Thomas Palmer, Gunner

According to his 1825 mortuary notice Thomas Palmer was eighty-five years old at the time of his death, suggesting that he was born about 1740, which is confirmed by his pension testimony taken in 1820. A wartime document noted later in this article also suggests that his name may have been Thomas Palmer, Jr. If so, it was this man who signed the New Hampshire Revolutionary War Association Test of 1776 in the Town of Portsmouth swearing to “hereby solemnly engage, and promise, that we will, to the utmost of our Power, at the Risque of our Lives and Fortunes, with ARMS, oppose the Hostile Proceedings of the British Fleets, and Armies, against the United American COLONIES.” Prior to his naval activities, Gunner’s Mate Thomas Palmer appears on the Return of Officers and Men under Captain Eliphalet Daniels in Fort Sullivan guarding Portsmouth harbor on 5 November 1775. Palmer was assisting Richard Wilson, who is noted as the Gunner the muster roll. According to his Revolutionary War pension application S.45054, Thomas Palmer of Portsmouth entered as Gunner’s Mate on the 18-gun Sloop-of-War Ranger under Captain John Paul Jones in August 1777, although he was unable to “ascertain with greater precision” the precise date due to the “loss of his papers, burnt with his house in the late great Fire here.” The Continental Navy ship-of-war Ranger was launched on 10 May 1777. Palmer was with the vessel she departed Portsmouth under the command of John Paul Jones on 1 November 1777 carrying dispatches to France bearing news of General Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga. He “continued to do his duty on board her” during Ranger’s cruise to France and into the Irish Sea. Two British prizes were taken on the crossing before Ranger arrived at Nantes on 2 December 1777 where the prizes were sold. Captain Jones next sailed the Ranger to Brest where the vessel received an official salute to America’s new flag the “Stars and Stripes” from the French fleet at Quiberon Bay. On 10 April 1778, Ranger sailed from Brest for the Irish Sea, taking a prize four days later. She took another prize on 17 April, before Jones led a daring raid to capture the Earl of Selkirk at the Scottish port of Whitehaven on 23 April. Thomas Palmer Gunner’s Mate is included in the list of “Crew of the Continental Ship Ranger who participated in the Whitehaven Expedition” found in John Paul Jones Letterbook and published in Volume 12 of Naval Documents of the American Revolution (1964). Captain Jones then sailed across the North Channel to Ireland in order to draw the 14-gun HMS Drake into action. After an engagement of one hour, the Drake struck her colors, after which the two vessels circumnavigated the west coast of Ireland before returning to Brest on 8 May 1778. After considerable drama between John Paul Jones and his first officer Thomas Simpson, during which the lieutenant was temporarily arrested and threatened with court-martial by his unpopular superior, Captain John Paul Jones was detached from the Ranger to command the Bon Homme Richard. Owing to the fervent loyalty of his crew as evidenced in the Petition to the American Commissioners signed by the Warrant and Petty Officers of the Ranger at Brest on 15 June 1778, Lieutenant Thomas Simpson was exonerated of wrongdoing and offered a commission as captain of the Ranger. The petition reads, “The Petition and Remonstrance of the warrant and petit Officers on Board the Continental Ship of War Ranger humbly sheweth: That your Petitioners with a view of maintaining their Families and serving their distressed and injured Country, entred chearfully to serve on board the Ranger under the Command of Capt. Jones, some for a Cruize others for twelve Months. After our signing in the entry Book against our Names by Capt. Jones’s Orders is put, and while absent from the Eastern States, which words were not in the Roll we first sign’d, to the Rendezvous (which can now be produced). None of Us may it please your honours, apprehended that we were to be deluded and deceiv’d in the manner we have been, and are like to be; We were inform’d that Capt. Jones was a Man of Honour which to Our Sorrow we are obliged to declare from Our Own Experience, is quite the reverse, his Government arbitrary his Temper and Treatment insufferable, for the most trivial matters threatening to Shoot the Person or Persons whom he in sallies of Passion chooses to call Ignorant or Disobedient, not to recount many Instances of His Behaviour which to us and every of the Ship’s Company has been and still is Disagreable, we humbly request that Your Honours would please to take our unhappy situation into consideration, and give Orders that We may return