11. Myth: John Paul Jones Was the Father of the United States Navy
Fact: He never even served in what we consider the United States Navy today… but he did serve in the Russian Navy.
John Paul Jones is revered as the Father of the United States Navy, a service in which he was never commissioned. Jones, whose real name was John Paul, was an officer in the Continental Navy of the American Revolutionary War, which was disbanded following the Treaty of Paris. Unemployed, Jones accepted a commission in the Russian Navy of Catherine the Great. In the Russian service, he was handicapped by palace intrigues and the personal enmity he developed with several British officers who also sought employment by the Russians.
Jones died in Paris in 1792, under a cloud besmirching his personal reputation, regarding his relationship with a 12-year-old girl some years before. Officially he remained an admiral of the Russian Navy at the time of his death. The United States Navy was created by an act of Congress in 1794, two years after Jones died in Paris. Thus he never held a commission in the United States Navy. In the 1970s the Chief of Naval Operations, Elmo Zumwalt, authorized the US Navy to celebrate its birthday on October 13, reflecting the date in 1775 when the Continental Navy was founded by act of the Second Continental Congress, even before the move to independence, creating the United States, was under consideration.