The Curious Case of John Paul Jones, Post-Mortem

John Paul Jones at age 158 years. This is an official autopsy photograph taken of John Paul Jones in 1905. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Naval Academy

Part II:
It only remained for the experts to conduct an autopsy. The internal organs, flooded with alcohol, were as well preserved as laboratory specimens. Pleural adhesions were present, particularly over the upper lobes. Jones once thought himself infested with tuberculosis,
yet examination showed no evidence of tubercular bacilli. The left lung showed a spot surrounded by fibrous tissue, a possible remnant of his bout with pneumonia. The cardiac muscle, still flexible after 113 years, showed no signs of pathology. The liver was contracted,
yellowish-brown in color, and the tissues were dense and compact. Several varieties of crystals
were interspersed in the hepatic cells. To the naked eye masses of tyrosin in the organ appeared as white opaque granules. Otherwise, the liver showed no abnormalities. The gall bladder seemed healthy and contained a pale yellowishbrown bile of a pasty consistency. The stomach was contracted, the spleen somewhat enlarged. The tissue of both organs, however, was
firm and free of lesions.

The kidneys, very well preserved, were sectioned and observed under the microscope. Clear evidence of interstitial nephritis or brightism existed. Dr. Capitan, one of the attending examiners, spoke more specifically in his report:

The vessels at several points had their walls thickened and invaded by sclerosis. A number
of glomerules were completely transformed into fibrous tissue and appeared in the form of
small spheres, strongly colored by the microscopic reactions. This verification was of the
highest importance. It gave the key to the various pathological symptoms presented by Paul Jones at the close of his life—emaciation, consumptive condition, and especially so much swelling, which from the feet gained completely the nether limbs, then the abdomen, where it even produced ascites (exudat intra abdominal). All these affections are often observed at the
close of chronic intestinal nephritis. It can, therefore, be said that we possess microscopic proof that Paul Jones died of a chronic renal affection, of which he had shown symptoms toward the close of his life.

Capitan’s colleague, Dr. Cornill, concluded his report of the microscopic examination by saying: “We believe that the case in point is interstitial nephritis with fibrous degeneracy of the glomerules of Malpighi, which agrees with the symptoms observed during life.”
A 1952 analysis of the autopsy report suggested that the renal disease may have had its origin both in Jones’ recurring fevers and a severe respiratory tract infection he suffered while traveling to Russia.

With positive identification, Ambassador Porter relayed his report to Washington and, shortly thereafter, President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched a naval squadron to France to escort the remains home.

On 6 July 1905, on the 158th anniversary of Jones’s birth, religious ceremonies were held in Paris. An honor guard placed the new oak casket upon a French artillery caisson and solemnly the procession moved through the Paris streets and down the Champs Elysees. Across the Seine, at the Esplanade des Invalides, French and American honor guards rendered the flagdraped
coffin the highest military honors. The magnitude of the occasion only served to contrast the
hasty and very private funeral that preceded the admiral’s burial 113 years before. The journey was not yet over.

After the transatlantic crossing and the speeches, the body was carried to the Naval Academy’s Bancroft Hall and placed behind a staircase upon two sawhorses. There it rested for seven years.

On 26 January 1913 the remains of John Paul Jones, rescued from the obscurity of a forgotten grave, were finally laid to rest in a crypt at the Academy chapel.

About the Author
Jan K. Herman is the Senior Historian of the Navy Medical Department. He is the author of numerous articles and several books. His most recent writings include Navy Medicine in Vietnam: Oral Histories from Dien Bien Phu to the Fall of Saigon (2009) and Frozen in Memory: U.S. Navy Medicine in thd Korean War (2006). Versions of Mr. Herman's article, "The Curious Case of John Paul Jones, Post-Mortem" have been published in U.S. Navy Medicine Magazine (April 1979) and later The Grog Ration (May-June 2009).

The Curious Case of John Paul Jones, Post-Mortem

One cannot underestimate the role French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon (1747-1792) played in the identification of John Paul Jones’s remains. The Houdon bust of Jones, sculpted from life, was arguably the most accurate portrayal of Jones. Photo courtesy of U.S. Naval Academy.

