The career of John Paul Jones, or Captain Jones, as he became on this day, is marked by both brilliance and controversy.

Jones was born in Scotland and sailed on merchant ships before coming to America and joining the nascent navy here. Through the Revolutionary War, he was involved with several key battles, many times off the English coast rather than on this sise of the pond. This led to his having an international reputation.

But in 1787 he was left without a command, so he took on a position with the Imperial Russian Navy, rising to the rank of rear admiral. Unfortunately, he was forced to leave after being accused of raping a 10-year-old Russian girl. (He admitted to having sex with her, but not raping her, and he also claimed that he was not the one to have taken her virginity. Neither of these claims really helped his case.) The whole thing turned into a mess and Empress Catherine eventually exiled him for a minimum of two years.

Captain Jones moved to Paris and was eventually appointed as the US Consul to Algiers, but he died before he could begin that position. After his burial, the records were lost and so his specific location was unknown for many years. What was known was that his body had been preserved in alcohol and that he had a lead coffin. In 1905 he was located and an autopsy completed, which confirmed the original suspicion that he’d died of interstitial nephritis.

Captain Jones’ body was returned to the United States and he was re-interred in a bronze and marble sarcophagus at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

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