joel Cook, and this is "Rogue History:" Rebels and Revolutionaries.

So how does one of the most notorious pirates in British history become an iconic hero of the American Revolution?

Long before he went toe to toe with Britain's powerful navy, the young man born as John Paul was just a simple Scottish merchant ship captain who committed a murder or two.

Let me set the scene.

From age 13, John quickly climbed the ranks of merchant shipping and earned a reputation as an aggressive captain who tended to be rough on his crew.

When he felt that a sailor was neglecting his duty in 1770, he flogged him so severely that the man filed charges against him.

When the sailor died several weeks later, many suspected that Captain Paul's beating had something to do with it.

But his worst episode was on a voyage to Tobago in 1773 when he had a dispute with his crew over their pay.

The boys wanted money for a little onshore party time, and honestly, understandable.

Between the moldy food, bad water, and hard labor sailor life stinks.

But John Paul said, "No."

The ringleader got mad.

And the next thing you know, el capitan killed a guy.

To be fair, John said he was attacked and had no choice but to defend himself.

But he also fled, spent time in Virginia and North Carolina, and began going by the name John Jones to hide his identity.

(mischievous music) Now, in today's environment, you'd be a little concerned if an ambitious, high-strung, slightly murdery, 26-year-old fugitive showed up in your neighborhood, but old Johnny boy was in luck because the America of 1774 was looking for exactly that kind of guy.

Trouble had been brewing between Great Britain and the American colonists for years over the issue of taxation without representation.

By 1774, it was clear that a war was coming.

Here's the problem, though: Great Britain had the most powerful navy on the planet.

When the first shots of the Revolution were fired in April, 1775, the British sported 250 vessels of all types, crewed by the most experienced naval war fighters in the world.

By contrast, the American Navy (crickets chirring) didn't exist.

It wasn't until five months later, on October 13th, 1775, that Congress authorized a national navy.

Getting it off the ground and into the fight was a task only a madman would take on.

But of course, that's exactly what John Paul Jones was.

Before the Continental Congress even agreed to hire him, John Paul Jones was already in Philadelphia working on fitting out the first American Naval vessel, the Alfred.

With the whole Tobago incident lurking in the background, you might think he was just being opportunistic, but you'd be wrong.

By all accounts John Paul Jones was a true believer in the American Revolution.

Throughout his life he declared that he had drawn his sword from pure love of liberty, not as an American, but as a citizen of the world.

And his affection for the cause brought out a different side in him.

Abigail Adams described him as "a gentle man who was soft in his speech," and he often showed that softness in his loving letters about America.

In December, 1775, he became the first person to raise an American flag on board a U.S. Navy ship.

Soon after, he joined a squadron led by Commodore Esek Hopkins for a raid on The Bahamas to seize military supplies.

This was the first naval operation in American history.

And things turned out pretty great.

The eight-ship squadron left The Bahamas with a whole bunch of loot and a few British hostages to boot.

But just before they made it back up the coast to Connecticut, the British Navy showed up.

And by British Navy, I mean one big ship, which proceeded to kick the American squadron's butt in the Battle of Block Island and then getaway scot free.

Remember that most experienced naval war fighters in the world thing I mentioned?

Yeah, wasn't kidding about that.

John Paul Jones was, as expected, absolutely furious, but soon he'd have an opportunity to lead his own ship and fight his own way.

In August, 1776, just a few months after the embarrassment of Block Island, the Marine Committee made him captain of the Providence.

The members of the committee, John Hancock among them, granted Jones an independent command, meaning he was allowed to move freely and make his own decisions.

They instructed him to seize, take, sink, burn, or destroy the vessels of the enemy.

And he did all of that.

Operating primarily in Canadian waters, Jones captured several merchant ships, raided coastal villages and freed hundreds of American prisoners.

Most significantly, he destroyed the British fishing economy in Nova Scotia in just two raids.

This was a devastating blow to Great Britain because it cut off a vital food supply for the Army and Navy and hurt the British coffers to boot.

While more famous figures like George Washington were struggling to find their footing against the powerful British army, John Paul Jones was making an immediate impact at sea.

Less than a year later, his accomplishments earned him command of the 18-gun Ranger with instructions to take the Revolution directly into British home waters.

Operating out of the French port at Brest, John Paul Jones triggered what the kids today would describe as a crashout.

You see, the British Navy served as the wooden walls around the British Isles, operating so effectively that no enemy ships could get to them.

In 1778, no Briton in living memory had experienced an attack on home soil.

