Captain Samuel Green (1738–1805)

Continental Navy Captain and New London Privateer

Born in 1738, the man who would become one of New London's most representative wartime mariners came of age in a Connecticut port town where the smell of salt air and tar was inseparable from daily life. New London in the mid-eighteenth century was a community built around deep-water seafaring — its wharves crowded with vessels engaged in coastal and transatlantic trade, its families shaped by the rhythms of departure and return. Samuel Green absorbed this culture from his earliest years, developing the demanding skills of blue-water seamanship through long apprenticeship in the coastal and Atlantic trades. He learned to handle vessels in treacherous waters, to navigate the shoals and harbors of the New England coast, and to manage crews of rough, capable men who respected competence above all else. By the mid-1770s, when the political crisis with Britain finally erupted into open warfare, Green was no untested youth volunteering for adventure. He was a seasoned captain in middle age, possessing the practical knowledge of wind, tide, and sail — and the hard-earned personal authority over men — that would make him a valuable asset to the American cause at sea.

Green's wartime career traced an arc familiar to many New England mariners who answered the call of independence. In the early years of the Revolution, he entered service with the Continental Navy, the fledgling American fleet that Congress was struggling to build and deploy against the most powerful navy on earth. It was dangerous, often thankless work — American warships were outgunned, undermanned, and chronically undersupplied, and direct engagements with Royal Navy vessels carried long odds. As the Continental Navy suffered devastating losses and its strategic limitations became painfully clear, Green followed a path that dozens of skilled New England captains also chose: he transitioned to privateering, carrying letters of marque that authorized him to seize British merchant vessels on the open sea. Operating out of New London, Green conducted cruises that brought captured prizes back into the harbor on the Thames River, where they were processed through the established network of admiralty courts and commercial agents. Nathaniel Shaw Jr., New London's most prominent maritime agent and a critical figure in Connecticut's war effort, managed the condemnation and sale of such prizes, converting captured cargo into resources that fed both the Continental cause and the local economy that sustained it.

The risks Green accepted were not abstract. Continental Navy service and privateering alike exposed him to capture, imprisonment, and death — and the British made no gentle distinction between the two. American sailors taken at sea faced confinement in the notorious prison ships anchored in harbors like New York, where disease, starvation, and brutal treatment killed thousands. If Green's vessel were overpowered by a Royal Navy frigate or a well-armed British privateer, he and his crew could expect no mercy as honorable prisoners of war; the Crown frequently treated American naval combatants as pirates and traitors. Beyond physical danger, Green wagered his livelihood and his family's security every time he sailed. A failed cruise meant not only personal peril but financial ruin — privateering required investment in vessels, provisions, and armaments, and a voyage that ended in capture rather than prize money could devastate a captain and the families of his crew. Green fought for a community as much as a cause: the families of New London, the network of mariners and merchants whose prosperity depended on the free use of the sea, and the broader principle that American commerce should not be strangled by an imperial power an ocean away.

Captain Samuel Green's significance lies not in singular acts of dramatic heroism but in what his career reveals about the true texture of the American Revolution at sea. The war on the water was not won by a few great admirals commanding mighty fleets — the young nation had almost none. It was sustained by hundreds of experienced, resourceful mariners like Green who moved fluidly between formal naval service and privateering, adapting to circumstances with the pragmatism that defined New England seamanship. Connecticut's maritime contribution to independence was, by necessity, decentralized and entrepreneurial — a web of individual captains, small crews, and local agents rather than a concentrated naval force. Green's life exemplified that reality. He returned to New London after the war and lived until 1805, part of the postwar maritime community that rebuilt the town's commercial life in peacetime. His story reminds us that the Revolution was won not only on celebrated battlefields but in the cold, unglamorous waters of the Atlantic, by ordinary professionals who risked everything on voyages that history rarely recorded in detail but that collectively helped break Britain's grip on American shores.

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WHY CAPTAIN SAMUEL GREEN MATTERS TO NEW LONDON

Samuel Green's story is the story of New London itself during the Revolution — a port town that turned its deepest skills to the cause of independence. Students and visitors walking the streets near the Thames River waterfront today are standing where captured prizes were brought ashore, where Nathaniel Shaw Jr. conducted the business of war, and where captains like Green prepared their vessels for dangerous cruises against British shipping. Green's career teaches us that the Revolution at sea was not a story of grand fleets but of local communities mobilizing their existing expertise — seamanship, commerce, courage — in a decentralized fight for survival. His life connects New London's colonial maritime heritage directly to the struggle for American independence.

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TIMELINE

• 1738: Born in New London, Connecticut, into the town's deep-water seafaring community
• 1750s–1760s: Develops his skills as a mariner in the coastal and Atlantic trades out of New London
• 1775: The American Revolution begins; Green is an experienced sea captain prepared for wartime service
• 1775–1777: Enters Continental Navy service during the early years of the conflict
• 1777–1781: Transitions to privateering under letters of marque, conducting cruises against British merchant shipping
• 1778–1782: Brings captured prizes into New London harbor, where agent Nathaniel Shaw Jr. manages their condemnation and sale
• 1781: New London raided and burned by British forces under Benedict Arnold on September 6, devastating the port community
• 1783: Treaty of Paris formally ends the Revolutionary War
• 1805: Dies in New London, remembered within the town's maritime community for his wartime service

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SOURCES

• Decker, Robert Owen. The Whaling City: A History of New London. New London County Historical Society, 1976.
• Middlebrook, Louis F. History of Maritime Connecticut during the American Revolution, 1775–1783. 2 vols. Essex Institute, 1925.
• Caulkins, Frances Manwaring. History of New London, Connecticut. Published by the author, 1852.
• National Archives. Naval Records of the American Revolution, 1775–1788. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1906.
• New London County Historical Society. Nathaniel Shaw Jr. Papers and related maritime records. New London, CT.