Tag: American Revolution

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JOHN PAUL JONES

The content below is from episode #153 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

  • This week I recommend you check out a YouTube channel called Pitch Meeting
    • It is a very simple concept. One dude Ryan George
      • Ryan George was born on 21 June 1989 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for Screen Rant Pitch Meetings (2017), Oddballs (2022) and Campus Law (2017).
    • Plays two characters: One is a studio exec who listens to the movie pitches of a writer (the other character he plays). Both characters make exaggerated faces and weirdly reacts to what the other character says.
    • But in the guise of this fake pitch meeting are what I consider to be great movie critiques. The fake pitch meetings are of movies that have already come out. So for example, they might do a Pitch Meeting video for the latest Batman movie and make fun of how incredibly dark it is, both the content and lighting.
    • I recommend this YouTube channel because by all means, I should hate it. All videos are almost completely the same, yet I can’t stop watching. It is funny and makes very good points about movies.

https://www.youtube.com/@PitchMeetings

The Studio Exec version of Ryan

The writer version of Ryan

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

  • Today’s episode is about a true historical badass that I’ve wanted to do an episode on for awhile now, ever since I saw a meme on the subReddit r/HistoryMemes.
  • Today we talk about the Father of the US Navy: John. Paul. Jones.
  • Here’s his Wikipedia summation:
    • John Paul Jones (born John Paul; July 6, 1747 – July 18, 1792) was a Scottish-American naval captain who was the United States’ first well-known naval commander in the American Revolutionary War. He was a Freemason, and made many friends among U.S political elites (including John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin) as well as enemies (who accused him of piracy), and his actions in British waters during the Revolution earned him an international reputation that persists to this day. As such, he is sometimes referred to as the “Father of the American Navy”
    • Jones was born and raised in Scotland, became a sailor at the age of thirteen, and served as commander of several merchantmen. After having killed one of his mutinous crew members with a sword, he fled to the Colony of Virginia and around 1775 joined the newly founded Continental Navy in their fight against the Kingdom of Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War. He commanded U.S. Navy ships stationed in France, led one failed assault on Britain, and several attacks on British merchant ships. Left without a command in 1787, he joined the Imperial Russian Navy and obtained the rank of rear admiral.
  • He started his life in Scotland on the Solway Coast, the son of a modest gardener. By the time he was a pre-teen he was a sailor.
    • He began his seafaring life as ship’s boy on the brig ‘Friendship’, sailing out of Whitehaven, across the Solway, and plying its trade to the West Indies and Virginia. Aged 17, he became the third mate on the on the ‘King George’ of Whitehaven.
    • Two years later, in 1766, he transferred as first mate to another slave ship.
      • At first he was on merchant ships and was making quite a lot of booty on the Atlantic slave trade. But he hated the life of a slave trader calling it an ‘abominable trade’.
      • While one of the slave ships he was working on was put to port in Jamaica he resigned his post.
      • It should be noted, he gave up the life of a slaver AFTER he made a fortune selling human lives.
    • The following years saw his career mired in controversy, with accusations of abuse and murder.
      • He worked on a brig known as “John” and took command of the vessel when the captain and first mate mysteriously died.
      • Whether gained through suspicious means or not, John Paul Jones’s was a natural seaman. His skills as a navigator impressed the owner of the brig John so much that he was appointed Ship Master.
  • JPJ was living life to the fullest as Ship Master until one day…
    • He swung into the port at Tobago in 1773. His crewmate was acting unruly and mutinous so, naturally, JPJ had him tied to the mast of the ship and flogged violently. He believed a show of force was necessary to command the power of a ship.
    • Unfortunately, JPJ flogged too violently and the punished crewmate died from his injuries.
    • JPJ’s reputation was shot to pieces and he was wanted for cruelty and murder.
      • Other versions say the crewmate didn’t die that day. He charged JPJ with acts of cruelty against him. JPJ won in court and wasn’t charged… but the crewmate mysteriously died a few days later and the authorities were certain JPJ murdered the guy out of retaliation.
    • Either way, the important part was that JPJ had anger issues that cost a man his life and what did he do?
      • Well he did what most Europeans did back then when they were wanted criminals… he fled to the American Colonies.
    • JPJ set sail for Fredericksburg Virginia (boy home of George Washington is in Fredericksburg and so is my old college buddy Panda)
      • Panda, if you are listening, sup buddy! Hope you are enjoying life in Fredericksburg. Thanks for having us as your guests last month.
    • In Fredericksburg JPJ’s brother had a big rich estate where he could crash. It the sweet life and JPJ was comfortable there… but not for long. JPJ is a wild-ass SOB and living the comfortable life isn’t sustainable for men like him.
      • Luckily JPJ didn’t have to live the quiet life for too long. A little thing called the Revolutionary war was about to kick off.
  • In 1775, with events working up to the American Revolution, Jones returned to Virginia and joined the fledgling ‘Continental Navy’ – the navy of the United States during the American Revolutionary War.
    • The colonies decided they wanted to go up against the British, but the British had the undisputed largest Navy in the world while the colonies had the equivalent of a few fishing boats.
    • Desperate for the closest thing to a fighting Navy they could scrounge up, the Colonists called upon men like JPJ to get ships and good naval commanders on their side.
      • They didn’t care too much about the criminal history of these men because most colonists had sketchy pasts and they were desperate.
    • When JPJ joined the Continental Navy he was given the rank of Senior First Lieutenant.
    • He was the first man to hoist a United States Naval Ensign over a US vessel, the 30-Gun Alfred, on which he served as second-in-command.
    • JPJ’s first couple months aboard the Alfred were full of sailing along the East coast laying waste to any British ship he could find. He and the continental navy sacked merchant ships and slow the supply line from Britain to their troops in America. It was pissing off the British royalty.
  • He ran successful campaigns enough times to get himself the command of his own ship the 12-Gun Sloop named Providence.
    • He captured 16 British ships in just 6 weeks.
    • It was November 2nd of 1776 when he went up against the British Coal Fleet at Isle Royale. He destroyed most of the fleet, rescued American POW’s, and stole a bunch of winter gear from the British that was supposed to go to British troops stationed in New York and Canada.
cincinnatus1.jpg
  • Then JPJ got an upgrade to the 18-Gun Frigate named the Ranger.
    • If you ask me, the Ranger sounds way cooler than the Providence.
    • JPJ was sent to France to garner support for the Americans. We went straight to Paris and met up with his friend Ben Franklin. The two networked around trying to get the French Navy on the side of the Colonists. While doing so they apparently partied it up hitting up local pubs and cavorted around with French ladies.
    • JPJ and Ben Franklin were successful in getting the French on their side and when that became official JPJ high tailed it to Jolly Old England. As he left, the Ranger got an official military solute from the French Fleet. This was the very first time an American ship was officially saluted by a foreign vessel of war.
    • When he reached England he went for the town of Whitehaven and began an assault in the dark of night. He and 16 of his crew rowed ashore and set ablaze to the fleet stationed there. He and his crew aboard the Ranger did the same to the estate of the Earl of Selkirk.
      • The objective was to capture the Earl of Selkirk and hold him for ransom, but the Earl wasn’t in that night.
  • The Ranger ravaged the British coast and Isles until his had to head back to France for resupply.
    • On the way back to France she encountered the British 20-Gun Sloop-o-War HMS Drake. A naval battle ensued, that which lasted 1 hour. The Ranger was vitorious killing 40 enemy sailors including the captain. JPJ captured the HMS Drake and subsequently boosted American morale back home. This was the first American naval victory over the Brits.
  • His reputation had slowly grown up until this point, but with the Ranger’s victory over the HMS Drake, JPJ was now reaching naval supernova status.
    • He returned to France and was put in charge of a squadron of US Warships and captain of the USS Bonhomme Richard (a 42-Gun Frigate refitted from a French Merchant vessel).
    • In September of 1779 the Bonhomme Richard encountered a massive fleet of 40 British merchant ships. This Fleet was guarded by the 44-Gun Frigate Serapis and the 28-Gun Countess of Scarborough.
    • Ben Thompson from one of my favorite blogs BadassOfTheWeek.com writes:

