Name of Vessel:

Swallow

Master of Vessel:

Commander John Murphy

Rig of Vessel:

Sloop

Date of Capture:

12 September 1777

Place of Capture:

24 miles northeast of Turks Island, British West Indies

Captor:

HM Frigate Æolus

Home Port:

Providence, Rhode Island

From What Port:

Acoaxet, Massachusetts

To What Port:

Cap Français, Saint-Domingue, French West Indies

Cargo:

Fish, oil, lumber

Tonnage:

Battery:

6

Crew:

28 [total]

Owners:

[Jeremiah] Clarke & Nightingale [of Providence, Rhode Island]

Prize master:

Prize crew:

Ordered Into:

Jamaica, British West Indies

Into What Port:

Jamaica, British West Indies

Date Arrived:

Date Tried:

Date Sold:

Action:

No

Recaptured:

No

Comments: Rhode Island Privateer Sloop Swallow (Commander John Murphy) was armed with six guns and had a crew of thirty men. She was owned by Clarke & Nightingale of Rhode Island. Swallow sailed from Acoaxet (near Dartmouth), Massachusetts, probably in August 1777, bound for Cap Français, Saint-Domingue with a cargo of fish, oil and lumber. On 12 September 1777, some twenty-four miles northeast of Turks Island., Swallow was sighted, at 0700, by HM Frigate Æeolus (Captain Christopher Atkins). A brief chase began, involving much gunfire from Æeolus . Murphy threw his guns overboard to escape, but Swallow surrendered at 1145. Murphy and his crew, totaling twenty-eight men, were taken in to Jamaica. Here Vice Admiral Clark Gayton, referring to him as a “notorious pirate . . .” clapped him in irons, with his officers. Gayton claimed Murphy was en route to Saint-Domingue to fill out his crew to 100 men by enlisting French sailors, and then raid the north coast of Jamaica. Murphy and the officers and most of the crew were sent to England, nineteen being committed to Forton Prison on 23 January 1778. Exactly six months later, on 23 July 1778, he escaped.

[NDAR, IX, 921 and note; X, 294-295 and 296 notes; XI, 448-453, 921-922 and 922 notes, 930 and note; Claghorn, Naval Officers of the American Revolution, 129, 216; Sheffield, An Address Delivered by William P. Sheffield before the Rhode Island Historical Society, 60]