A little-known footnote to the career of John Paul Jones, father of the United States Navy, is that in “1788, Jones agreed to join the Russian side in Catherine’s new war against the sultan, which had come about after an Ottoman ultimatum to quit Crimea and return it to its previous independent status. The inducement was that Jones would be given supreme command of the new Black Sea fleet, [then] wintering at Kherson and Sevastopol. Jones was part of a long line of foreign officers in the employ of the Russian navy … and since the new United States had still not established a navy of its own, the opportunity for gaining a major command, even if under a foreign ensign, must have seemed an opportunity too good to miss” (King). Instead of the entire fleet, it turned out he was only given command of the Kherson squadron. Worse was to come, as he not only fell foul of Russian court politics, but in 1789 was arrested on an alleged rape charge. Catherine allowed him to leave for Paris in July that year, where he remained until his death not long after this print was published.
The armament of Russia was a perplexing issue for England, although Prime Minister William Pitt’s plan to invade Russia was met with fierce opposition by Charles Fox. Catherine II was extremely grateful to Fox for this, so much so that she actually placed a bust of Fox between those of Demosthenes and Cicero in the Russian royal residence, Tsarskoe Selo. In Pitt’s speech to the Commons on 1 March, 1792 defending his government’s actions over the arming of Russia, he responded to a question as to whether he might expect to receive an honours should he visit St. Petersburg, that “he scarcely imagined he should have the honour of being placed in a gallery between two of the greatest orators of Greece and Rome” (Cobbett).
Two weeks later, this image appeared. The bust of John Paul Jones on the lower left is a ominous reminder of his role in this current situation in addition to that of the Revolutionary War. James Gillray also produced a print on the same topic - Design for the New Gallery of Busts and Pictures (London, H. Humphrey, 17 March, 1792) - which appeared just two days later.
OCLC locates copies at Yale, the Morgan and Clements. We find others at BL, V&A, and NPG.
Cobbett’s Parliamentary History of England, vol. 29, (London, 1817) p.998; King, C., The Black Sea: A History (Oxford, 2004), p.158.
