Charles Bulkley, Lieutenant

     As the Revolution erupted, Charles Bulkley was returning from a voyage to the West Indies when off Montauk Point his vessel was boarded by a tender of the British frigate Rose under Captain Wallace who informed the crew of the recent events at Lexington and took their sloop as a prize. Bulkley was one of the men left on board with the British prize crew with orders to sail her to the Rose. “The Narrative of Captain Charles Bulkeley” recounts the rest of the incident in his own words, “In September 1775 I was from the West Indies bound to New London in the Sloop- Capt. Daniel Starr. We were captured by a tender belonging to the Rose Man of War off Block Island, and soon after it became calm, and remained so all that day and night. Just at night a Block Island boat with two men and a boy came off and within hail and they were ordered to keep off. I then ran out on the squaresail boom and jumped over board and swam to the boat and then went ashore on Block Island and arrived there in the night and manned that boat and got another boat to assist us to recapture the Sloop. We went off and lay until daylight and after day broke we discovered the Sloop and retook her and brot her in to New London.” According to his pension testimony, “the following winter [1775-1776] I went into the Old Fort as a Volunteer near the market.”

     Son of Major Charles Bulkley 3rd and Ann Latimer, Charles Bulkley (1753-1848) was a lifelong resident of New London where he entered the ship Alfred, then laying at Philadelphia, as a midshipman under the command of Dudley Saltonstall in January 1776. A merchantman named Black Prince under the command of John Barry before the war, the 30-gun Alfred was acquired by the Continental Congress in November 1775 and placed in commission a month later on 3 December. The vessel would serve as Commodore Esek Hopkin’s flagship during the New Providence Expedition and is documented to have been the first Continental Navy ship to fly the Grand Union flag. According to his pension application S-12349, Bulkley sailed to the Delaware and then on to New Providence under Saltonstall. Along with friends Peter and Nathaniel Richards, Charles Bulkley entered on board the sloop Lizard under the command of Joshua Hempstead, Jr. on 13 January 1776 to sail six days later for Reedy Island, PA. Although the Lizard’s passage was rough, she successfully landed the eighty or so naval recruits from Connecticut in New Jersey where they were picked up and delivered to Commodore Esek Hopkin’s Continental Navy fleet about 13 February 1776.

     The Alfred was part of the fleet which sailed from the Delaware Capes on 17 February 1776 under Commodore Esek Hopkins which included the Cabot under John B. Hopkins, Andrea Doria under Nicholas Biddle, Columbus under Abraham Whipple and the sloop Providence. Arriving at New Providence in the Bahamas on 3 March, the port was quickly captured with the harbor forts’ cannon loaded for American use at home. The fleet sailed for New London on 17 March 1776. During the return voyage, Commodore Hopkins’ Continental fleet took two prizes, the British schooner Hawke under Lieutenant John Wallace, tender to the frigate Rose, on 2 April off Long Island and the brigantine Bolton serving as a bomb vessel under Lieutenant Edward Sneyd off Block Island on 5 April. That evening two more prizes were taken however, in the early morning hours of 6 April 1776 as the fleet “all went helter skelter”, the 16-gun brig Cabot was the first to engage the 26 gun frigate HMS Glasgow under the command of Tryingham Howe. When challenged to identify his ship and companions while closing for action, John B. Hopkins replied “the Columbus and Alfred, a two and twenty gun frigate”. This first fleet action sea battle in U.S. Navy history began when one of the Cabot’s marines in the “fighting top” threw a grenade onto the deck of the Glasgow. The Cabot then unleashed a broadside into the Glasgow, killing one British marine and wounding a second. After the brig Cabot sustained “considerable damage in her hull, spars and rigging which occasioned her falling astern of the Glasgow” from two unanswered broadsides from the superior frigate; the Alfred and Andrea Doria immediately picked up the fight- the entire engagement lasting “3 glasses”. After chasing the Glasgow for more than three more hours before her escape to the protection of the British fleet anchored off Newport, Commodore Hopkin’s little fleet put in at New London. Charles Bulkley apparently distinguished himself in the hot action with the Glasgow “for the cool intrepidity with which he stood at his gun”.

