Read, Thomas

READ, THOMAS. (1740?–1788). American naval officer. Delaware. The third of the Read brothers, he was master of vessels in the West Indies and Atlantic trade prior to being commissioned captain of the Pennsylvania navy on 23 October 1775. Commodore of thirteen rowing galleys initially, he took command of the newly purchased Montgomery in March 1776 and was stationed at Fort Island to guard the chevaux de frise (chains for blocking passage). On 5 June he became eighth-ranking captain in the Continental navy and was assigned to command the frigate George Washington. This vessel not being completed when the British pushed Washington back to the Delaware, Read marched on 5 December with a naval battery to join the army and took part in the defense of Assumpink Creek, near Trenton, the afternoon of 2 January 1777. When the British captured Philadelphia, Read and his superior, John Barry, dismantled and scuttled their ships, the Washington and Effingham, just below Bordentown in December 1777, and on 7 May 1778 they were destroyed by the British. Read saw little sea duty during the remainder of the war. In April 1778 he was in Baltimore fitting out the fast brigantine Baltimore, apparently making a single voyage in that ship. In February 1779 he was ordered to take station in the Chesapeake. Later in the year he was put in command of the frigate Bourbon being built in Connecticut, but the vessel was never completed. In 1780 he took out the privateer Patty of Philadelphia, and he was at sea in 1782. Ascaptain of the frigate Alliance, purchased by his friend Robert Morris, Read made a remarkably fast trip to China by a new route east of the Dutch Indies. He left Philadelphia on 7 June 1787, reached Canton on 22 December, and was back at Philadelphia on 17 September 1788 with a tea cargo valued at $500,000. He died five weeks later.

SEE ALSO Princeton, New Jersey; Read Brothers of Delaware.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clark, William B. et al., eds. Naval Documents of the American Revolution. Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1964–.

                                revised by Michael Bellesiles