It's the 18th of July. I want to tell you about a Scottish military hero,
who fought for two countries. Not Scotland in the UK...
He fought for the United States and Russia.
He was born here in 1747, and he died on this day
in Scottish history. Hiya I'm Bruce Fummey. If you're interested in the people
events and places in scottish history, then subscribe to Scotland history tours
and click the bell symbol to be notified of new videos.
In the meantime let me tell you a story. If you look up mercurial in the
dictionary it should say John Paul Jones. The only thing is that
that's not what he was christened. It was simply
John Paul. He was born in this house in Arbrigland on the Solway coast.
His dad was a gardener on the estate here. He was a fourth of a large family, but
they didn't all survive. You see maybe poverty can be idyllic when
you breathe the fresh sea breeze and paddle the warm
Gulf stream, but I'd still rather have a winning scratch card.
Born a year after Culloden, this was as far away as you could be
from the troubled Highlands and still be Scottish.
There was a little port here at Caresthorn, a couple of miles
down from his house, and as a child he would come down here and play amongst
the boats whenever he got the opportunity. He loved it!
His elder brother went off to the Americas and he did well for himself,
eventually with a plantation in Virginia. Now john clearly had the same drive,
but he was destined for the sea. At the age of 13 he left this little port and
crossed the Solway to start a seven-year apprenticeship
as a sailor in Whitehaven; round the British coast, across the Irish Sea and of
course, ultimately the West Indies and America
With his elder brother in America, still British colonies in the mid 1760s,
John's early career was working the transatlantic trade.
Let's not be about the bush, slave ships. He worked at slave ships, his brother had
a plantation in Virginia. It was perfect ...apparently not.
He decided that this was a disgusting trade...
eventually. He got off a profitable boat in Jamaica and never got back on it.
Now after a while a ship put into port with a Kirkcudbright captain,
who offered him free passage back home here. Perfect.
Apparently not. On the way home the captain and the first mate both died of
yellow fever. Oh no! And none of the other crew had
navigation experience. Oh double no! But young John
saves the day, by steering the ship back here to Scotland;
and as a reward he becomes the master of the ship, and gets 10 percent of the
profits. Ya dancer! He's only 21 and he's got a
proper who's the daddy job. Perfect. Apparently not.
On the way home on the second trip he has a guy flogged, and later the guy
dies. Now 18th century sailor dies sometime after a flogging. That's not
even a 'like' let alone a retweet, but rule number one for ship's captains:
If you're going to flog a man who's about to die,
make sure he's not a member of an influential family.
Damn it!
The Tollbooth in Kirkcudbright. Temporary accommodation until it's confirmed
that the cause of death was, in fact, yellow fever.
You'll be in the tune anyway though john aye?
No problem. He soon gets command of another ship,
this time with guns. Perfect.
It's perfect as long as a dispute over wages doesn't become mutinous
and you run the ringleader through with a sword.
You didn't do that did you? So your seafaring career over aye?
He'd come a long way from the gardener's son in ,
and now he was never going back. The fortune that he'd accumulated
would remain here in Britain without him. Where could he go?
To Virginia, where his brother had lived but recently died. Somebody needed to
take care of the estate... and those seagulls.
So how would you escape British justice A move to Virginia and a change of name.
Nothing too fancy, just add Jones to the end.
So now he's john Paul Jones. The British authorities will never twig to that.
They'll just think he's the bass player Led Zeppelin. All he needs to do now
is: grow his hair, wear a floral shirt, and find a guy who can play guitar with
violin bow and the disguise will be complete.
Now he started taking guitar lessons, but this was the mid 1770s,
and you know what happened in those rebellious British colonies around that
time. How convenient for somebody who was
seeking to avoid British justice. I'm not saying that John Paul started
the rebellion, I'm just saying it was convenient. They were looking for
people who were sailors to build up a navy of this naughty
nascent nation. A nation in a shooting war with the very
people whose justice John Paul was looking to
escape. Turns out John Paul, now Jones, was an
enthusiastic rebel. But he had to start again with nothing
but a masonic handshake which, as it turns out, is exactly the
qualification you need to become a first lieutenant in one of
the new country's new naval ships. Perfect. Right
I'm supposed to cover this in 10 minutes and, I'll be honest I'm failing miserably.
He had lots of adventures that we don't have time for. He continued to show
genius at sea and a disrespect for senior officers
above him, and let's be honest the men beneath him
as well. But you couldn't doubt his effectiveness.
He captured British vessels. He destroyed British vessels. He sunk British vessels.
He had a knack of outwitting the world's greatest naval superpower time
and again, but he kept rubbing people up the wrong way.
