JOHN PAUL JONES WAS HERE

He didn’t stay anywhere long. John Paul Jones called himself a "citizen of the world". But twice he stayed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for very long visits waiting to equip the historic RANGER and the fated AMERICA.

JOHN PAUL JONES in Portsmouth

With no surviving plans or sketches, the Portsmouth-built warship RANGER, like its captain John Paul Jones, remains intriguingly mysterious. Although often missed in textbooks, the RANGER played a large role in the small Continental Navy. (Bill Gilkerson illustration used with permission)

The Complex John Paul Jones

In Great Britain, where he raided his own native soil, he was considered a terrorist. In America, where he risked life and fortune in the American Revolution, he was a patriot -- although he was never a citizen and was later ignored.

JOHN PAUL JONES

The father of the American navy as a woman? Yes, said Agnes Huntington. She played the macho naval hero in the 19th century comic opera Paul Jones.

PISCATAQUA SHIPS

Skilled boatbuilders were producing fine wooden ships from the dense local forests by the late 1600s. The Raleigh, first of the ships in the Contientnal Navy was built here before the Revolution. Shipyards flourished all along the Piscataqua and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine is over 200 years old. This section is dedicated to those ships, the men and women who built and sailed them, and their families.
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USS CONSTITUTION

Among the oldest pictures in the US Navy archives is an iamge of :Old Ironsides" under repair in Portsmouth Harbor. Though built and berthed still in Charleston, Mass, the USS CONSTITUTION has deep ties to the Piscataqua. The oldest US naval ship was here for nearly two decades during a strange era in her history -- told here.
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JOHN PAUL JONES
(1747 - 1792)

Scottish born naval captain John Paul Jones visited New Hampshire twice. In 1777 he took Portsmouth-built RANGER with a Piscataqua crew to France. There he worried the British in a series of guerilla raids before his famous battle in the BON HOMME RICHARD. Later, a hero decorated by the king of France, he returned to Portsmouth to fit out the AMERICA, largest ship of war ever built in the nation to that day. Jones stayed at the Purcell House, today the Paul Jones Museum. This site offers those stories and many more.
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