to America: that We may have the pleasure of providing for Our Families and serving our Country with Chearfulness; which it may please your Honours we are sorry to inform You we never can do under the Command of Capt. Jones. And Your Petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pray.” Today in the collection of the American Philosophical Society, the petition includes the signatures of Ranger’s James Falls, gunner and Thomas Palmer James, gunner’s mate. I suspect careful transcription of Palmer’s signature will show it to actually read Thomas Palmer, Jr instead of Thomas Palmer J’s. The pension application states Palmer “still belonged to the said Ranger in his said capacity until Captain Simpson took command”. It appears that Thomas Palmer was promoted to the rate of Gunner for the return voyage as James Falls was recovering from a musket wound to the shoulder incurred during the action with HMS Drake. This is supported by an invoice by Portsmouth physician Hall Jackson dated 17 February 1779 for attendance to the wounds of four men upon Ranger’s return home including treating Mr. Falls in November 1778 for a “wound by a French man, in his shoulder”. Simpson and the ship Ranger departed Brest on 21 August 1778, arriving at Portsmouth on 15 October 1778, in company with Continental Navy frigates Providence and Boston and three prizes taken during the transatlantic crossing. According to his testimony, Palmer was discharged from naval service in late October and the pension application notes his name was “found on the rolls as Gunner’s Mate.” No muster roll of Ranger’s officers and crew for her maiden voyage is known to be extant today. According to the testimony of 1st Lieutenant Elijah Hall found in other pension applications, the rolls of Ranger’s first cruise “are lost or mislaid”. Palmer’s pension application included the testimony of former Ranger Steward Jacob Walden of Portsmouth who stated Palmer served as gunner’s mate from August or September 1777 to October 1778. Thomas Palmer indicated in his pension testimony dated 4 July 1820 that he was eighty years old and had worked as a rigger until two years earlier when he dislocated a hip. He states “I am not able to go aloft”, have no family and am “dependent upon my son-in-law”.  Palmer was granted a Revolutionary War pension of eight dollars per month beginning 6 April 1818. Thomas Palmer died on 27 May 1825 and according to a 1927 letter from the Piscataqua Pioneers signed by Joseph Foster, Rear Admiral U.S. Navy (Retired) in the pension file, was buried in the Old Major Joseph Hammond Farm in Eliot, ME. The major appears to be an ancestor of the Massachusetts Revolutionary War veteran of the same name buried nearby. Additional correspondence from Mrs. Florence Hammond McDaniel of Dover in the pension records indicate Palmer’s grave is on the land of his grand-daughter and that his wife is buried in Portsmouth. Furthermore, it reveals Thomas Palmer’s daughter Mary, born about 1769, married Captain Peter Pray of Portsmouth and lived on Pray Street until Captain Pray died in 1825. The aged veteran then went to live with his grand-daughter Mary Pray who was then the wife of Joseph Hammond of Eliot, four mile from Portsmouth, where he resided until his death. Interestingly, genealogical records do not completely support Mrs. McDaniel’s claims. Thomas Palmer’s daughter Mary, also known as Polly, did indeed marry Capt. Peter Pray, Jr. of Portsmouth on 30 August 1789 in Berwick, Maine. However, Peter Pray died two years after the aged veteran in 1827 and Thomas Palmer’s grand-daughter Mary Pray was married to Joseph Hammond of Eliot on 18 September 1825 at Portsmouth, almost four months after the death of her grandfather. Mrs. Florence Hammond McDaniel additionally asserts in Thomas Palmer’s pension records that he “was once taken prisoner of war and was in an old English prison ship, and was later exchanged.” While this has not yet been confirmed, it seems probable that the experienced gunner sailed on a private armed ship after his government service and could have been taken captive and confined on the Old Jersey prison ship moored in New York harbor. Finally, Mrs. McDaniel states, “Family tradition also says he [Palmer] had service in the War of 1812-1815 and that he used to say ‘Hed had fought pirates off the coast of Algiers’…and also used to tell about service on the old Constitution in his later service.” While plausible, no evidence of these details has yet been discovered. One Thomas Palmer appears on the muster roll of the Schooner Ariel dated 10 September 1813 which sailed with Oliver Hazard Perry’s fleet during the Battle of Lake Erie, however that veteran appears to hail from Ohio.