“Captain Chambers has commenced a Suit in London”

In the early 1770s James Chambers criss-crossed the Atlantic between New York and London on the ship London. His name appeared regularly in the New York newspapers as shopkeepers announced they were selling the latest goods from Britain, as brought by Capt. Chambers.

During the tea crisis of 1773, Chambers promised the people of New York that he wouldn’t take on any cargo of tea for the East India Company. But in April 1774 he arrived with eighteen chests of tea that he had bought himself, hoping to sneak them past the city’s boycott.

That didn’t work, as I‘ve been relating. Chambers had to go into hiding for a couple of days before sailing back to London on another captain’s ship, along with 698 chests of rejected (but at least still intact) tea.

On 15 September, the Boston News-Letter carried this news item from New York:

We are informed, that Captain Chambers has commenced a Suit in London, for the recovery of the Damages he sustained in the destroying a quantity of Tea, which he some time ago brought to this Port.

That same month, the New-York Gazette carried a small advertisement for the sale of a schooner named Little-Peggy, ”James Chambers, Master,” as shown above.

The captain appears to have been cutting ties with New York. In 1776 and then again in 1778, Chambers wrote to the British government complaining about the destruction of his eighteen chests of tea and presumably seeking compensation.

The last news of Chambers that I found in New York newspapers made clear which side of the political conflict he had ended up on. He became a Loyalist. On 19 Oct 1778, the New-York Gazette reported:


Captain James Chambers, in a small Privateer belonging to the Island of Jamaica, has lately taken several valuable Prizes off Charlestown, South-Carolina: a large Brig was fitted out to take him, but he left the Station, and ’tis thought steered for New-Providence [in the Bahamas].

In contrast, Chambers’s trainee Thomas Truxton allied himself with the defiant Americans. In 1775, at age twenty, he commanded his own sloop trading with the West Indies, bringing in gunpowder. After the Royal Navy seized that ship off St. Kitts, Truxton made his way back to Philadelphia and signed aboard one of the Continental Congress’s first privateers. Eventually he would command the Continental Navy’s Independence and the U.S.S. Constellation.

Capt. James Chambers on the London

As promised, I’m going to explore the story of the “New York Tea Party.” And I’ll start with the sea captain James Chambers.

The Roster of Saint Andrew’s Society of the State of New York, compiled by William M. McBean in 1911, says Chambers was active in New York from 1757, sailing to various ports. In 1762, for example, his ship Manchester was equipped with “eight carriage guns” and an unusually large crew of twenty to protect its cargo of furs and skins in wartime.

The 4 June 1770 New-York Gazette reported that on a voyage ”from the Musqueto Shore for Jamaica” Chamber’s brig had been cast away on Trinidad. The ship was “entirely lost,” but the crew and cargo survived—as did the captain, though reportedly the Spanish authorities kept him in jail for a while.

Late that November, Chambers was back in New York, commanding the ship London. He appears to have made regular trips on that vessel between New York and London after that.

Around that time a young sailor named Thomas Truxton (1755-1822, shown above as an older man), who had grown up on Long Island, asked to serve under Chambers. When they were in London in 1771, the Royal Navy impressed the teenager aboard H.M.S. Prudent. After several months, some Americans in London got Thomas released back to Chambers.

The year 1773 of course brought the Tea Act. According to the 25 Apr 1774 New-York Gazette, “Capt. Chambers was one of the First who refused to take the India Company’s Tea on Freight the last Summer, for which he received the Thanks of the Citizens.” When the London sailed back into New York harbor from Britain on 8 October, it carried no tea, but it did bring a celebrity to America: Lt. Col. Charles Lee.

Capt. Chambers was thus in North America as the tea crisis was reaching its zenith. He saw the crowds in New York demand a united front against not only the East India Company’s tea but all tea, to ensure that none of the dutied weed slipped through. He may even have heard about the Boston Tea Party in December before he sailed for Britain again.

COMING UP: When New York heard that tea was on its way.