Night on Fire: The First Complete Account of John Paul Jones's Greatest Battle [Hardcover]

John Evangelist Walsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1978

McGraw Hill, 1978. Hardcover. First Edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 185 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1St Edition edition (1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070679525
• ISBN-13: 978-0070679528
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,837,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I have not yet BEGUN to fight!", September 18, 2010

By 

fredtownward "The Analytical Mind; Have Brain... (Mocksville, North Carolina, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Night on Fire: The First Complete Account of John Paul Jones's Greatest Battle (Hardcover)

There have been a number of biographies of John Paul Jones over the years, both before and after this 32-year-old volume, but it was the first and is still the only complete account of JPJ's greatest battle, which is rather surprising when you think about it. After all JPJ arguably owes most of his undying fame to this one battle, and as one of JPJ's best biographers (who nevertheless only briefly covered it) put it, it was "a naval combat the like of which has never been fought before or since." So, relying upon the primary sources, the several eyewitness accounts we have, Mr. Walsh set himself the task of reconstructing this unparalleled battle and answering some of the remaining questions about it such as, "Why did Jones, for example, not send a boarding party against the English ship for more than two hours, even though that was his whole purpose in grappling?"

IMHO Mr. Walsh does a splendid job of (to the fullest extent possible today) answering that question and the more general one of, "What, exactly, took place on those tumultuous, smoke-shrouded decks where over five hundred brave men fought for an interminable three and a half hours...?"

Did he say "it"? Among the questions Mr. Walsh deals with is what, exactly, did JPJ so famously say and when did he say it? Not even JPJ appears to have remembered clearly because he gave three different versions on the three different occasions he later referred to it! However, Mr. Walsh rather convincingly defends the accepted version, based on the usually reliable Lt. Richard Dale. Among other arguments in its favor, the accepted version is arguably the plainest and the simplest. Three hours into this carnage was neither the time nor the place for witticisms or clever wordplay; this was a snarl of defiance, which had the intended effect of convincing Captain Pearson that "The enemy commander, it appeared, was a man of unyielding will, almost inhuman, who seemed ready to send every living soul aboard both ships to the bottom rather than accept defeat."

Having endured three hours of enemy pounding, disobedience, desertion, catastrophic mechanical failure, cowardice, treachery, friendly fire, in addition to observing the stalwart courage of most of his crew in the face of it, and personally directing the fire of a nine pounder scoring hit after hit on the enemy mainmast, that likely sums up JPJ's attitude rather well!

Indomitable will and unremitting fury.

Sometimes it pays off.