PART I:

This year marks the 232th anniversary of one of the most famous battles in American
naval history. On 23 September 1779, off Flamborough Head, England, the British warship, Serapis, struck her colors after a vicious and bloody moonlight encounter with the Bon
Homme Richard. As the victorious skipper of the outclassed and outgunned Richard, John Paul Jones achieved his greatest triumph and ensured his reputation for the ages.

But if his immortal words “I have not yet begun to fight,” assured Captain Jones a hallowed place in the pantheon of American naval heroes, they by no means guaranteed his immediate
future. The Revolution ended in 1783 and the Continental Navy ceased to exist. America, the Scotsman’s adopted homeland, suddenly offered few challenges to one who drew vitality
and sustenance from the sea.

Jones spent the remaining years of his life in Europe, first trying to settle prize claims for his former crewmates and then as advisor and rear admiral in the Russian Navy under Catherine the Great. His health soon after began to fail. The cruel Russian winter took its toll and he contracted pneumonia, a disease that became chronic. Even before his Russian sojourn, he displayed evidence of bronchiolitis, a condition that may very well have approached clinical
asthma. Malaria had infected him years earlier in the West Indies and he was also subject to recurring attacks of that disease.

He returned to Paris in 1790, his voice weakened and his diminutive five feet seven inch frame wracked by frequent coughing fits. Two years later the once wiry seaman had already lost much of his appetite and began to show symptoms of jaundice. Jones’s limbs swelled and 18th century
medicine could do little to stem his overall physical decline.

Colonel Samuel Blackden, a North Carolina planter, described his last illness: “A few days before his death his legs began to swell, which proceeded upward to his body so that for two days before decease he could not button his waistcoat and had great difficulty in breathing. . . .”

On 18 July 1792, Jones succumbed to “dropsy of the heart” at age 45. Blackden recalled that “the body was put into a leaden coffin . . .that, in case the United States, which he so essentially served with so much honor, should claim his remains they might be more easily removed.”
Memories faded and time and neglect gradually erased the location of Jones’s unmarked grave. Yet there were those who had not forgotten. In 1845, Colonel John H. Sherburne began a campaign to return the hero’s remains to the United States. He wrote to the Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft and requested that the body be brought home aboard a vessel of the Mediterranean Squadron.

Six years later preliminary arrangements were made, but those plans fell through when several of Jones’s Scottish relatives objected. Had they not intervened, a far more serious problem might well have put a premature end to the whole affair. Where was John Paul Jones buried?
Almost another 50 years passed before another individual, the newly confirmed U.S. Ambassador to France, Horace Porter, vowed to locate the grave. “I felt a deep sense of humiliation as an American citizen in realizing that our first and most fascinating naval hero
had been lying for more than a century in an unknown and forgotten grave and that no serious attempt had ever been made to recover his remains and give them appropriate sepulture in the land upon whose history he had shed so much luster.”

After painstaking research into the records, Porter narrowed the field to a long abandoned
Paris cemetery now covered by rows of squalid tenements. Exploratory excavations began on 3 February 1905. Fifty-six days later workmen finally unearthed a lead coffin which was opened in the presence of Ambassador Porter and other witnesses. Those present were amazed to find
that the body which had been wrapped in linen and packed with straw, had also been immersed in alcohol. The flesh appeared to be well preserved. Porter wrote: “The face presented quite a natural appearance. . .Upon placing [a likeness of Jones in profile] near the face, comparing the other features and contour of brow, appearance of the hair, high cheek-bones, prominently arched eye-orbits, and other points of resemblance— we instinctively exclaimed, ‘Paul
Jones’; and all those who were gathered about the coffin removed their hats, feeling that they werestanding in the presence of the illustrious dead—the object of the long search.”

Yet the Ambassador realized that he conjectured on the skimpiest of evidence. A more scientific analysis of the remains was necessary. Immediately, a team from the Paris School of Medicine began that investigation.

After removing the linen winding sheet, an anthropologist carefully measured the cranial features. The existence of a “from life” Houdon bust of Jones made comparison that much easier. Porter wrote: “Dr. Papillault, with his delicate instruments, made all the necessary anthropometric measurements of the head, features, length of body, etc., and found them so entirely exact as to be convinced . . .that the length of body, five feet seven inches, was the same as the height of the Admiral.”