Ship's Crew

Thomas Anderson Conover (from the Dutch “Van Kouwenhoven,” one of the original five “head families” in New Amsterdam in 1625) was born at Middletown Point, Monmouth, New Jersey on April 17, 1791. He was warranted a midshipman in January 1812 and first ordered to duty in the frigate Essex. Shortly after the start of the War of 1812, the ship captured the British sloop-of-war Alert on August 13, 1812. Two months later, Essex sailed to the Pacific where she decimated British whaling interests before her capture at Valparaiso, Chile by a superior British force in February 1814. Soon exchanged as a prisoner of war, Conover, still a midshipman, was sent to the Lake Champlain Squadron, where he commanded the gunboat Borer in a victory over the British in September 1814. Conover’s performance earned him a ceremonial sword from Congress. At war’s end, he served on the new frigate Guerriere, Stephen Decatur’s flagship, in which the Americans swiftly defeated Algerine warships in the second Barbary War. The Algerines sued for peace in June 1815. Conover was promoted to lieutenant in 1817 and then to commander in 1838, by which time he was commanding the light frigate John Adams. In October 1848 he was promoted to captain and ordered to command the razee (a ship-of-the-line, cut down to a frigate) Independence, flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron.