Continental Navy

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.

     Son of Providence’s first postmaster, merchant Samuel Chase, Esq. (1722-1802) and Freelove Lippitt (1720-1801) of Boston; Samuel Chase, Jr. was born at Providence, RI on 18 June 1749. The twenty-two year old mariner was married to Rosabella Angell (1748-1781), daughter of Nathan Angell (1718-1808) and Susannah Hopkins (1728-1791) on 2 September 1770 at St. Johns Church, Providence. One year after his marriage, Samuel Chace first emerges in the Rhode Island newspaper shipping notices on Saturday 10 October 1772 which reports “Yesterday Capt. Samuel Chace arrived from West Indies via New York…having lost his vessel at Aux Keys in a violent Gale of Wind the 4th of August last”. In his own defense, Chace adds 27 sail were drove ashore with 17 entirely lost. He is next recorded on 29 November 1773, “Wednesday last arrived sloop Swan, Captain Samuel Chace from West Indies”. Chace is again reported inward bound from Turk’s Island in command of the sloop Swan on 14 March 1774. An 18 July 1774 notice indicates Captain Samuel Chace brought the brig Industry into Rhode Island from Hispaniola. Another newspaper of two days earlier suggests Surinam was another of Industry’s ports of call. Published at Newport, the New Mercury reported on 26 September 1774, Chace sailed outbound again in command of the brig Industry to the West Indies. The New Mercury reports again Captain Samuel Chace, Jr’s inward bound arrival from Hispaniola in the Industry on Monday 28 August 1775.

     On what was clearly a voyage to procure military supplies for the rebellion, The Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser of Boston for Thursday 4 July 1776 reports under the byline of Providence for 29 June 1776, “Yesterday, Capt. Samuel Chace arrived here from West Indies, having on board 10 pieces of cannon, a quantity of sail Duck, some Powder, Salt-Petre, Brimstone, etc.” Thomas Cooke specifies in a 15 July 1776 letter particulars of Chace’s cargo not accounted for in the newspaper account- 14,500 gun flints, 30 cutlasses and 20 small arms. Another 16 July 1776 letter among the Nicholas Cooke Correspondence notes the ten cannon to include “Four 4 Pounders, Six 3 Pounders, and Eight Swivels which are greatly wanted here for privateers”.  Just a little over one month later, the captain’s young son Nathan Angell Chace died and was buried at St. John’s Church on 24 August 1776. Several months later, Samuel Chace, Jr. was commissioned to the newly built 20-gun 160-ton RI privateer ship Oliver Cromwell on 21 November 1776, then outfitting in the Taunton River. The owners were listed as Nicholas Brown and William & Joseph Russell, however it can be inferred that Chace also had some investment in the vessel earned during his previous four year merchant marine career. No record can be found of the Oliver Cromwell going to sea in late 1776 or early in 1777, probably due to the British occupation of Newport in December 1776. Landlocked between commands, Samuel Chace, Jr. appears on a 19 April 1777 petition from some Providence men under the command of Col. Joseph Nightingale “on Military Duty at Pawtuxet for the Defence of our Country” protesting that town’s taking action on a question reflecting on the “Conduct of the Present Assessors of Rates” until they could be present.

     Captain Chace was again commissioned to the same vessel on 4 August 1777. Although designed for a compliment of almost 200, the privateer was manned by only twenty-three in the dark and foggy early morning hours of 27 August 1777 when in company with the Continental Navy brig Hampden, the Oliver Cromwell attempted to run the British blockade of the Narragansett Bay and get to sea. The shore side guns of the British battery at Fogland Ferry alerted the sleeping guard on the 14-gun sloop-of-war Kingfisher which quickly recovered and engaged the Oliver Cromwell. With no fighting force, Captain Chace altered course to evade Kingfisher’s attack and inadvertently ran the vessel hard aground with all sail set. With Kingfisher keeping up fire and sending a boarding party, the Americans abandoned ship. Unable to float their prize, the British set her ablaze while the Hampden escaped unmolested.  According to the “Diary of Frederick Mackenzie” parts of which are published in Volume 9 of “Naval Documents of the American Revolution” and made readily accessible online by Ken Kellows, the British concluded “The want of spirit on the part of the Rebels was very conspicuous… and for a vessel of that force to run ashore from a Sloop of War of 14 Guns and about 90 men, without firing a shot, was perfectly scandalous.” Chace commented that he’d lost “all he hade in the World.” According to some sources, sometime after the loss of the Oliver Cromwell Samuel Chace, Jr. took command of the 20-gun privateer St. Peter which was captured by the British warship Aurora off Antigua on 13 January 1778. The 200-ton vessel was out of Martinique, French West Indies during the fall of 1777 and it thought to be associated with Connecticut naval agent Nathaniel Shaw, Jr. of New London. The prize vessel and compliment of 107 men were sent into Barbados.

