Caleb Brewster was a secondary character in the TV series “Turn, Washington’s Spies,” but he was a main character in the formation of George Washington’s Culper spy ring and in Coast Guard history.

Brewster initiated the Culpepper spy ring,

“Again in the dark for critical intelligence, Washington, to his great relief, received an unsolicited letter written on August 7, 1778 – a day that could be considered the start of the Culper Spy Ring.  It was written by Caleb Brewster in Norwalk, offering to gather intelligence on Long Island Washington instructed Brewster to “not spare any reasonable expense to come at early and true information.” Brewster wrote his first intelligence report on August 27, 1778. He warned Washington that Sir Henry Clinton was planning to attack the Continental Army strong point in Newport, Rhode Island, allowing Washington to take precautions to avert an attack.”

He was wounded in a “spy boat fight”  the British in 1782.

Caleb Brewster was injured on December 7, 1782 during a naval exchange with British troops on Long Island Sound.  He was hit by a musket ball through his shoulder, or “breast,” as he described in his letter to President George Washington.

He commanded the Revenue Cutter Active 1812 to 1816.

During the War of 1812, the cutters Active and Eagle kept very busy escorting merchantmen between New England and the mid-Atlantic states.

Of the war’s revenue-cutter masters, Captain Caleb Brewster of the Active proved the most experienced intelligence-gatherer, having been part of an effective spy ring supplying information to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. On 26 May 1813, a New York newspaper reported that the Active braved a “strong south gale” near Montauk Point, Long Island, to maintain surveillance of three British men-of-war about ten miles out to sea. Employing local small craft, Captain Brewster sped the information to U.S. Navy Commodore Stephen Decatur, whose squadron was trapped in Long Island Sound. Brewster continued providing military intelligence to New York officials regarding enemy naval operations until the war’s end.

During the summer of 1813, the cutter Active sailed through the British squadron blockading Commodore Decatur’s flotilla near New London, Connecticut. The Active provided force protection for Decatur’s warships and delivered reports, messages, and naval intelligence between the commoedore’s flotilla and authorities in New York.

22 January 1814 near Sandy Hook, New Jersey, when a boarding party from the Active inspected the merchant ship Fair American, which had special papers to sail for Liverpool, England. In what became a rather sensational story at the time, Caleb Brewster’s crew found 11 men without passports concealed in the ship’s hold and several men of wealth disguised as seamen. They caught others among the crew trying to destroy illegal documents. The Active’s boarding party found bills, orders, and drafts for supplying the Royal Navy and the British military in Canada and the West Indies and arrested a number of passengers, including two smuggled British prisoners of war. A New York newspaper described the incident as demonstrating “the development of a most nefarious and long continued system of smuggling, [and] victualing the British and contravening the most imperious laws and highest interests of the country.”

Why haven’t we named a cutter after this man?