     Subsequent to her return, the Alfred sailed to the Providence River in Rhode Island, arriving on 28 April 1776, where “they were for some time”. One crew list suggests that Bulkley may have been advanced to Master’s Mate by 2 May 1776. According to his pension testimony, while there Bulkley was appointed Sailing Master of the brig Hamden but by permission of Commodore Esek Hopkins, “continued onboard the Alfred”. Soon afterwards about October 1776, the ship Alfred was placed in the command of John Paul Jones at Newport. In company with the sloop Providence under Capt. Hoysted Hacker, the two vessels sailed toward Cape Breton Island where they “took sundry prizes”, including the brig Active on 11 November, the armed transport Mellish with her cargo of winter uniforms for British troops at Quebec on the following day and the scow Kitty bound to Barbados on 16 November 1776. On 22 November 1776, Jones and the crew of the Alfred raided the town of Canso, Nova Scotia- Jones second attack on the town in two months. His first attack while in command of the Providence on 22 September resulted in much property damage and the destruction of fifteen vessels. During this second raid, the American sailors burned a transport ship and stocked warehouse and captured a prize schooner. On 24 November, Alfred took three colliers bound to New York and two days later the 10-gun British privateer John of Liverpool. Afterwards, Jones and his crew sailed to present-day Sydney, NS to liberate 300 American prisoners forced to labor in British coal mines. Alfred was pursued unsuccessfully by the HMS Milford on her return to Boston after her six week cruise “to the eastward”, arriving on 15 December 1776. Charles Bulkley is noted as the 2nd Master on Jones’ undated list of officers and men due prize shares for the ship Mellish and brig Active. It is assumed that one of the two was assigned as sailing master of the schooner taken in Canso as it was highly unusual for any vessel to sail with two masters, as well as experienced masters mates. Soon after John Paul Jones’ return, feuding with Commodore Esek Hopkins resulted in a change of command for the ship Alfred.

     There Captain Elisha Hinman took command of the Alfred about 19 January 1777 and Charles Bulkley was appointed Third Lieutenant by Commodore Hopkins. About the same time, boyhood friends Nathaniel Richards was commissioned Alfred’s Second Lieutenant of Marines and his older brother Peter Richards First Lieutenant of the ship. The vessel sailed from Boston to Portsmouth where Captain Hinman superintended a major refit. Apparently during this time, Bulkley commanded the Ann, possibly named for his daughter, on a cruise to Martinique as the vessel was taken as a prize by the British warship Daphne on her homeward bound voyage on 3 April 1777. The 5 July 1777 edition of the New Hampshire Gazette reported that on “Last Wednesday Evening [25 June] a Flag of Truce arrived from New York, which Place she left at 2 o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. Capt. Charles Bulkley, (who was taken in a Vessel belonging to this State, and has been Prisoner in a Guard ship in New York near three Months past) came Passenger…”

     The Continental Navy ship Alfred sailed from Portsmouth bound to France in company with the newly-constructed 32-gun frigate Raleigh under the command of Captain Thomas Thompson on Friday 22 August 1777. Two weeks later on September 4, the two vessels encountered HMS Druid and despite Raleigh’s punishing attack, the severely damaged enemy warship escaped. According to Bulkley’s pension testimony, the Alfred took two Jamaicamen as prizes on the crossing. Resuming their course, Alfred and Raleigh reached France on 6 October 1777. Several months later on December 29, the two again departed port in company homeward bound with military stores. After cruising the coast of Africa and taking one prize, the pair made a trans-Atlantic crossing to the West Indies where the ship Alfred was taken by British frigate Ariadne and sloop Ceres a little windward of Barbados on 9 March 1778, at least partly as a result of Captain Thompson and the Raleigh avoiding engagement. Alfred’s officers and men were taken to Barbadoes as prisoners. Here Peter Richards and his brother Nathaniel, were recognized by British Captain Nicholas Vincent of the 74-gun Yarmouth, as he knew the Richards’ boys as children through intimacy with their father’s family. Through the influence of Ariadne’s Captain Pringle and the intercession of Elisha Hinman, Nathaniel Richards was permitted to return home on parole.