But then John Paul Jones attacked Whitehaven.

While the raid was mostly ineffective and no one was killed, the British people lost it.

The press roared that he was a pirate and described the attack as "one of the most impudent Since the time of the Vikings."

The uproar grew even louder when he defeated and captured the British warship Drake the following day.

The British Navy had to respond.

They got their chance when Jones, getting a squadron from his flagship Bonhomme Richard, attacked a fleet of British merchant ships off Flamborough Head.

Instead of the easy pickings he was expecting, he found himself facing the bigger, faster 44-gun HMS Serapis.

Realizing that he was outgunned, Jones leaned into his time-honored tradition of absolutely unhinged behavior by deciding to board and capture it.

In layman's terms, that means Jones was about to tie his slow, old ship up to the big scary warship and hope that his crew had more mess-around-and-find-out energy than the British.

The battle rage for hours with Serapis damaging Jones' ship so badly that it began to sink.

But when the British captain demanded his surrender, John Paul Jones roared back, "I have not yet begun to fight!"

Or something like that.

The famous quote originated from an interview.

First Lieutenant Richard Dale gave in 1825, but Dale, stationed two decks below Captain Jones in the middle of a very loud battle, couldn't have heard him say that.

It seems that he was summarizing a number of different retellings from newspapers, other sailors, and even Jones himself into what would become one of the most famous one-liners in history.

Regardless of what he actually said, when the battle seemed absolutely lost, John Paul Jones refused to be beaten.

Even when one of his own sailors begged him to surrender, he shouted, "No, I will sink.

I will never strike."

Seriously.

He really said that one.

A lucky grenade from an American sailor hit the powder magazine on the Serapis.

With the ship severely damaged, a sizable chunk of his crew killed, a raving lunatic still shouting catchphrases at him, the British captain decided that he'd had enough.

Jones accepted his surrender and took control of the Serapis, winning one of the most legendary victories of the American Revolution.

By the end of the battle, Bonhomme Richard was completely wrecked, and after trying in vain to save it, Jones moved his crew over to Serapis and sailed for the safety of neutral Holland.

By the time he arrived, he was perhaps the most famous naval officer in the Western world.

When the British demanded he be arrested on charges of piracy because of his lack of a flag, the Dutch quickly stitched together their idea of an American flag so that they could ignore the demand.

Meanwhile, in France, King Louis XVI met him personally and granted him the honorary rank of chevalier, or knight, to honor his victory.

But the same aggressive qualities that brought John Paul Jones to the height of fame would soon bring him down.

Unable to accept the peacetime conditions that followed the American victory in the Revolution, Jones took a position as a rear admiral in the Russian Navy in 1788.

He remained an excellent naval commander winning two major naval battles against the Ottoman Empire, but his aggressive personality clashed with high-level figures in the Russian court.

Then in 1789, Jones became embroiled in a controversy over allegations that he assaulted a young girl.

Catherine the Great granted him a two-year leave of absence with the understanding that he was not to return to Russia and never spoke to him again.

Both his pirate reputation and the assault allegations followed him throughout Europe.

When he tried to visit England he was nearly lynched by a Harwich mob, and returned to Paris in ill health.

As his financial situation deteriorated, Jones reached out to American and French friends to pay him money owed from the war, but never received it.

He died alone in his apartment on July 18th, 1792, and would've been given a pauper's burial, if not for the care of an old friend.

His body was placed in alcohol and buried in a sealed lead coffin with the expectation that the United States would soon come to collect the body of its most important naval officer.

But with the establishment of a new country to worry about, no one did.

It wasn't until over 100 years later that President Teddy Roosevelt's administration began searching for the lost grave of John Paul Jones.

It was identified under a paved-over section of Paris, exhumed, and reburied at the United States Naval Academy in 1906.

In 1913, his remains were placed in an elaborate sarcophagus in the crypt under the Naval Academy's chapel, where they remain to this day.

It takes all kinds of people to pull off a revolution.

John Paul Jones was a fearless, aggressive man whose willingness to fight against insurmountable odds made him the perfect fit.

He went where few other captains were brave enough to go and did so out of a genuine love for what the United States of America stood for.

His victories in British waters showed the world that America could win against the most powerful empire in the world and made him one of the most revered naval officers of his day.

But the same qualities that made him the terror of the British Isles and father of the American Navy also resulted in his fall from grace.

So was he really the ruthless pirate the British said he was?

Or was he the unflinching young naval officer who helped win the democracy America was founded on?

The answer for him, and for many rebels in history, lies somewhere in between.