If you're Scottish, remember when we were kids and we used to mask a swear word
with expression: 'Get to France.' well the American naval authorities told
John Paul Jones to get to France, to do what he could for
the cause, but out of the way like. Now on entry to
French port he was the first naval captain to fly the new flag, the stars
and stripes. Benjamin Franklin was a commissioner in
France at the time and he and John Paul Jones became firm friends.
John Paul Jones and his men terrorised the British coastline, like starfighters
trying to blow up a death star. Now imagine you were British and when I
say that i mean late 18th century British,
when Britannia ruled the waves, and not just Ibrox Football Park. Your parents
had seen rebellion suppressed in Scotland.
You subdued the great European powers, your nation was building the world's
biggest empire, and you had the world's most
powerful navy to protect an island nation.
You felt pretty safe in your bed. You certainly
didn't have to worry about the colonial fighting on the other side of the
Atlantic. And then some jumped up Jock, flying a
fancy new flag, lands on England's shores. John Paul Jones
terrorised British waters so much that British naval ships even had to be
brought back from the Americas to defend imperial homeland, perfect.
No it was perfect. I mean you know something's going to go wrong
but you don't know what. I'm going to mention
three things that deserve much more attention than we have time for.
He invaded Britain! That's right America invaded Britain in April 1778.
He made a landing in Whitehaven across the Solway there,
from where he'd sailed as a youth remember. Now, knowing the town,
he made a daring raid to burn the shipping in the port.
He splits forces in two. They made a landing.
What perfect? No. It would have been perfect but for the fact that, whilst
John was scaling the walls and forcing the town's garrison to
surrender in their barracks, the group who were supposed to set fire
to the boats ran out of oil for the lamps. They went
into the local pub to ask: 'Do you have any spare lamp oil so we can
set fire to your ships?' 'Nah mate, we just sell beer.' All right that'll
do.' So these American sailors took the
opportunity to: get pissed, forgot what they were originally there
for, and escaped again having only set fire to one ship.
Right, we're going to make a second landing on the other side of the Solway,
in Scotland, and this time no cock-ups. What are we going to do
there boss? They came across here to St Mary's Isle
behind me, by Kirkcudbright to go to the house of the Earl of Selkirk and kidnap
him. That way we can exchange them for
sailors being held, or press ganged even,
by the British. So they make a successful landing.
They get to the house. They break in... but the
Earl of Selkirk isn't there. Now some say that they just took the silver and were
nothing more than pirates. Others that he saved the Countess, who
was home, by letting his near mutinous men take
silver, bought it from them later, and returned
it to the Countess after the war. Now which version you believe depends on
whether you watch Fox News or CNN. Now the more comments there are
below, the more people YouTube shows this video
so, in the YouTube comment section, can you
choose? Just say pirate or patriot and give the
thumbs up. Let the cross Atlantic battle commence!
Now the most dangerous, deadly, and ultimately pointlessly heroic event in
John Paul Jones's tormenting of the British fleet must have been the
part of the American revolutionary conflict which happened
the farthest from American soil. On the 23rd of September 1779 the
nascent American navy in a ramshackle ship borrowed from the
French, and held together with safety pins and sticky-backed
plastic attacked a British convoy in the North Sea off
Flamborough Head. It was here that John Paul Jones, in the heat of battle,
asked with English captain if he gave up said: 'I have not begun to fight!'
He might have been the father of the American navy, but he was still
Scottish. Now I'm running out of time, so I'll give fuller details of this battle
on the member site. Right to find the member site there'll be
a link in the description below, and hopefully the existing members
don't mind the rest of you joining in and seeing
that video. Now at the end of it all John Paul Jones
gained awards and accolades in France, but at the end of the Revolutionary War
the Americans decided that they didn't need, and really
couldn't afford a navy. Their best ship was given to the French
to cover debts. The navy wasn't big enough to give John
Paul Jones the admiralship that he thought he deserved. He had to
find a living on the sea elsewhere. Now Catherine the
Great, Empress of Russia could use a man like John Paul Jones and
so he served as rear admiral in the Russian navy.
Perfect. But John being John he rubbed the Russians up the wrong way
as well. He finally returned to France on a
pension from the Russian navy, and in 1792, on this day in history he
died alone in France, 12 days after his 45th birthday.
The French placed his body in an unmarked grave, but
they did put him in an alcohol-filled coffin to preserve
the body. They assumed that the Americans would
want to come to collect their great hero, and father
of their navy.
113 years later they eventually did. Finally it was brought back to the
United States in a warship, accompanied by three cruisers. Seven
battleships met them off the coast, and salutes were fired
as they sailed the Chesapeake to Annapolis.
Perfect. John Paul Jones was finally laid to rest
in a magnificent marble sarcophagus in the chapel
crypt of Annapolis Naval Academy, but he started life here, on the Solway
coast, as simple John Paul. Please
like, share, and spread the word. Tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda is going to be a llama alive