The man regarded as the founder of the US Navy, John Paul Jones, was born in 1747 in a small white-washed cottage at Arbigland near Kirkbean, Kircudbrightshire, on the Solway coast. He joined the fledgling American Navy and defeated a British naval force at a battle off Flamborough Head on the Yorkshire coast of England. The cottage where he was born was opened as a museum in 1993, with financial help from American supporters. Now a US team is carrying out an archaeological dig which hope to find interesting artefacts from the time when Jones lived there. Even rubbish which had been thrown out into the adjoining yard will help the archaeologists reconstruct how people lived hundreds of years ago.