om these daring adventurers was that earliest
of America's naval commanders, John Paul Jones, well called the "Founder
of the American Navy." He it was who first carried the Stars and Stripes
into foreign waters, and who made Europe to see that a new nation had
arisen, in the west. He it was who first scouted the tradition of
England's invincibility on the sea, and carried the war into her very
ports. He it was who proved that American valor yielded no whit to
British valor--who, when Captain Pearson, of the Serapis, asked if he
had struck his colors, shouted back that he had not yet begun to fight,
although his ship had been shot to pieces and was sinking; but who
thereupon did begin, and to such good purpose that he captured his
adversary and got his crew aboard her as his own ship sank. Truly a
remarkable man and one worth looking at closely.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, there lived in the county of
Kirkcudbright, Scotland, a poor gardener named John Paul. He had a large
family, and finding it no small task to feed so many mouths, accepted
the offer of a distant relative named William Jones to adopt his oldest
son, William, named in honor of that same relative. Jones owned a
plantation in Virginia, and thither the boy accompanied him, being known
thereafter as William Paul Jones. None of John Paul's numerous children,
however, would have figured on the pages of history but for the youngest
son, born in 1747, and named after his father, John Paul.

Little John Paul had a short childhood, for as soon as he could handle a
line, he was put to work with the fishermen on Solway Firth to help earn
a living for the family. By the time that he was twelve years old, he
was a first-class sailor, and had developed a love for the sea and a
disregard of its perils which never left him. Securing his father's
consent, he shipped as apprentice for a voyage to Virginia, and visited
his brother, who was managing his adopted father's estate near
Fredericksburg. The old planter took a great fancy to the boy, and
offered to adopt him also, but young John Paul preferred the
adventurous life of the ocean to humdrum existence on a Virginia
plantation. For the next fifteen years, he followed the sea, studying
navigation and naval history, French and Spanish, and fitting himself in
every way for high rank in his profession.

On the seventeenth of April, 1773, John Paul anchored his brig, the Two
Friends, in the Rappahannock just