THIS DAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1803,COMMODORE JOHN BARRY, 58, died at his home, "Strawberry Hill," near Philadelphia. Barry, son of a poor tenant farmer. When the family was evicted by their British landlord, John sought work on the sea. He was revered by his own generation of revolutionaries as "Father of the American Navy,". But that title was later bestowed on a another bold though self-seeking captain, a man with "a towering ego combined with a violent temper", John Paul Jones. Jones was born John Paul, later changing his name to John Jones when he fled to America in the wake scandal. John Paul senior was a gardener at Arbigland, the estate of William Craik in Scotland. His mother, Jean McDuff, also worked there as a housekeeper. It was locally rumored John Jr. was Craik’s bastard son. For several years John sailed aboard British merchant and slave ships, gainining a reputation of being "unnecessarily cruel" to his men. In 1764 he signed on as third mate on the King George, a “black birder” or slave ship. He later joined another slaver, Two Friends, as first mate. When Paul returned to Scotland he was arrested for the murder of a sailor from his home port, seaman Mungo Maxwell. While on bail, Paul was accepted into the Masons in 1770. Paul was acquitted of the charges, but brooded over being tried in his home town, and especially bitter that William Craik took sides with the Maxwells against him. Paul then headed for Virginia where his brother had a business, changing his family name to Jones. Through the Masons he made friends with important Virginians, and was accepted into the newly formed American navy. But in 1776 when the Marine Commission posted a seniority list for naval captains, Jones’ name was near the bottom. In 1777 at the helm of his ship Ranger, Jones decided to raid his own home port of Whitehaven, Scotland. He spiked the harbor guns and burned one ship while some of his crew broke into a tavern and got drunk. He then sailed by his birthplace to kidnap for ransom the Earl of Selkirk. Lady Selkirk was home and was relieved of her silver. She recognized Jones as John Paul, the son of the gardener at Arbigland and a “noted blackguard”. However Jones then added some glory to his apparent revenge expedition when he attacked and defeated HMS Drake in Carrickfergus harbor, becoming the first American captain to defeat a British ship of equal power. Arriving back in America Jones lobbied hard but unsuccessfully for promotion to admiral. And his ego and attitude angered many prominent Americans. Jones eventually returned Lord Selkirk’s silver, and Minister Thomas Jefferson suggested he join the Russian Navy, which he did, hoping to command the fleet which Catherine the Great was assembling against Turkey. He was not given command of the Black Sea Fleet, but did take part in that war in 1788. As usual, Jones did not get along with his fellow commanders. He disagreed strongly with Prince General Grigori Potemkin, who was Catherine’s secret lover. Catherine instead transferred Jones to command of the Northern Fleet, which was icebound in the Baltic. Jones journeyed to St. Petersburg to again lobby Catherine but the Czarina reportedly told him to “go mind his own business”. He was soon accused of having raped a young German girl, possibly a "set-up". Jones was put on two years leave and encouraged to leave Russia. By 1790 Jones was in Paris, where the Marquis de Lafayette and the rest of Paris shunned him. Even the American Minister in Paris, his old friend Gouvenor Morris, author of the preamble and other large sections of the Constitution, found Jones a burden. When Jones died in 1792, he was given a quiet burial in a Protestant cemetery. Morris skipped the funeral claiming a dinner engagement. A century later American Ambassador to France General Horace Porter spent six years searching for Jones’ grave. President “Teddy” Roosevelt, a staunch Mason, was also intrigued by the life of John Paul Jones, and persuaded Congress to pony up the then princely sum of $35,000 for Porter to complete the search. John Paul was found beneath a Paris parking lot, exhumed, and taken to America where on April 24, 1906 Roosevelt dedicated a fine memorial at Annapolis, using the occasion to promote his plan to build a grand naval fleet. Jones finally got the attention he craved in 1913 when his coffin was placed in the flamboyant sepulcher, modeled after Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides, beneath the chapel at Annapolis. By that time Roosevelt had built both his fleet and the Panama Canal, and left office. In contrast, John Barry, Father of the American Navy, has been ignored by later generations.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 17:12:35 +0000
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