”  Jones ordered his ships on the attack, and the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis closed and became involved in a brutal Frazier-and-Ali style old-school life-or-death face-smashing brawl.  Devastating broadsides from Serapis blew apart theBonhomme Richard‘s sides, knocking out several of her main deck cannons and crippling the ship.  Jones fired back with broadsides of his own, but continued fire from the larger and more heavily-armed Serapis raked his ship, driving in his counters and quarters, forcing him to abandon all of his lower-deck guns, and catching Bonhomme Richard on fire in several places.  At one point in the battle, a volley from Serapis blew a large portion of the Bonhomme Richard‘s mast off, causing Captain Pearson of Serapis to ask whether Jones had struck his colors in surrender.  Jones took a look at the burning wreckage of his crippled warship, which taking on water and littered with dead bodies, set his jaw, and declared:

 

‘Surrender?!  I have not yet begun to fight!‘

Jones then rammed Serapis with Bonhomme Richard, fouling both ships together.  Serapis attemped to pull away from the Bonhomme Richard so she could bring the full might of her artillery to bear on the almost-defenseless American ship, but Jones threw hooks over the side and lashed the two ships together.  His desperate men poured musket fire and hurled hand grenades at the Serapis‘ deck, setting fire to the ship and inflicting heavy casualties.  A large contingent of British marines forward in an attempt to board the American vessel, but Jones was able to repulse the boarding party before leading a group of his own men over to Serapis, where he was able to capture the vessel and effect her surrender.

