Culper Ring

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The Culper Ring was organized by Benjamin Tallmadge under the orders of General George Washington in the summer of 1778. The Ring was given the task of 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, though its heyday was between 1778 and 1781.

After the battle of Monmouth in late June of 1778, British forces under General Sir 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 (since General Washington's defeat at the Battle of Fort Washington in September 1776). 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 (a village on Long Island's north coast), Robert Townsend, a merchant in Manhattan, agreed to supply much of the information, and a Setauket tavern keeper named Austin Roe served as the courier. (Jonas Hawkins also served in that role for a short time.) 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. To avoid the British, Brewster was here 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 all the operatives. Townsend's role was finally determined in 1939 by handwriting analysis, and has since been confirmed by other evidence.

One of those who allegedly aided the Culper Ring is the operative known only as “355,” the group’s code for “lady.” Some historians believe that she was the only member of the ring to be arrested and hanged as a spy. Others claim that she gave birth to Robert Townsend's child while she was a prisoner aboard the British hulk, The Jersey, but this story has been discredited. Robert Townsend allegedly did father a child by another woman after 355's death.

Hale and Tallmadge were close friends at Yale, and 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. Before that, he worked for the spymaster Nathaniel Sackett, later fired.

[edit] The Culper Ring in Popular Culture

One of the main characters in the comic book Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughan, is an agent of a fictional modern day Culper Ring. In a direct reference to the historical Culper Ring, the agent is only known by her code name, 355. In the world of Y, the Culper ring has existed ever since the American Revolution as a secret spy ring under the direct command of the President. A group of rogue Culper agents, who split off from the group in 1977, are known as the Setauket Ring, after the town in New York where the historical Culper ring was originally formed.

In the BBC drama Spooks, Series 2 Episode 2, Tom Quinn takes on the identity of a student named John Culper at the University of West Midlands.

Culper Ring is the name of an experimental music project on Neurot Recordings which includes Steve Von Till, a guitarist and vocalist for the long-running Bay Area experimental metal band Neurosis.