     Captain Vincent of the Yarmouth took Hinman and five other officers including Lieutenants Peter Richards and Bulkley on board his vessel, transporting his captives to England where they were confined at Forton Prison on 18 July 1778. Confined at Forton but a short time, Captain Hinman escaped by digging under the wall of the prison on a dark, rainy night and walking ten wet miles before finding sanctuary with an American sympathizer who arranged for a Londoner to spirit the Continental Navy Captain off to safety in France. Soon afterwards Bulkley and Alfred’s other officers also escaped by digging under the prison walls, escaping to Deal via Gosport and London. While staying in London for a few days, Bulkley and Richards took in the sights, finding St. Paul’s Church and the Tower of London both “well worth seeing”. From Deal, about 75 miles from London, the pair “got passage in a open Smuggler’s Boat and crossed the channel for France in the night and landed at Calais.” From that place, they travelled to Paris where they met Franklin and Adams. Pension testimony of Charles Bulkley reveals that he and Peter Richards “took passage from Bordeaux to Baltimore and off the Cape of Virginia was again taken. A few days after which he & Lieut. Peter Richards were put on shore, about ten leagues to the southward of Cape Henry & traveled on to Boston, where they arrived in 1779 when they settled with the Navy board.” Stopping at Philadelphia along the way, Bulkley writes in his narrative that he there “received a large sum of money from Col. Pickering, he being, I believe the Quarter Master Gen’l, to carry to New Hampshire.”

     Little is known of Charles Bulkley’s maritime activities in the two years between his return from English captivity and his commission to command the 10-gun Connecticut privateer sloop Active and her compliment of sixty on 22 May 1781. Bulkley is recorded in those documents as hailing from Wethersfield, Colchester and New London. Owners of the Active were noted as John Wright and Justis Riley, both of Wethersfield. Under Bulkley’s command, the Active captured the British schooner Hazzard with a cargo of lumber bound from the Penobscot River to New York about 10 August 1781 with assistance from Connecticut privateers sloop Randolph and schooner Young Cromwell. Active was listed among the privateers belonging to New London on 10 August and armed with twelve 3-pounder guns. In company with his old friend Peter Richards in command of the brig Hancock and another Connecticut privateer, Bulkley captured another un-named sloop about 25 August near Fire Island Inlet. The prize was sent into New London, arriving on 29 August. The sloop Active was laying at wharf there with one of her masts out for repair when on 6 September 1781 turncoat Benedict Arnold led a dastardly raid with tragic consequences on the town. While Captain Buckley participated in the resistance, his vessel was heavily damaged by fire.

     Bulkley’s friend and compatriot, former Continental Navy Lieutenant Peter Richards arrived at New London in the Hancock on 31 August 1781 and volunteered his services for the defense of Fort Griswold upon encouragement by commanding officer Colonel William Ledyard who had earlier assisted Richards with the manning of his vessel. One week later on September 6, British General Benedict Arnold raided and burned the town, attacking the fort whose layout he was familiar. Earlier that morning, Richards had gone on board the Hancock seeking volunteers to accompany him in aiding the garrison at Fort Griswold. It is said his entire crew followed their captain into battle where Peter Richards was killed in action, one of the 88 of about 165 defenders massacred by British forces. When the enemy finally breached the fort’s defenses and Colonel Ledyard surrendered his sword, he was run through with it and killed. As Colonel Ledyard was stricken, “Captain Peter Richards and a few others, standing near, rushed upon the enemy and were killed, fighting to the last.” Richards’ former lieutenant, Christopher Prince writes that his friend suffered “32 bayonet holes in his murdered body”, killed on his wife’s twenty-seventh birthday. In Bulkley’s narrative he writes, “When the enemy retreated after burning N. London, by that traitor Arnold, they were pursued by a small party of men & I being in advance on Manwaring Hill I took a prisoner”.

