Culper ring

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George Washington (contemporary portrait by Gilbert Stuart )

The Culper Ring was an espionage organization around Benjamin Tallmadge (1754-1835) under the command of General George Washington , which was founded in the summer of 1778 . The ring was tasked with scouting the British-controlled area of New York City and reporting on military inclinations and intentions. The heyday of the Culper Ring was between 1778 and 1781.

Foundation and members

After the Battle of Monmouth in late June 1778, British forces under General Sir Henry Clinton withdrew to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. From there it was shipped to New York City, which had been occupied by the British for almost two years since the defeat of General Washington in the Battle of Fort Washington in September 1776. Washington, aware of the need for good intelligence, hired one of its officers , Major Benjamin Tallmadge , to recruit trustworthy personnel to be deployed undercover in New York.

Tallmadge recruited Abraham Woodhull , a farmer from Setauket (a village on the north coast of Long Island ), and Robert Townsend, a merchant from Manhattan ; both provided the bulk of the information. An innkeeper named Austin Roe and a certain Jonas Hawkins acted as couriers for the organization.

Robert Townsend's reports and messages from the British-occupied Setauket were delivered by the whaler Caleb Brewster and his men across the Long Island Sound to Tallmadge's Dragoons and smuggled into General Washington's headquarters . Brewster was already in New York by the time the British captured Nathan Hale with drawings of their fortifications and then hung him . Apparently influenced by Hale's death, Washington decided that the Culper Ring spies needed more support. Tallmadge then taught them how to use ciphers , invisible ink , dead mailboxes and aliases .

The farmer Woodhull was called in the mission "Samuel Culper Senior" and refers to Townsend as "Samuel Culper Junior". The secrecy developed in such a way that even Washington itself no longer knew the identities of all agents . Townsend's role became clear in 1939 after an analysis of manuscripts and has since been supported by other evidence. One of the helpers was only known under the code "355", in the group this was the code for women . It was a prisoner aboard the British battleship The Jersey , who gave Robert Townsend an illegitimate child.

Nathan Hale and Tallmadge were close friends at Yale . Tallmadge's entry into the " secret world " was not accidental, as was the establishment of the "Culper Ring" in 1778. As early as 1777, Tallmadge was the contact person for agent John Clark in Connecticut when he was on Long Island. Before that, Tallmadge worked for the spy chief Nathaniel Sackett.

References in music and entertainment literature

  • In the comic series Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, an agent of a fictional modern Culper Ring is one of the main characters. In a direct reference to the historic Culper Ring, the agent is only known by her code name 355 . In the world of Y , the Culper Ring has existed as a secret spy ring under the direct orders of the President since the American Revolution. In the story, a group of renegade agents split off from the Culper Ring in 1977 and henceforth called themselves Setauket Ring , after the New York neighborhood where the historic Culper Ring was originally formed. One of 355's closest associates in the Culper Ring is Agent 711. In response to a joke by Yorick Brown, it is stated that 711 was the code name of George Washington in the historic Culper Ring. In the modern ring, the number is a sign of heroism.
  • In the BBC drama Spooks , Series 2, episode 900231, Tom Quinn assumes the identity of a University of West Midlands student named John Culper .
  • Culper Ring is the name of an experimental music project by Steve Von Till, guitarist and singer of the long-standing experimental metal band Neurosis , which was published by the American label Neurot Recordings .
  • Lucia St. Clair Robson's novel Shadow Patriots tells the story of the Culper Ring and the 355 spy .
  • Culper Ring was mentioned in episode 207 of the American action series Chuck by Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak in connection with possible espionage methods.
  • The television series Turn: Washington's Spies , broadcast by AMC since 2014, tells the story of the Culper Ring, based on the book by Alexander Rose.
  • In season 4, episode 6 of the television series White Collar , the Culper Ring is the theme. The content is the search for a supposed flag of the Culper Ring from the War of Independence.

literature

  • Bernadine Fawcett: Missing Links to the Culper Spy Ring? Infinity Publishing, Conshohocken, PA 2005, ISBN 0-7414-2159-3 .
  • Alexander Rose: Washington's Spies. The Story of America's First Spy Ring . Bantam Books, New York NY 2006, ISBN 0-553-80421-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Secret and sanctioned: covert operations and the American presidency , author Stephen F. Knott, Oxford University Press US, 1996, ISBN 0-19-510098-0 , page 18ff [1]
  2. ↑ George Washington, spymaster: how America outspied the British and won the Revolutionary War , by Thomas B. Allen, Verlag National Geographic, 2004, ISBN 0-7922-5126-1 , page 55 ff [2]
  3. ^ Vaughan, Brian K., Y - The Last Man, Panini Manga and Comic, 1st edition, May 2008, ISBN 978-3-86607-602-0
  4. ^ MacFadyen, Matthew, Spooks - Series 2 - Complete, year of production: 2003
  5. ^ Levi, Zachary, Chuck - Series 2, year of production: 2008