ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on Paul Jones's service as an officer in the Continental Navy. The story they embody might be considered, as it stands, an enviable record for the average, or more than the average, naval commander. It is customary in dealing with the history of an individual to pause at some point for the purpose of analyzing his character and deploying in the abstract his traits. The situation of Paul Jones in France after the Banger had sailed, leaving him without a command and wholly dependent on the grace of the King for further opportunity, is graphically described in a letter to Joseph Hewes. Whatever others may have done or may have tried to do for him, Jones unquestionably owed the opportunity of his crowning success, and of the victory that made his name immortal, to the gentle and beautiful woman whom history knows as the wife of Philippe Egalite and the mother of Louis Philippe.
