Benajah Carpenter (April 27, 1748 – August 27, 1776) was a founding member of the United States Army Field Artillery Corps under Henry Knox and veteran of the Siege of Boston and Battle of Long Island.

Private mariners of the period were those who possessed knowledge of cannon and artillery, a necessary part of early American shipping and seaborne trade.

Henry Johnston in his Campaign of 1776, describes Carpenter as commanding the two-gun battery that opposed the British under Grant.

Johnston surmises that it was Carpenter's battery that caused British light troops to retire to their main line.

This was the first instance, Johnston tells us, where the newly minted American army met the British "in the open field" in classic military formation.