By the time the sun set that night, both ships were crippled, had lost over half of their men and were on fire in numerous places.  Bonhomme Richard had to be abandoned the following morning when attempts to bail several feet of water out of her hold proved fruitless.”

  • JPJ won. He was knighted by the King of France, Kin Louis. He was given the order Military Merit from the French and the Medal of Valor from the US Continental Congress in 1787. The British Government hated him.
  • When JPJ captured the Serapis he sailed it into a Dutch Port and there was some political tension that arose from this the details of which are messy and complicated. But what came out of it was that JPJ flew his own flag over the Serapis, thought to be designed by Benjamin Franklin (ambassador to Paris at the time).

This SOB flew his own made up flag lol.

  • Now after the American Revolution JPJ found himself home in the US with no wars to fight.
    • The war hound was restless. So he set sail for Russia and enlisted his services for Empress Catherine II in the Russian navy.
      • Jones served as a Rear Admiral for a Black Sea Russian Fleet under the appointment of Catherine the Great. He went by the name Pavel Dzhones.
      • He became Vice Admiral and commanded the Vladimir, an 24-Gun flagship of the Imperial Navy.
    • Under the Russian flag he defended the Liman Region of the Black Sea from the Ottoman Turks. He was awareded the Order of Saint Anne from the Russian Monarchy.
  • He retired to Paris in 1790.
    • Two years later in 1792 he died. His remains were barried in Saint Louis Cemetary.
"An honorable Peace is and always was my first wish!  I can take no delight in the effusion of human Blood;  but, if this War should continue, I wish to have the most active part in it."
“An honorable Peace is and always was my first wish! 
I can take no delight in the effusion of human Blood; 
but, if this War should continue,
I wish to have the most active part in it.”
  • The French, anticipating the US government would one day wish to return Jones’s remains to America, buried him in an expensive lead casket that was filled with rum for preservation. 
  • In 1905, after an extensive four-year search funded by the US Ambassador Horace Porter, Jones’s body was rediscovered.
  • JPJ’s body was exumed and returned to the US Military escorted by many battleships. He was burried with full military honors at the US Naval Academy chapel in a sarcophagus.
  • President Theodore Roosevelt would have Captain John Paul Jones reinterred at a specially built chapel at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Renewed interest in John Paul Jones led to Congress allocating $50,000 in June 1909 for a memorial to be built for him on the National Mall.
  • The memorial includes a bronze statue of Jones, 10 feet high, sculpted by Charles Henry Niehaus of New York City. It shows Jones standing with his left hand on the hilt of his sword. The rest of the memorial has a 15-foot marble pylon behind him, with two bronze dolphins on either side shooting water. This part was designed by the firm of Carrere & Hasting also of New York City.
  • The john Paul Jones Memorial was dedicated on April 17, 1912 which, by happenstance, was just two days after the British steamship Titanic sank. The memorial was dedicated by President William Howard Taft. The statue was unveiled by Spanish American War hero Admiral George Dewey. 
  • Jones is also remembered by his adversaries. The quaint Scottish cottage on the estate of Arbigland, where the gardener’s son, the future John Paul Jones, grew up has been preserved as a museum.
  •  Furthermore, the British Port of Whitehaven, raided by Captain Jones during the American Revolution, decided to pardon him in 1999.

CREDIT:

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Revered… Inaccurately

The following are the notes from Season 2 Episode 9 of the Who’d a Thunk It Podcast. More is discussed in this blog than is read aloud in this podcast episode.

  • Who was Paul Revere?
    • Paul Revere was born in Boston’s North End at the end of 1734 (the exact date is unknown) to a French Huguenot father who ran a silversmith shop and a mother from a local family.
      • That word “Huguenot” refers to French Protestants who fled France to escape violent prosecution from the Catholic French Government in the 16th and 17th centuries.
      • I wanted to explain this because one can see a connection between why Revere’s father fled to America and why Paul would be willing to side with the colonists during the American Revolution. They both were being oppressed. His father was being religiously oppressed, and Paul for political and economic reasons.
    • The young Revere was educated in reading and writing in school before completing his training as an apprentice to his silversmith father. At age 19, Revere inherited the business upon his father’s death. But he left the business briefly and enlisted in a provincial army in 1756 during the French and Indian War. So the American Revolution was not his first military experience.
    • Paul was a colonial Boston silversmith, industrialist, propagandist and patriot immortalized in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem describing Revere’s midnight ride to warn the colonists about a British attack.
    • He died of natural causes on May 10, 1818 at the age of 83 at a time when the average life expectancy was 30 to 40 years of age. He left five children, several grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren. The son of an immigrant artisan, not born to wealth or inheritance, Revere died a modestly well-to-do businessman and a popular local figure of some note.
  • This is who Revere was. Below is the poem that made him famous. For the Podcast I’ll be reading the beginning and end, while skipping the bulk of the poem’s mid section. It is along one, but in this blog post I have included the entire poem.

