John Paul Jones (1747-1792) gains renown for his victory over British ships of war off the east coast of England during the U.S. War of Independence.

Jones, commanding the American ship Bonhomme Richard, engages the British ship Serapis in the Battle of Flamborough Head on September 23.

According to the later recollection of his First Lieutenant, Jones' legendary reply to a quip about surrender from the British captain, uttered during the early stages of a grueling three- to twelve-hour gun battle: "I have not yet begun to fight!"

The Bonhomme Richard sinks, but the Americans board the Serapis and other vessels, and are victorious.

Jones achieves a stunning victory, though with a heavy loss of life, when the Serapis surrenders.

A Scots-born redhead (as seen in a 1781 portrait by Charles Wilson Peale, currently in the Independence national Historical Park Collection, Philadelphia, PA), he was originally named John Paul.

After being appointed a master, he had purchased a vessel in the West Indies in 1772 but after killing the ringleader of a mutinous crew the following year, he had fled the islands to escape trial and changed his name to John Paul Jones.

America's first well-known naval fighter, Jones had been commissioned a senior lieutenant in the new Continental Navy when the war broke out.

The Affair of Fielding and Bylandt has motivated the Dutch to seek adherence to the First League of Armed Neutrality, which espoused the principle of "free ship, free goods," especially after Britain formally abrogated the Commercial Treaty of 1668.

The Dutch hope to gain the armed support of the other members of the League to maintain their neutral status.

The British government sees the danger of this move (it might embroil Great Britain in war with Russia and the Nordic powers Sweden and Denmark–Norway also) and therefore declares war on the Republic shortly after its adherence in December 1780.

To forestall Russia from coming to the aid of the Dutch (something Empress Catherine II of Russia does not favor either) the British government cites a number of grievances that are ostensibly unrelated to the Dutch accession to the League.

One of these is the shelter the Dutch had (reluctantly) given to the American privateer John Paul Jones in 1779.

More importantly, much is made of a draft treaty of commerce, secretly negotiated between the Amsterdam banker Jean de Neufville and the American agent in Aix-la-Chapelle, William Lee, with the connivance of the Amsterdam pensionary Van Berckel, and found among the effects of Henry Laurens, an American diplomat who had been apprehended by the British cruiser HMS Vestal in September 1780, on the high seas.

He had been sent by the Continental Congress to establish diplomatic relations with the Dutch Republic.

The draft-treaty had been cited as proof by the British of the non-neutral conduct of the Dutch.

The Russian Black Sea fleet commanded by John Paul Jones, the American naval hero now in the Russian service as a rear admiral, wins two naval battles near the mouth of the Dnieper River in June 1788.