Paul Douglas
Douglas was born on March 26, 1892 in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of Annie (Smith) and James Howard Douglas. When he was four, his mother died of natural causes and his father remarried. His father was an abusive husband and his stepmother, unable to obtain a divorce, left her husband and took Douglas and his older brother to Onawa, Maine in Piscataquis County, where her brother and uncle had built a resort in the woods.
Andrew Snape Douglas
Andrew Snape Douglas was born in Edinburgh on 8 October 1761, the son of Dr. William Douglas, a medical doctor of Springfield, and Lydia Hamond, daughter of a London merchant and shipowner. William Douglas's death in 1770 led Andrew to sign on that year aboard his maternal uncle, Sir Andrew Snape Hamond's ship, the 32-gun frigate . The two sailed to North America, and after spending time along the coast, Douglas moved to the West Indies. With the outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1775 he returned to North America and rejoined his uncle, now commanding the 44-gun . He received his commission as a lieutenant on 23 April 1778, and was made master and commander on 16 February 1780. He was to have been appointed to the armed ship "Germain", but instead took command of a floating battery, and was present at the Siege of Charleston. He was subsequently promoted to post-captain on 15 May 1780 and appointed to the command of the captured American frigate . Instead he had in April 1780 become commander of the "Roebuck", then serving as the flagship of Vice-Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot. He went on to capture the American ships on 14 April 1781 and "Protector" on 5 May. He was succeeded in the command of the "Roebuck" by Captain John Orde in July 1781.