Navy blues.

• Author: Boyer, Michael C.
• Position: Book Review

JOHN PAUL JONES: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy by Evan Thomas Simon & Schuster, $28.00

JOHN PAUL JONES ARRIVED IN the United States like many immigrants--under a false name and a change of murder. Just 26 years old in the winter of 1774, Jones was already a slave trader, murderer, and sea captain. America was already home to revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Over the next 20 years, Jones would carve his place in history among them, as the founding father of America's navy.

Such lives stir imaginations. Herman Melville fictionalized Jones in Israel Potter. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a (reportedly awful) screenplay about Jones in mid-1920s. Hollywood made a major film about his life released in 1959. And numerous biographers have tackled his globetrotting escapades. The latest is Evan Thomas, who in previous books has shown a penchant for debunking important historical episodes. In John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy, Thomas strives to expose Jones as a man driven as much by personal glory as duty to country, and one whose legend is as much fiction as fact.

The son of a Scottish gardener who lacked the social connections to land a commission in the Royal Navy, Jones went to sea at age 13 as a lowly laborer, and quickly excelled as a seaman. By 19, he was first mate on a slave ship that sailed the infamous "middle passage" between Africa and Caribbean. By 21, he'd had enough of the high seas and set sail for home from Jamaica aboard the Scottish brig John. During the trip, Jones unexpectedly became the ship's master when its captain and first mate died suddenly. Only he knew how to navigate. Upon his safe return, the ship's owners rewarded Jones with command of the merchant vessel.

Jones was a demanding and difficult captain whose next command led to a mutinous rebellion, the leader of which Jones stabbed to death. By his own account, the slaying was accidental. But Jones nevertheless fled to Fredericksburg, Va., shortly before the war for independence in April 1775. Thomas argues that Jones viewed the war not as a patriotic duty but an opportunity: "The prospect of war meant a great chance for Jones to advance in ways dosed to him in his prior life." Indeed, the disorganized American navy offered great hope to Jones, who was experienced in naval gunnery, which the British merchant ships he'd sailed carried for protection. Late in the summer of 1775, he went to Philadelphia...