On a clear, cool day, 100 years ago (24 April 1906), President Theodore Roosevelt, congressional and judicial leaders, governors, military and naval officers, foreign emissaries, representatives of patriotic societies, and thousands of spectators gathered in Annapolis to pay tribute to John Paul Jones, whose remains now rest in a striking black marble sarcophagus below the Naval Academy Chapel.1 The inscription on his tomb reads: "He gave to our navy its earliest traditions of heroism and victory," a sentiment echoed by Secretary of the Navy Charles J. Bonaparte when, in his introduction of President Roosevelt, he declared, "We have met to honor the memory of that man who gave our Navy its earliest traditions of heroism and victory."2
After welcoming the assembled dignitaries and paying special homage to the French naval officers present, Roosevelt challenged U.S. naval officers, saying, "Every officer in our Navy should feel in each fiber of his being an eager desire to emulate the energy, the professional capacity, the indomitable determination and dauntless scorn of death which marked John Paul Jones above his fellows." The two themes developed by the president in his oration were personal courage to the point of refusing to surrender regardless of the hopelessness of the situation, and the need for "building up the United States Navy."3
The fact that Roosevelt devoted more of his speech to the need to enlarge the Navy would probably not have surprised Jones were he present. Indeed, Jones had, for much of his life, been ceremoniously used by writers and political leaders for their own purposes. In 1780, following the victory in which he and the Bonhomme Richard captured the British frigate Serapis, French leaders lionized him in Paris. King Louis XVI knighted him and presented Jones with a gold-hilted sword, Queen Marie Antoinette invited him to join her at the opera, and various soirees were held in his honor. The explanation for such honors lies in the timing. The spectacular success of Jones' voyage around the British Isles; his capture of half a dozen ships; the virtual panic inspired by his attempt to hold Leith, the port city of Edinburgh, for ransom; and his capture of the Serapis and her consort, the Countess of Scarborough, shone in stark contrast to the dismal failure of a planned Franco-Spanish attack against southern England.4 That French leaders sought by celebrating him to deflect attention from the failure of their own navy is reflected by the caption to a print hastily engraved and offered for sale in Paris. Translated, the caption reads:
When God presents one, the most must be made of him.
A decade later, Jones was living in Paris in retirement when a new government came to power in revolutionary France, one much displeased with the conduct of U.S. Ambassador Gouverneur Morris. When Jones died in July 1792, Morris, a witness to his will, ordered that the naval commander be buried as cheaply and privately as possible. Seeing an opportunity to embarrass Morris and perhaps to engineer his replacement by an ambassador more sympathetic to the new government, officials of the Legislative Assembly took charge of Jones" funeral, appointing a clergyman to officiate, ordering a detachment of grenadiers to lead his cortege, and sending a committee of its members to follow the hearse in carriages. If the French leaders hoped reports of Morris' parsimony would further undermine his position at home, they had to be pleased that he decided not to cancel a dinner party he was hosting the evening of the funeral and sent an assistant to represent him.5
Thus political leaders used Jones and invoked his name for their own purposes both during his lifetime and a century later. A half-century later producers of the 1959 Hollywood depiction of John Paul Jones, which featured Robert Stack as the hero, followed the lead of Theodore Roosevelt. They opened the film with an officer on board an aircraft carrier quoting Jones on the need for maintaining a strong Navy in time of peace and, reflecting Cold War images of the era, characterized most of the people with whom Jones came into contact during his service in Russia as deceitful and conniving.
How relevant or useful is Jones in 2006, another half-century later? Will his life be examined for lessons another century from now? What would a present-day Theodore Roosevelt find of value in the life of John Paul Jones? Roosevelt's analysis of the past to glean lessons for the present was clear in his first major publication, a naval history of the War of 1812, and he doubtless could find lessons in the life of Jones for the 21st century, just as he did for the 20th.6 The content of those lessons would depend, of course, on the audience being addressed.
