John Paul Jones Service in
France and Last Adventures
In 1787 he left America with the intention of serving
under Louis. When he reached Paris, he was met by a
proposition to enter the service of Catherine of Russia,
in which he was induced to engage by prospects of rank
and glory. On his journey to St. Petersburg, he had a
characteristic adventure in his passage from Stockholm
to Revel, which he made while the navigation was
interrupted by ice, traversing the sea, with great
hardihood, in an open boat, extorting the labors of the
boatmen by his threats of violence. He was well received
by the Empress, who forwarded him to Potemkin, then in
command on the Black Sea, in a war with the Turks. It is
not necessary to recount the movements of a small
squadron, with a divided command and jealous counsels,
presided over by a whimsical, despotic court favorite.
Many as were the vexations encountered by Jones in
the inefficient resources, the shifts and expedients of
foreign allies, and the straits of the American
commissioners, they were light compared with the
stifling restraints of Russian tyranny. Jones did much
fighting, in his command of the Wolodomer, on the Black
Sea, against the Pasha, but retired with little glory.
Persecution followed at St. Petersburg--there was an
assault upon his moral character, which was triumphantly
disproved--various projects flitted through his teeming
mind, and his connection with the country closed after a
residence of fifteen months. It is sad to watch the last
years of Paul Jones, not, indeed, of age, but of growing
weariness and disease, as he renews his broken Russian
hopes, and revives the old, faded, pecuniary claims on
the French court. A gleam of sunshine appears in his
aspirations to serve his country--for he still looked
across the Atlantic--in the removal of the chains from
the American sailors imprisoned at Algiers. His country
listened to his cry; he was charged to treat with the
Regency for their ransom, but before the commission
reached him, he had passed to that land where the weary
cease from sighing, and prisoners are at rest. Here,
with Mercy bending over the scene, let the curtain fall.
Paul Jones died at Paris, at the age of forty-five, of a
dropsical affection, July 18, 1792.
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Introduction
| Apprenticeship
| Early Adventures
| Return To Scotland
| His Greatest Exploits
| Service in France
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