Saltonstall, Dudley

SALTONSTALL, DUDLEY. (1738–1796). Continental naval officer. Connecticut. Born at New London, Connecticut, on 8 September 1738, Saltonstall was a merchant captain in the West Indies trade and a privateer during the Seven Years' War. At the start of the Revolution he commanded the fort at New London but sought his own ship in the new U.S. Navy. Through the intercession of his brother-in-law, Silas Deane, who was a member of Congress's naval committee, Saltonstall was given command of Esek Hopkins's flagship, the Alfred, on 27 November 1775. Taking part in the first of the war's naval operations, he was exonerated after several courts-martial and a congressional investigation of wrongdoing in the Alfred-Glasgow encounter of 6 April 1776. The next year he was named to command the new frigate Trumbull. Although this vessel did not get to sea for two years because it could not get over the shallows of the harbor where it was built, Saltonstall did command a ship by the same name and captured two British transports off Virginia. He succeeded the more capable John B. Hopkins as captain of the Warren (thirty-two guns) and commanded the fleet in the Penobscot expedition disaster. After a court-martial in Boston, he was dismissed from the navy on 27 December 1779. He later was successful as a privateer and after the war returned to the merchant service. He died of yellow fever in Haiti in 1796.

SEE ALSO Alfred-Glasgow Encounter; Naval Operations, Strategic Overview; Penobscot Expedition, Maine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buker, George E. The Penobscot Expedition: Commodore Saltonstall and the Massachusetts Conspiracy of 1779. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2002.

                            revised by Michael Bellesiles