If speaking to midshipmen at the Naval Academy or other young military or naval officers, Roosevelt would almost certainly place less emphasis on Jones' personal courage under fire, and more on the commander's "professional capacity," to which the president alluded but did not further discuss in his address of 1906. Roosevelt's focus on Jones as a heroic figure reflected the hagiographies of the past century, when popular writers and biographers depicted him as a man of action and devoted as many as half their pages to his exploits in command of the Ranger and the Bonhomme Richard. Romantic writers of the mid-19th century rebelled against the logic of the preceding era and placed greater value on intuition and emotion than on education and reason, preferring men of action struggling against overwhelming odds to men of contemplation. As the United States expanded across the continent, built cities and industries, Jones also represented the quintessential man of modest birth who rose to heights of fame.7
Recognizing the technological nature of the modern Navy and the need to develop professional expertise, a modern Roosevelt would almost certainly mention Jones' exploits in passing-few could resist quoting "I've not yet begun to fight"-and focus instead on the professionalism exhibited by Jones, on the value he placed on education when he proposed establishment of a series of naval academies and a fleet of evolution to test strategy and tactics, and on his quest to expand his professional knowledge. For example, Jones learned the French language to better communicate with others, observed operations during a cruise on board a French flagship in order that he might better command a squadron, and accepted a commission as an admiral in the Russian Navy so he could command a fleet and thereby prepare himself for high command when the United States revived its Navy, as Jones knew it must.
Addressing an audience of serving officers, a modern Theodore Roosevelt might well draw on the life of John Paul Jones to illustrate the "bedrock principles or core values" of the modern U.S. Navy: honor, courage, commitment. These ideals appear on a poster available to all naval commands, their contemporary meanings are explored in a book distributed to all enlisted personnel at the time they enter naval service, and a recent article in the magazine of the Naval Academy Alumni Association discusses the ways in which John Paul Jones embodied those values.8 Speechwriters could draw on all of these sources when drafting remarks for a modern Roosevelt.
A navy, like the society it serves, evolves over time and finds useful different heroes or exemplars in different eras. In the pantheon of American naval leaders inhabited by John Paul Jones, Oliver Hazard Perry, David G. Farragut, George Dewey (present at the ceremony in April 1906), Chester Nimitz, and William F. Halsey, Jones stands above the rest in the popular imagination. The subject of numerous poems, half a dozen plays, and scores of biographies, his multifaceted persona has fascinated Americans for centuries. He and his exploits appear in museums in Scotland, Russia, France, England, and the United States. That his fame will continue into the future is certain, and whenever individuals seek lessons for their time in the lives of those who went before them, some will doubtless turn to the study of John Paul Jones.
Jones served during the age of sail, a time of wooden ships propelled by winds and armed with smoothbore cannon, a time that appears far removed from the nuclear- and gas turbine-powered ships of today with their guided missiles, steel hulls, and superstructures bristling with electronic weapon systems. The future will undoubtedly bring technological changes of an equal magnitude, but the basic principles of naval leadership and attributes of successful naval officers will remain constant. As former Naval Academy Superintendent Admiral James Calvert once stated, "Important as ships are, naval history is made by men."9 Thus it is not difficult to imagine a speaker in 2047 marking the bicentennial of Jones' birth by delivering an address entitled "The Continuing Relevance of John Paul Jones," or an article in the April 2106 issue of Naval History entitled "The Life of John Paul Jones: Lessons for the 22nd Century."
1. "There is no event in our history attended with such pomp and circumstances of glory, magnificence, and patriotic fervor." Charles W. Stewart, comp., John Paul Jones Commemoration at Annapolis, April 24, 1906 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907), 13.
2. Ibid., 15.
3. Drawing on historical examples to support his points, Roosevelt devoted as much of his 2,000-word speech to lessons of the War of 1812 as he did to John Paul Jones and the American Revolution. Ibid., 15-19.
4. During the summer of 1779 a Franco-Spanish expedition against England collapsed after more than a year's preparation. Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, l975), 150-158, 163-165.
5. Gouverneur Morris, A Diary of the French Revolution, 2 vols., edited by Betrix Cary Davenport (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939), II, 471.
6. Theodore Roosevelt, Naval War of 1812 (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1882). The lessons Roosevelt drew from his study of naval history and his employment of them are discussed in Mark Russell Shulman, Navalism and the Emergence of American Sea Power, 1882-1893 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, l995).
7. James C. Bradford, The Reincarnation of John Paul Jones: The Navy Discovers Its Professional Roots (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Foundation, 1986).
8. Thomas J Cutler, A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 1-68. The poster can be found on the Internet at: www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/traditions/html/corvalu.html. James C. Bradford, "John Paul Jones: Naval Leader for the Centuries," Shipmate (July/August 2005), 8-11. The use made of quotations by Jones, some bogus, is explored in Lori Lyn Bogle and Joel I. Holwitt, "The Best Quote Jones Never Wrote," Naval History, 18:2 (April 2004), 18-23.
9. James Calvert, The Naval Profession (New York: McGraw Hill, 1965), 6.