Construction

Upon the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, the Connecticut General Assembly in July 1775 authorized Governor Jonathan Trumbull to purchase and outfit two armed vessels, the largest of which would be Oliver Cromwell.^[2] Under the supervision of Capt. Seth Harding, ship builder Uriah Hayden began preliminary work for the project on 30 January. Work began in the Hayden family shipyard that sat on the Connecticut River in Saybrook (Essex), Connecticut, on April 2, and continued until the ship's launch on 13 June 1776.^[3]

When launched, the three-masted brig was the largest fully-rigged warship in the [Continental Navy], and carried twenty guns. She weighed 300 tons, had an eighty-foot keel, was twenty-seven feet wide, and had a hold twelve feet deep.^[4]

Capture of Admiral Keppel

In the spring of 1778 Oliver Cromwell set sail from Boston with Defence for the West Indies, stopping in Charleston, S.C., for refitting.^[5] On April 15, while sailing east of St. Kitts, the pair encountered two British ships, Admiral Keppel and Cyrus, and captured them. On board Admiral Keppel, and taken prisoner, was Henry Shirley, the former British Ambassador to Russia, and other bureaucrats, and their families, who were en route to Kingston, Jamaica, to relay instructions from London to the colony. Admiral Keppel was sailed to Boston and sold for £22,321, and, after some deliberation by Gov. Trumbull, Mr. Shirley and the other captives were permitted to continue to Kingston under a flag of truce.

End of Service with the Connecticut Navy

A hurricane struck Oliver Cromwell while she was off the coast of the Bahamas in which she was stripped of her masts. In June 1779 she encountered British ships off Sandy Hook and was forced to strike her colors after a battle lasting several hours. After her capture, the British refitted her and commissioned her as Restoration.^[6] From there, the ship was purchased by the Royal Navy and commissioned as the HMS Loyalist.^[7]