Brief Summary: John Paul Jones

Born on July 6th, 1747, John Paul’s father was a gardener and grew up in the slums of southwest Scotland. John Paul at 12 years old was sailing the seas as an apprentice. Apprenticing under a merchant whose name was John Younger, John Paul was a cabin boy and sailed all over under Younger. Sailing across the Atlantic, John Paul made it to Fredericksburg, Virginia to visit his older brother, William. In 1766, Younger’s merchant business had gone under and failed. Once leaving Younger’s crew, John Paul had found work as a chief mate for a slave brigantine from Jamaica. As the next few years follow, John Paul worked on a variety of slave ships sailing between Britain, the West Indies, and Virginia.

After working 14 years on various ships, John

Under the Commodore Esek Hopkins, Jones was honored to raise the grand union flag on a journey to the Bahamas. Not too long after, John Paul Jones was handed command over the sloop, ‘Providence’. Starting in 1776, Jones took the ‘Providence’ on a six week voyage through the Atlantic Ocean sailing from Bermuda to Nova Scotia. Along the six week voyage, Jones managed to capture 16 British Vessels. In between voyages, Jones established a close friendship with Benjamin

The battle of three and half hours long between ships with guns firing back and forth, Jones finally defeated the 50 gun British frigate ‘HMS Serapi’s’ and the 22 gun hired ship ‘Countess of Scarborough’ after tying the ships together where the guns were fired into each other. The Captain of the ‘Serapi’s’ asked Jones to surrender; Jones yelled “I have not even begun to fight!’ With Jones’ ship badly damaged, he boarded the ‘Serapi’s’ and sailed to Holland with the ‘Countess of Scarborough’ as a