     Samuel Chace entered Continental Navy service as Purser on the 28-gun frigate Providence, then under the command of Captain Abraham Whipple, sometime prior to April 1778 at Providence, RI. The purser is an officer on a ship who handles financial accounts and various documents relating to the ship and who oversees the vessel’s money and valuables for safekeeping. The term “purser” comes from the word “purse”, which referred to the pouch in which this person kept the ship’s money. Chace was likely assisted in obtaining this position by his wife’s uncle Continental Navy Commodore Esek Hopkins, his mother-in-law Susannah’s older brother. Purser Chace was well-connected through other family relationships as well, his brother-in-law Dr. Henry Malcolm was a ship’s Surgeon in the Continental Navy on the Columbus and Andrew Doria and another brother-in-law William Blodget was aide-de-camp to Rhode Island’s native Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene, who was at that time Quartermaster General of the Continental Army. About 1775, the gifted Major William Blodget executed at least three pastel portraits now on display at the Rhode Island Historical Society, demonstrating a competency in the fine arts complementing his talent in the performing arts. The subjects include his wife’s sister Rosabella Angell Chace, her husband Samuel Chace, Jr. and Continental Army chaplain Rev. Dr. Enos Hitchcock, future pastor of the First Congregational Church of Providence. Blodget would later serve in 1779 on the Continental Navy frigate Deane as Chaplain.

     The Continental Navy frigate Providence had been launched in May 1776 but was blockaded in the Providence River for over a year before running for open sea on the night of 30 April 1778. The ship sailed “within half a pistol shot” and was engaged by the 40-gun British frigate Lark and 68-gun frigate Renown before escaping to complete her mission to France conveying important dispatches while seeking guns and military supplies for other Continental Navy vessels then under construction. It is said Captain Abraham Whipple succeeded in deceiving the enemy within earshot by screaming orders for the Providence’s helmsman to “Pass her on the Narragansett side” while quietly directing him to do precisely the opposite. While at sea on 2 May 1778, Purser Samuel Chase joined five other Providence officers, including his wife’s relative Acting Lieutenant William Hopkins, in petitioning Captain Whipple for “proper Navy Uniform [s to be] procured” in order to standardize their clothing and present a professional appearance. The frigate Providence under Captain Abraham Whipple was at Paimboeuf by 30 May 1778, staying until 8 August 1778 when she sailed for Brest. Joining the frigate Boston under Captain Samuel Tucker there, the two sailed for home on 22 August, arriving at Portsmouth, NH on 15 October 1778 laden with clothing, arms and ammunition. The pair took three prizes on the homeward bound cruise. The Samuel Tucker Papers at Harvard reveal that Joseph Proctor was appointed Prizemaster of the brig Sally on 24 August 1778 and William Atkins in command of the prize snow Adventure on 15 September 1778. Just one month after returning from France, the tragedy of two years earlier was repeated with the death of the captain’s young daughter Susannah Chace who was buried near her brother at St. John’s Church on 18 October 1778. It is suspected that the frigate Providence’s Purser Samuel Chace had not made it home for his daughter’s burial as he executed a 2 November 1778 receipt at Portsmouth to Continental Agent John Langdon for “Forty Pounds, sixteen Shillings” on the ship’s account.

     Captain Samuel Chace Jr.’s precise activities in the two years between October 1778 and September 1780 are not known, however he clearly continued to sponsor merchant and privateering endeavors as a part owner in vessels. Along with John Jenks and others, Chase owned an interest in the 60-ton sloop Joanna, built in Providence in 1773. The vessel was registered on 28 November 1778 and again on 18 February 1779 with Stutely Williams named as master. With Martin Thurber and James Wheaton, Jr.; Chace also owned part of the 15-ton sloop Dolphin built at North Kingston in 1770. This vessel was placed under the command of Lewis Thomas who had previously served in 1776 as lieutenant aboard George Washington’s armed schooner Warren under Captain William Burke. An April 1779 newspaper advertisement suggests that Captain Chace was sticking close to home while “Selling choice Connecticut Flax and Flax Seed.” The 22 May 1780 edition of Boston’s Independent Ledger notes “Yesterday arrived at Providence in 26 days from Cape Francois in a [unnamed] sloop laden with salt, molasses, sugar, etc.” Samuel Chace, Jr. is again in command of an unnamed sloop “belonging to Messrs. Welcome Arnold and Company, of Providence” by September 1780 when his father petitioned the Rhode Island Assembly to authorize the exchange of British Captain Aaron Martin who was taken by the ship General Washington for his son, then a prisoner in New York. The junior Chace apparently was captured by the ship Earl of Dunmore. A review of the muster rolls of prisoners held on the Jersey Prison Ship indicates that after his transfer to the Jersey from the Royal Oak or Strombolo on 12 October 1780, Samuel Chase was paroled on 30 October 1780.

     Tragedy struck the Chace household yet again when Mrs. Rose Chace died at the age of thirty-two on 26 April 1781. The 31 May 1783 edition of the Providence Gazette notes Captain Samuel Chace, Jr. on the ship Junius Brutus “arrived at Boston from Cape Francois”. Fourteen months later on 17 July 1784, the Providence Gazette reported the death of Captain Samuel Chace, Jr. in Providence on “Sunday last [11 July 1784] in the 36th year of his age”. The Continental Navy Purser was buried in the Episcopal Burying Ground at St. John’s Church with his family on Tuesday 13 July 1784. His death followed that of his sister-in-law Ann Phillis Chace Blodgett on 18 May 1784 by less than two months.