[3] 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.

Seth Harding, ship builder Uriah Hayden began preliminary work for the project on 30 January.

[6] In the spring of 1778 Oliver Cromwell set sail from Boston with Defence for the West Indies, stopping in Charleston, S.C., for refitting.

[7] 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.

In June 1779 she encountered British ships off Sandy Hook and was forced to strike her colors after a battle lasting several hours.

[13] This article includes data released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported UK: England & Wales Licence, by the National Maritime Museum, as part of the Warship Histories project.