Falmouth Packet Archives 1688-1850 | home
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Florida, Carolinas, Virginia
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VA Ports:
1781: Founded in 1727 and named after Frederick, Prince of Wales (father of George III), Fredericksburg was incorporated as a town in 1781.
1822: Fredericksburg was made a central point for the distribution of mail to five States, and the mails became so heavy that surreys were used instead of post riders.
John Paul (1747-92) was born in Scotland. He first visited Virginia as a lad of 12, apprenticed to a shipmaster. During the next nine years he was acting midshipman, third and first mate on slavers, shipmaster, and finally master of his own boat. When his crew mutinied, he killed the ringleader and fled to his brother in Fredericksburg.
In 1775, after seven years of obscurity, he appeared in Philadelphia, calling himself John Paul Jones and bearing a commission as senior lieutenant in the Continental navy. Then began his incredible career as a naval officer. He successfully attacked New Providence in the Bahamas and for a time convoyed supply ships into New York harbor; in a seven-week freelance cruise between Bermuda and Nova Scotia he captured six brigantines, one sloop, and one ship and destroyed six schooners, one ship, and one brigantine; he cut his way through ice to save Americans on Isle Royale, burned a warehouse on the Acadian coast, took four transports, and on his way home captured another transport and a sixteen-gun privateer.
Sailing to France with dispatches, he picked up two prizes and forced a British sloop to strike her colors.
With the clumsily remodeled Bonhomme Richard, obtained for him by Benjamin Franklin, he entered upon a series of successful engagements and, in one of the great sea fights of history, caused the Serapis to ask for quarter. He often paid officers and sailors out of his own pocket and was not reimbursed until after the war. In 1787 Congress awarded him a gold medal. The next year, on Thomas Jefferson's advice, he accepted Empress Catherine's invitation to reorganize the Russian Navy. Though made an admiral and sent to the Black Sea against the Turks, he was never given the superior command and lost Catherine's good will through the intrigue of rivals.
After the Revolution Jefferson spoke of him as a man of 'disinterested spirit' and the 'principal hope of our future efforts on the ocean . . .'He died in Paris [in 1792] at the age of 45 and was buried there in St. Louis Cemetery for Protestants. In 1813 his body was removed to the Naval Academy Chapel at Annapolis
