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PATRIOTS AND TORIES HIT AND RUN BATTLES ON LONG ISLAND SOUND by Patricia Q. Wall

Two hundred and fifty years ago the exploits of Revolutionary whaleboatmen were a subject of fascination and dread on each side of the western Sound. And it had nothing to do with the catching of whales.

During the six and a half years of the American Revolution, residents along the southwestern Connecticut shore lived in constant fear of midnight raids from hostile loyalist whaleboatmen based across the Sound in the Huntington area. Darien, then called the Middlesex Parish, a part of Stamford, was particularly vulnerable to such attack. Only six miles away on Lloyds Neck, Long Island, were, by 1777, hundreds of desperate, hungry, ill-clothed Americans who had fled from their Connecticut homes at the start of the war. These were the Tories who had chosen to side with King George III in America’s fight for independence.

Throughout the war these Tories survived by raiding and plundering the opposite shores, especially the area between the Noroton River in Stamford and William’s Cove in West Norwalk. In the darkness they rode across the Sound to rob, capture prisoners, and advance the King’s cause through subversion and sabotage. Many Middlesex families were forced to leave their battered ransacked homes to seek shelter farther inland. Even then they were not assured of safety, for as the war progressed, the Tory raiders grew bolder, moving inland on their hit-and-run strikes. In 1781 Tory whaleboatmen began an active, well-organized guerrilla offensive to try to force the southwestern end of Connecticut to submit to British authority.

But Connecticut had its own whaleboat warriors. Operating out of the many coves between Norwalk and Greenwich and from elsewhere along the coast, they led the fight against the enemy. Thus Huntington’s residents and those in surrounding areas came to know the same dread that Connecticut felt. Tories on the Island often suffered when Rebels sneaked ashore to retaliate. Rebel sympathizers in Suffolk County, of whom there were doubtless a great many, took secret satisfaction from this and some of them aided such Rebel raiding whenever they could. In fact quite a number of Huntington-area whateboatmen took refuge in Connecticut during the war and assisted in cross-Sound raiding. Had these daring whaleboatmen been carefully organized and consistently employed early in the war, our coastal towns might not have suffered as much as they did. As it was, the Rebels carried on the war as independent raiders and privateers. Many left behind a shining record of courage; others were little better than selfish and brutal plunderers.

However, research shows that the positive side far outweighs the negative. General Washington repeatedly praised the boatmen’s skill in capturing British and Tory ships that plied the Sound between Huntington and New York City. There is a record of more than 100 small Rebel whaleboats engaged in this activity in the western Sound from time to time. Either singly or in groups of three or four, they rowed through darkness and fog to capture a total of nearly 150 enemy supply vessels.
History books have overlooked the whaleboatmen, yet they were a necessary part of Washington’s military force throughout the conflict. For a short time, early in the war, Washington had units of Continental whaleboats stationed in the Stamford-Greenwich area and at Norwalk. Their task was to guard the coast and attempt to destroy British supplies and military installations on adjacent Long Island. Some local men served with these units. Later on, many residents of southwestern Connecticut were called out as volunteers on several major raids across the Sound. Whaleboatmen frequently served as spies and messengers for the Continental Army and the State of Connecticut.

It is hard now to picture how grim life must have been in towns along the southwestern coast during that time. To a citizenry by the deprivations, dreariness, and unrelenting tensions of a seemingly endless war, the Rebel boatman provided a few bright moments. One can imagine the excitement as residents hurried down to the harbors to view their latest catch. Once in a while the prize was a fair-size British ship, bristling with cannon, though more often it was one of several small Tory-owned sloops loaded with food and firewood intended for the British Army in New York City.

There was another important reason for pride in and gratitude to Connecticut boatman. Each time Tory raiders from Lloyds Neck captured a local citizen, it was up to the Rebels to go to Long Island and capture a Tory for exchange. This the Rebels did many times, as great risk to their lives, and in this way many Connecticut residents were saved from death in New York City’s disease-ridden prisons. In July of 1781, in a now famous incident, fifty men in the Middlesex Congregational Meeting House, including their minister Moses Mather, were captured by Lloyds Neck Tories and carried across the Sound. Since the Continental Congress made little if any provision for exchanging civilians, it was largely through the efforts of local whaleboatmen that many of the Middlesex prisoners were eventually able to return home.

Excerpted from Patricia Q. Wall’s article “Whaleboats for the Bicentennial” in the Connecticut League of Historical Societies Inc. LEAGUE BULLETIN July 1976.

A year ago Jim Morneau from Canton sent us a carton of old LEAGUE BULLETINS from the 70s and 80s and we were exited to read them all. Patricia Wall’s story was particularly interesting, telling us about an aspect of the Revolution we didn’t know about before. We tried to locate Patricia Wall, who at the time she wrote this article 44 years ago lived in Darien. We finally found her in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In recent years she has authored several critically acclaimed books for young adults on black children in early New England, including BEYOND FREEDOM and CHILD OUT OF PLACE.