Paul Jones: Founder of the American Navy - A History, in Two Volumes

xv, [1], 328, [6]; vii, [1], 379, [5] pp. Brown leather spine and corners, marbled boards and endpapers, gilt titles and decorations, top edge gilt. Color frontispiece of Paul Jones in first volume, etched portrait frontispiece in second volume. Also includes a map of the British Isles, an outboard profile of the Bon Homme Richard, a plan of the battle of the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis, and a facsimile of an letter from Paul Jones to George Washington. John Paul Jones (born John Paul; July 6, 1747 – July 18, 1792) was a Scottish-American naval captain who was the United States' first well-known naval commander in the American Revolutionary War. He made many friends among U.S political elites (including John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin), as well as enemies (who accused him of piracy), and his actions in British waters during the Revolution earned him an international reputation which persists to this day. As such, he is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the American Navy" (a sobriquet he shares with John Barry and John Adams). Jones was born and raised in Scotland, became a sailor, and served as commander of several merchantmen. After having killed one of his mutinous crew members with a sword, he fled to the Colony of Virginia and around 1775 joined the newly founded Continental Navy in their fight against the Kingdom of Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War. He commanded U.S. Navy ships stationed in France, led one failed assault on Britain, and several attacks on British merchant ships. Left without a command in 1787, he joined the Imperial Russian Navy and obtained the rank of rear admiral.