09/23/2022
Arrrrggghhhh! Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day. Visitors to the National Mall won’t find any pirates but they will find a memorial to Captain John Paul Jones. Though a naval hero to us, the British saw him as a pirate during the American Revolution.
Born in Scotland and finding early success at sea, John Paul faced serious legal jeopardy when he killed a mutinous crew member. He fled to Virginia and added Jones to his name. Drawn to the cause of independence, John Paul Jones was commissioned in 1775 as one of our first naval officers.
On April 17, 1778, Captain Jones led the crew of the USS Ranger on a raid of the English port of Whitehaven, near where Jones started his maritime career. Although relatively light damage was done, the raid on English soil, plus Jones’ subsequent defeat of the Royal Navy sloop HMS Drake, shocked the British public. John Paul Jones further terrified them when on September 23, 1779, he led an American squadron in an attack on a valuable convoy right off the coast of Northern England. Causing havoc, burning towns, and taking trophies, it’s easy to see how the British considered Jones a pirate, even without an eyepatch or peg leg.
After the Revolution, Jones continued to live an adventurous life until his death in Paris in 1792. In 1905 his remains were disinterred and reburied in a specially built chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Not bad for a man that some people once thought to be a pirate.
Photo by National Park Service.