After his retirement from the command of the John he engaged in local trading with the Isle of Man. It has been charged that he was a smuggler during this period; but he specifically and vehemently denied the allegation, and it is certain that the first entry of goods shipped from England to the Isle of Man, after it was annexed to the crown, stands in his name on the custom-house books of the town of Douglas. Soon after this he commanded a ship, the Betsy, of London, in the West India trade, in which he engaged in mercantile speculations on his own account at Tobago and Grenada, until the year 1773, when he went to Virginia again to take charge of the affairs of his brother William, who had died intestate, leaving neither wife nor children. Very little is known of his life from this period until his entry into the public service of the United States. From remarks in his journal and correspondence, it is evident, in spite of his brother's property, to which he was heir, and some other property and money which he had amassed by trading, which was invested in the island of Tobago, West Indies, that he continued for some time in very straitened circumstances. He speaks of having lived for nearly two years on the small sum of fifty pounds. It is probable that his poverty was due to his inability to realize upon his brother's estate, and the difficulty of getting a return of his West Indian investments, on account of the unsettled political conditions, though they were of considerable value. During this period, however, he took that step which has been a puzzle to so many of his biographers, and which he never explained in any of his correspondence that remains. He came to America under the name of John Paul; he reappeared after this period of obscurity under the name of John Paul Jones. It is claimed by the descendants of the Jones family of North Carolina that while in Fredericksburg the young mariner made the acquaintance of the celebrated Willie (pronounced Wylie) Jones, one of the leading attorneys and politicians of North Carolina. Jones and his brother Allen were people of great prominence and influence in that province. It was Jones' influence, by the way, which in later years postponed the ratification of the proposed Constitution of the United States by North Carolina. Willie Jones seems to have attended to the legal side of Paul's claims to his deceased brother's estate, and a warm friendship sprang up between the two young men, so dissimilar in birth and breeding, which, it is alleged, ended in an invitation to young Paul to visit Jones and his brother on their plantations.