below his brother's plantation, and
rowed to shore to pay him a visit. He found him breathing his last. He
died childless, and John Paul found himself heir to the estate, which
was a considerable one. Resigning command of his vessel, he settled down
to the life of a Virginia planter, adding to his name the last name of
his family's benefactor, and being known thereafter as John Paul Jones.

Events were at this time hurrying forward toward war with Great Britain;
Virginia was in a ferment, and Paul Jones was soon caught up by this
tide of patriotism. When, in 1775, the Congress decided to "equip a navy
for the defence of American liberty," Jones at once offered his
services, and was made a senior first lieutenant. It is amusing to run
over the names of those first officers of the American navy. As was the
case with the first generals, out of the whole list only two names live
with any lustre--Paul Jones and Nicholas Biddle.

Paul Jones was the first of these officers to receive his commission,
John Hancock handing it to him in Independence Hall, Philadelphia,
shortly after noon on December 22, 1775. Immediately afterwards, the
new lieutenant, accompanied by a distinguished party, including Hancock
and Thomas Jefferson, proceeded to the Chestnut street wharf, where the
Alfred, the first American man-of-war was lying moored. Captain
Saltonstall, who was to command the ship, had not yet arrived from
Boston, and at Hancock's direction, Lieutenant Jones took command, and
ran up the first American flag ever shown from the masthead of a
man-of-war. It was not the Stars and Stripes, which had not yet been
adopted as the flag of the United States, but a flag showing a
rattlesnake coiled at the foot of a pine-tree, with the words, "Don't
tread on me."

Three other small vessels were soon placed in commission, and the
squadron started out on its first cruise on February 17, 1776. Through
the inexperience and incompetency of the officers, the cruise was a
complete failure, and resulted in the dismissal of "Commander-in-Chief"
Ezekial Hopkins, and the retirement of Jones's immediate superior,
Captain Dudley Saltonstall. It was a striking example of how the first
blast of battle winnows the wheat from the chaff, and its best result
was to give Paul Jones a command of his own. Never thereafter was he
forced to serve under an imbecile superior, but was always, to the end
of his career, the ranking officer on his station.

His first