     Captain Charles Bulkley next assumed command of the 14-gun Connecticut privateer brig Marshall on 25 July 1782. Bulkley experienced difficulty in recruiting his compliment of eighty for the vessel, “I took the command of the Brig Marshall of 14 Guns and all the officers and men we could get to man her was forty-nine. The cause was if captured they would be sent to the Jersey Prison Ship and they were almost sure to die.” After first taking the prize sloop Hunter on 30 August 1782, the Marshall engaged two British letter-of-marque vessels, the 8-gun brig Ann and ship New Salt Spring, both armed with 8 guns and carrying cargoes of rum and sugar on 3 September 1782. Bulkley writes: “This cruise we captured a Schooner from the W. I. and a Ship and brig from Jamaica- the Ship and Brig we took in tow about a week and never cast them off until we arrived opposite Fisher’s Island Point.” Both prizes were sent into New London, arriving on September 10. Subsequently, Bulkley and the Marshall also took the prize brig Thomas on 22 October 1782.

     After the War for Independence, Charles Bulkley returned to Merchant Marine service; selling rum, molasses and dry goods acquired on shipping ventures and eventually manufacturing and merchandising vinegar. In 1790 the sea captain built a large dwelling which also served as his store on the East side of Bank Street at the site of a former structure burned by Benedict Arnold’s troops in 1781. Slated for demolition in 1976, the building was saved and restored in the 1980’s and today is known as the Bulkley House Saloon at 111 Bank Street. Often called the Second War for Independence, the War of 1812 drew Charles Bulkley back into privateer service when he took command of the 9-gun schooner Mars and her crew of 93, a “larger and better class [of privateer] with an increased number of gun and men”. Sailing out of New London on 7 November 1812 for the Azores and Madeira on a cruise off the coast of Spain, it is reported that Bulkley’s cruise in the Mars may have been one of the most successful of the war as the vessel participated in the taking of eleven prizes, 94 prisoners and over $100,000 in cash before returning home on 24 February 1813. The Mars fired only seven shots during the cruise, which would have been yet more successful had not four of her prizes been recaptured in addition to the one destroyed and other put to use as a cartel returning prisoners.

     Captain Charles Bulkley and his wife Elizabeth shared seven children, all of whom died single. Some of the captain’s sons sailed with him on the privateer Mars during the War of 1812. Mrs. Elizabeth Bulkley died at New London on 21 May 1823 at the age of sixty-seven. Upon the death of Charles’ unmarried son Leonard Bulkley, who was the only child to survive him and who inherited his father’s business, “the family became extinct”. Leonard left a sizable bequeath founding the Bulkeley School for Boys in 1873, which subsequently merged with Chapman Tech to form New London High School. Plenty of inaccurate genealogical sources incorrectly name Charles Bulkley (1749-1824) of Wethersfield as the Revolutionary War naval lieutenant probably due to a faulty 1912 application to the Daughters of the American Revolution.

     When the Morning News incorrectly reported the death of Nathaniel Cook of Cumberland, RI as the last survivor of those who served with John Paul Jones in the Revolution on 14 October 1846, an alert reader response was published the following day, “Capt. Charles Bulkeley, now living at New London, nearly ninety four years, was an early companion and brother officer with the gallant Jones…. As regards Capt. Bulkeley, the immunities of the grave, as yet happily forbid that we should speak of him as at some future time it may be more fitting, but we assure the public, that if ever his history shall be written, it will form an interesting page in the annuls of our country’s naval fame…. But the brave old sailor is now enfeebled by the weight of extreme old age, and his condition indicates the truth, that however successful as even conquerors we may have been, there is one conqueror at least, before whom we must all, sooner or later bow; and our prayers are, that his remaining days, however few, may be rendered as peaceful, as his active life has been filled with adventure and commotion, and that when his sun shall set, it may go down in peace, and the present life of change, be relinquished for one of unfading brightness and perpetual joy.” Captain Charles Bulkley died at the age of 95 in 1848 at New London where he is buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery. One account declares “he had white brandy at his decrease, taken by him under Capt. Hinman, in the Alfred, during the Revolution.”