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JOHN PAUL JONES AND THE AMERICAN NAVY
Copyright© 1996 - UIDBA* Features. All Rights Reserved.
John Paul Jones (1717-1792) is usually given credit for founding the United States Navy. This misplaced credit is founded upon a set of spurious documents by Augustus C. Buell, a Jones biographer.
John Paul Jones, whose birth name is simply John Paul, was born in Scotland. Drawn at an early age to the sea, he became an apprentice seaman at age twelve.
For bringing a merchant ship in safely to port after both the captain and first mate died, he was given ten percent of the value of the cargo, plus command of a ship. After a difficult period as captain, he found himself in America at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, unemployed. This was when he added "Jones" as his new name. Jones obtained a position as an officer aboard the Alfred - the first naval ship bought by Congress. He was able to do this through a political acquaintance with a congressman. He was later given command of the Providence, where he built a distiguished record.
He was later promoted to captain and command of the sloop Ranger followed. He was sent to France. He managed to capture the British sloop Drake with many prisoners upon his return trip to the United States. On his return to France, with seven "kills" and many prisoners to his credit, he was hailed a hero. Jones captured seventeen ships and then defeated Serapis in a notable engagement on a journey around the British Isles. Jones was blocked by political rivalries from his promotion to admiral on another return trip to America. However, he was given command of the America, the largest ship in the Navy. This ship, then under construction, was eventually turned over to the French, without Jones ever taking command. It is to be noted that Jones was awarded a gold medal by Congress. After that he accepted an offer from Catherine the Great to serve in the Russian navy. A jealous French adventurer had Jones' ideas for combat against the Turks largely undercut. Jones spent the last two years of his life in Paris, where he is known to have been quite ill. His body was buried in a French cemetry. He was finally shipped back to the United States in 1905. His remains were buried in a specially constructed tomb at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1913.
Augustus C. Buell was called a "fraudulent historian" by author Milton Hamilton, among others. Samuel Eliot Morison, the author of the latest biography of Jones, devotes several pages to a list of Buell's false statements about Jones. It is held that Buell was responsible for the misinformation about Jones' role in the formation of the United States Navy, among other frauds. Consequently, it is generally held that Buell is the hoaxer by way of deception.
Augustus C. Buell's statements about his own background contain a number of apparent falsehoods. He had claimed to have ancestors who worked for, or actually knew personally, all of the subjects of his biographies. Buell wrote biographies of Jones, Andrew Jackson, Sir William Johnson, and William Penn. All of these statements drawn from what appear to be sources manufactured for the occasion by Buell himself. He appears to have invented journal entries, letters, books (these were usually described as quite rare), and whole archives. He is known to have thanked the Librarian of Congress for making materials available. In this connection, Morison states that Buell never visited the Library of Congress.
*Universal Intelligence Data Bank of America
