John Paul was born in Kirkcudbrightshire in 1747.  At the age of twelve, he took to the sea.  By the time he was twenty-two, he commanded a British merchant ship, the John.  After the death of a man who was flogged under his orders, John Paul was imprisoned.  After a few years, he was released and became captain of the Betsey.  Betsey's crew mutinied, and John Paul killed the leader of the mutineers.  John Paul was charged with murder a second time, and fled to America, where he added the name Jones, probably to hide his true identity.
    John Paul Jones joined the American Navy as soon as it was formed, and soon took command of the Ranger.  While in command of this ship, Jones was probably the first man to fly the Stars and Stripes, and was later aboard the Ranger the first time a foreign country saluted a ship flying those colours.
    During his first voyage, a trip to France, John Paul Jones harassed shipping and even captured H.M.S. Drake in the Irish Sea, near his old home.  However, after an extended stay in France, Jones's crew grew mutinous, and Jones resigned his command. But by the next spring, 1779, he had command of an old French East Indiaman, renamed the Bonhomme Richard after Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, and also commanded two frigates and two smaller vessels under French captains but sailing under the Stars and Stripes.
    His first venture with these ships, a journey up the Irish Sea, met with the loss of his small vessels, the Cerf and the Vengeance.  After rounding the northern end of Scotland, Jones and his remaining ships sailed south, hoping to find valuable prizes.  By good fortune, his remaining ships were all close by when, in September 1779, he encountered a convoy of merchantmen escorted by the Serapis, a heavily armed frigate, and the Countess of Scarborough, a lightly armed sloop.
    One of Jones's escort ships, the frigate Pallas, engaged and eventually captured the lightly armed Countess of Scarborough, and spent the rest of the night securing her capture.  Jones's other frigate, the Alliance, was equally unhelpful, content to fire randomly at all involved parties.  This forced the Bonhomme Richard to engage the superior Serapis alone.  This was inadvisable because the Serapis had more cannon and was more maneuverable.  After an hour's fighting, the Serapis was wreaking havoc on the Richard; at this point, Jones's fortunes turned.  The Serapis' jib boom caught in the Richard's starboard mizzen rigging, and Jones lashed the two ships together with his own hands.
    Both ships had similar numbers of men, but because the gun decks of the Bonhomme Richard had been smashed by English cannon fire, Jones' gun crew was freed to come on deck to fight against the Englishmen.  One of Jones' men had also climbed out on a mainyard with a bucket of grenades, and succeeded in throwing one of them down the main hatchway of the Serapis, doing considerable damage to her guns and their crews.
    The situation was little better on the Richard.  The ship's hold was beginning to fill with water, and when word of this reached the chief gunner, he and two other men ran to the rear of the ship and tried to strike the colours.  However, the pole had been shot away, and they tried to haul down another flag, crying "Quarter! For God's sake, quarter!"  When Jones saw this, he (ever ready to be unpopular) threw his pistols at the chief gunner, knocking him senseless.  At about this time, the British captain asked if Jones' ship had stuck her colours and surrendered, to which Jones answered, "We have not yet begun to fight."  This has since become a Navy slogan.
    Although the colours remained unstruck, upon hearing the cries for quarter the American master-at-arms went below and released over a hundred British prisoners.  Had they been organised, the Serapis might have won the day, but they were so confused that Jones was unable to put them to work manning the pumps that kept the Richard afloat.  At about this time, the Alliance returned from assisting the Pallas, and Jones thought that the battle was won.  Much to his surprise and dismay, the Alliance fired into his own stern, killing many of his best men (according to Jones' account).  Nonetheless, the appearance of the Alliance and word of the capture of the Countess of Scarborough disheartened the British, and after three and a half hours of fierce fighting, the British captain struck his colours and the battle was ended.  Two days later, the Bonhomme Richard, her hold filled with water, sank, and John Paul Jones and his prizes sailed back to France.
    Although Jones, and incidentally the British captains, were greatly honoured by their nations' leaders, this was John Paul Jones' last important action with the United States Navy.  Jones later served aboard several French vessels and even fought in the Russian Black Sea Fleet as a Rear Admiral, by special request of Empress Catherine the Great.  His service was unspectacular, and he retired to Paris.  He was appointed American commissioner to Algiers in 1792, but he died before word officially reached him.  His body was not returned to the United States until 1905, when he was nominated for the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.  This movement was rejected because of his Russian service.  However, a similar nomination in 1925 passed, and John Paul Jones was inducted into the Hall of Fame 133 years after his death.

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