Culper Ring
The Culper Ring was organized by Benjamin Tallmadge under the orders of General George Washington in 1778. The Ring was tasked with infiltrating British controlled New York City and reporting troop dispositions and intentions. The Ring conducted covert operations until the end of the American Revolutionary War.
After the battle of Monmouth in late June of 1778, British forces under General Henry Clinton retreated to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. From there they took ship for New York City which they had occupied for almost two years. General Washington was well aware of the need for good intelligence, and he asked one of his officers, Major Benjamin Tallmadge, to recruit people who could be trusted to collect it in New York City.
Tallmadge enlisted the services of Abraham Woodhull, a farmer from Setauket, NY Robert Townsend, a Quaker merchant in Manhattan, agreed to supply the information, and a Setauket tavern keeper named Austin Roe served as the courier. Once Townsend’s reports reached Setauket, whaleboatman Caleb Brewster and his men ferried it across Long Island Sound where Tallmadge’s dragoons waited to carry it to Washington’s headquarters.
Two years earlier the British had caught Nathan Hale with drawings of their fortifications and had hanged him. Perhaps with Hale in mind, Washington made sure that these spies had more support. Through Tallmadge he provided them with codes, invisible ink, dead drops, and aliases.
Woodhull became known in dispatches as Samuel Culper Sr., and Townsend was referred to as Samuel Culper Jr. Secrecy was so strict that Washington himself didn’t know the identity of the operatives.
One of those who allegedly aided the Culper Ring is the operative known only as “355,” the group’s code for “lady.” 355’s identity and her fate have been the subjects of a great deal of speculation, though a forthcoming book by historian Alexander Rose (Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring) demonstrates that "355" never existed. The book also deflates the many other romantic myths that surround the Culper Ring (and espionage in general) while discussing the Whaleboat War, gun-running, privateering, covert operations, double agents, and codebreaking in the 18th century.
Using newly discovered documents, Rose opens his narrative by detailing, for the first time, the real story of Nathan Hale's mission -- and how he was caught, and by whom. He also reveals that Hale and Tallmadge were close friends at Yale, and that Tallmadge's entry into the secret world was not accidental, nor did it begin with the Culper Ring in 1778. In fact, as early as 1777, Tallmadge acted as the operative John Clark's contact in Connecticut when Clark was based on Long Island. Over the next few years, Tallmadge ran his Culper cell very efficiently, but was often plagued by Woodhull's bouts of nervousness, Townsend's depressions and desire for reward, Brewster's predilection for killing his Tory foes, and Roe's tardiness. In this respect, Tallmadge resembled every other case-officer in history: His spies were by no means perfect, and he and Washington were obliged to play the role of father-figures to their errant agents. Washington, in particular, could be chiding, congratulatory, or cold as the situation warranted. Rose also tracks the efforts by the British secret service to catch the Culper Ring over the years, and focuses on just how close the triple agent -- William Heron, who worked for the Americans, the British, but most of all, for himself -- came to destroying them.
Reference books on the subject are:
Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring, by Alexander Rose (Bantam Dell, May 2006). The author's website is www.rosewriter.com.
Also see:
Shadow Patriots, a Novel of the Revolution by Lucia St. Clair Robson tells the story of The Culpers and Spy 355.