THE FAMOUS POEM: Paul Revere’s Ride

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – 1807-1882

  • Note: When Revere died, Longfellow was only about 11 years old.
This image was taken in 1868. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the “Fireside Poets,” wrote lyrical poems about history, mythology, and legend that were popular and widely translated, making him the most famous American of his day. 


Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,—
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,—
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

  • The Legend
    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as well as having one of those really cool names you have to say in its entirety every time you say it, could write one heck of an epic poem.
      • “A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
      • A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,…”
    • That is poetic gold. It really did immortalize Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride years after his death. The poem written about Revere’s ride was so popular that it was taught in American public schools.
      • I didn’t have to look this up. I remember being taught the accounts in this poem as if they were facts.
    • But it turns out the American Public school system got it wrong. That night did NOT happen the way we were all told.
  • April 18th, 1775
    • Paul’s mission was to warn the militiamen of Lexington and Concord if the British attacked. That is true.
    • But he never said the famous words “The British are coming,” like all the reenactments us American’s have seen.
      • I don’t actually know where this idea came from, because the line wasn’t in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem either.
      • During the 1770’s everyone considered themselves British. The citizens at the time may have distinguished themselves as colonial patriots or loyalists… but they all considered themselves British. Because they were… they had all recently immigrated to the Americas and/or they were still technically part of the British Territory that was America.
      • So if Paul Revere actually did say “The British are coming,” it would have been very confusing and wouldn’t have accomplished much at all.
      • Instead, Revere and his compatriots referred to the British army as “The Regulars”
    • Ok so far I’ve only said that 1 word out of the story is off, but all my fellow middleschool classmates and I were shown an image of Paul Revere riding around the streets on his horse yelling at the top of his lungs… that is not how it went down.
      • This was a covert intelligence operation. Instead of yelling on the streets (which would have gotten him captured by British authorities immediately) Revere went specifically to known colonist patriots and most likely whispered the news.
      • But I understand why this part of the story was doctored. You try getting a bunch of kids excited about a guy traveling to peoples’ houses at night and whispering news in their ear… much more exciting sounding if he is frantically racing around shouting at people in the middle of the night.
    • Now the biggest inaccuracy was that Revere didn’t complete his mission. He actually failed miserably.
      • The lanterns that Revere supposedly saw as signals for whether the British were coming (One if by land, Two if by sea) well Revere didn’t even see those lanterns.
      • Those lanterns were set up to signal this message, but it was Dr. Joseph Warren (a different son of Liberty) that received the message.
      • But Dr. Joseph Warren wasn’t the one who sent the message to Lexington and Concord, instead he sent a man named William Dawes. Dawes was the first Son of Liberty to set out on the Midnight ride. Revere joined him later. They warned Lexington together. Then Dawes and Revere were detained by the British/Regulars. They never made it to Concord.
      • It was Samuel Prescott who warned Concord. There were numerous riders that night dispatched to warn all sorts of towns…
      • This means Revere’s contribution was minimal compared to other riders that night. In the time between his failed midnight ride and his death, people forgot about his contribution to the revolutionary war. Revere’s Midnight ride wasn’t even mentioned in his Obituary.
  • So why do a podcast on this topic?
    • To sum things up, the Midnight ride was an impressive intelligence operation during the revolutionary war. The colonial army’s spy network showed great organization skills and that they could carry out such an operation affectively.
    • It seems that years later a talented poet heard about this impressive operation, picked the coolest sounding name out of those who were involved (Revere) and used that name to construct a more interesting narrative to grab the attention of the largest audience possible.
    • For 200 years, the American public schools then taught this narrative as fact to the youth of the nation. Now everyone knows the fabricated version of the events of the Midnight Ride instead of the actual facts.
    • The reason I wanted to do a podcast on this is because stories like this have changed how I view the world. Stories like this helped me realize a few truths:
      • Doubt can be a debilitating thing if it goes unchecked in the human psyche, but if used properly it can be a powerful tool for uncovering the truth.
      • Education is important and usually benefits society, but it is an institution run by human beings. Therefore it is susceptible to error.
      • Educate yourself, but never trust blindly. Put a little bit of doub in to everything. If it is worth while, it will withstand the doubt.

CREDIT

If you are like me and prefer to listen instead of read, then you are in luck. Everything above is read aloud by me for the Who’d a Thunk it? Podcast. By now the Who’d a Thunk It has reached people in 38 countries. It is hosted by Anchor.fm but you can also find Who’d a Thunk It on:

If you would like to contact me, feel free to comment on this blog post, or email me at WhodaThunkItPodcast@gmail.com