The Admiral and the Ambassador

Copyright © 2014 by Scott Martelle

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, IL 60610

ISBN 978-1-61374-730-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Martelle, Scott, 1958–

The admiral and the ambassador : one man's obsessive search for the body of John Paul Jones / Scott Martelle.

       pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61374-730-8

1. Jones, John Paul, 1747–1792—Death and burial. 2. Jones, John Paul, 1747–1792–Tomb. 3. Porter, Horace, 1837–1921. I. Title.

E207.J7M23 2014

973.3′5092—dc23

2014002307

Interior design: PerfecType, Nashville, TN

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

For Margaret, of course

Introduction

1 Jones: A Hero Dies

2 A New President

3 McKinley, Grant, and an Ambassadorship

4 Jones: The Scourge of England

5 The Ambassador Arrives

6 Of War and Heroes

7 Jones: The Fall

8 War in Cuba, Peace in Paris

9 The Missing Grave

10 A Brush with Fame

11 The Search Begins

12 Dreyfus, the Exposition, and Other Distractions

13 An Assassination

14 The Negotiations

15 The Dig and the Discovery

16 The Return of the Hero

17 A Celebration and a Delay

18 Annapolis Celebrates

19 “Stowed Away Like Old Lumber”

A Note on Sourcing and Some Thanks

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

O
N A
S
UNDAY MORNING
in late January 1913, the US secretary of the navy, George von Lengerke Meyer, and Horace Porter, the former US ambassador to France, led a small group of political dignitaries on a thirty-mile train trip from Washington, DC, to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was an unusually warm, spring-like day, and bright sunshine drenched the countryside as the train glided eastward, arriving a little before 11 A
M.
A small welcoming committee awaited them at the platform. After the dignitaries alit and introductions had been made, academy superintendent Captain John H. Gibbons escorted the group the few blocks to the college grounds for a brief ceremony that would be part funeral and part final chapter of a long and shifting story.
¹

As the dignitaries arrived, the academy's seven hundred uniformed midshipmen were already in place on an expanse of treed parkland between the domed, five-year-old chapel and a ship basin that had been carved into the bank of the Severn River at the northeast edge of the grounds. The grandiose, five-story Bancroft Hall, the cadets' palatial new dormitory, anchored the southeast corner of the park, and once the dignitaries had entered the chapel, a small detachment of midshipmen marched to an open stone courtyard at the foot of the broad staircase leading up to Bancroft Hall's main entrance.

A half dozen of the young men then split off and entered the hall, making their way beneath the grand staircase where they surrounded and carefully lifted a flag-draped coffin from a temporary bier of two sawhorses. The young pallbearers carried the body outside to a small caisson, then fell in behind the navy band and a double line of midshipmen for the short and somber parade to the chapel. While the dignitaries listened to a short service on the main floor, the pallbearers took the coffin down a short flight of stairs to a large room in the middle of the basement where they hoisted it into a massive twenty-one-ton marble-and-bronze sarcophagus supported by bronze dolphins. Workmen then winched the heavy lid into place and sealed the sarcophagus shut.

The ceremony in the church was short—just a few comments about the significance of the moment and some accolades for the man whose body was freshly placed in the basement crypt, closed out by a prayer. At its end, the celebrants descended the stairs to the basement, where they became the first tourists to visit the final resting place of Revolutionary War hero John Paul Jones. The moment was decidedly anticlimactic, but that shouldn't have been surprising for what was, in effect, Jones's fourth funeral.

Jones's arrival at his ornate crypt came more than 120 years after his death in Paris in 1792. France at that time was in the throes of its own revolution, and Jones's death—of natural causes—was quickly noted and even more quickly forgotten, an ignominious end for the man many people consider to be the father of the US Navy. Were it not for Horace Porter, one of the men on the Annapolis outing on that January day, Jones's body would likely still be buried deep beneath modern Paris instead of tucked into the basement of the Annapolis Chapel. How Porter found the hero's remains—which involved something of a historical detective story—is the subject of this book.

Jones was most famous for words he never uttered. According to legend, “I have not yet begun to fight” was his response to a demand that he “strike his colors”—surrender—by a British navy captain with whom his barely floating
Bonhomme Richard
was engaged in a deadly sea battle. What Jones actually said was closer to “I have not yet thought of it, but I am determined to make you strike!” Not quite as resonant or poetic, though equally emblematic of Jones's preternatural stubbornness and drive.

Over generations, such embellishments to Jones's life have helped create a legend that exceeds the scope of the man, which is fine; that is the nature of heroes and hero worship. The real Jones, though, was a fascinating figure without the embellishments. At times petulant and easily offended, at other times a masterful and intuitive naval strategist, Jones cut a wide swath through Revolutionary America and the salons of Europe. He liked women—especially, it seems, those already married. He liked receiving accolades. And he hungered for fame and acceptance from the rich and the powerful, an understandable character trait for the ambitious, lowborn son of a Scottish gardener.

In the course of his short life, Jones achieved much. He became a successful sea captain and expert navigator, a self-taught and prolific letter writer, a murderer, and a war hero. He was received at the courts of royalty in Paris and Saint Petersburg, was fluent in French, and counted among his friends and acquaintances a roster of America's founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin.

He was the first American naval commander to receive a salute from a foreign power—France—while flying the new American flag, the Stars and Stripes, and showed through his cleverness, bravery, and will, that the eighteenth century British navy was not as formidable as it might have seemed. While Jones never acquired the kinds of riches he sought, he did amass a fortune large enough to make most men comfortable in that time.

Jones's story has been well chronicled in many splendid (and some not-so-splendid) biographies, led in 1959 by Samuel Eliot Morison's Pulitzer Prize—winning
John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography,
and followed more recently by Evan Thomas's well-turned
John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy
in 2003. Jones biographies invariably end with a full or partial chapter on how Jones's body went missing after his death, tacked on like an appendix, as though the author is saying, well, I've told you a story about this fascinating man and I guess I should tell you that here at the end of his life another little drama took place.

It's that last story that fascinates me most. There is something poignant about Jones's earthly afterlife. It speaks to our national impulse to elevate heroes—particularly military ones—but also our collective short memory and disregard for history. The genesis of this book was my chance encounter
with an article, “Home Is the Sailor,” by historian Adam Goodheart, in the April 2006 issue of
Smithsonian
magazine. The piece explored lingering uncertainty about whether the body in that Naval Academy crypt is indeed that of Jones. I believe it is and that the questions are more of the “what if” variety than serious doubts.

But the article introduced me to the man responsible for finding the body, Horace Porter, who achieved significant fame during his life but who has since faded into the shadows of history. Curiosity piqued, I began poking around to learn more about Porter and the obsession that led this confidante of presidents—himself a decorated Civil War hero who attained the rank of brigadier general—to spend several years and a small fortune trying to find the body of a man long dead.

As I worked, it became clear that the lives of Porter and Jones, taken together, were inextricably linked to some of the most significant events in the first half of the nation's history. Through them, we can see on a human scale the evolution of a nation from its birth in revolt against the British through the patriotic fervor and burgeoning militarism and imperialism that would make the twentieth century the American Century.

So this book begs a bit of indulgence. It proceeds largely chronologically and focuses primarily on Porter, but it also detours a bit into wars and assassinations, international exhibitions, and the frailties of human endeavors and egos. While this is not a biography of Jones or Porter, understanding who these men were and the times in which they lived is crucial to understanding why their deeds mattered. In some ways, it is a story of obsession, of small acts committed in times of great upheaval, and of lives dedicated both to personal success and to the well-being of the nation.