Robert Townsend: America’s Most Important Spy Multi-Cache

The Culper Ring’s Robert Townsend might have been the single most important spy in America’s history. His espionage activities probably had a greater and longer lasting historical impact than that of any other single clandestine operative from the country’s founding to the present. For somebody whose actions played such a great role, he is remarkably little known, and does not get anywhere near the recognition his historical contributions warrant. That was how he wanted it. Townsend never sought recognition during the war, insisting that his identity be kept secret even from George Washington. After the conflict, the few who knew his identity – whose numbers by then included Washington – respected his wish to remain anonymous.

George Washington personally spelled out Townsend’s tasks. In a letter with detailed instructions, the Continental Army’s commander in chief directed Townsend to remain in New York City and: “… collect all the useful information he can – to do this he should mix as much as possible among the officers and refugees, visit the coffee houses, and all public places. He is to pay particular attention to the movements by land and water in and about the city especially“.

Washington went on to add that Townsend was to report on the number of troops operating in New York and its environs; identify their units; the defensive fortifications; the security measures in place to protect transports; the state of supplies and provisions; and the morale of the military and civilians. He closed by noting: “There can be scarcely any need of recommending the greatest caution and secrecy in a business so critical and dangerous. The following seem to be the best general rules: To entrust none but the persons fixed upon to transmit the business. To deliver the dispatches to none upon our side but those who shall be pitched upon for the purpose of receiving them and to transmit them and any intelligence that may be obtained to no one but the Commander-in-Chief“. Little did Washington know just how well Townsend would perform, or how well positioned he was to come across some of the most sensitive information of the entire war.

After gathering information, Townsend wrote his reports using invisible ink on seemingly blank reams of paper. He then handed them to a courier who delivered them to Abraham Woodhull in Setauket, and from there they made their way to Washington. The general read the reports after developing the invisible ink with a chemical agent, and often responded to Townsend with invisible ink messages of his own.

Townsend did a lot of valuable legwork gathering intelligence and fulfilling the tasks assigned him by George Washington. He got a gig as a columnist for a Loyalist newspaper, and visited coffeehouses to hobnob with British officers, many of whom opened to him in the hopes of seeing their name in print. That was how Townsend got wind of a British plot to wreck the American economy by flooding the country with counterfeit dollars. His warning enabled the Continental Congress to avert disaster in the nick of time by recalling all bills then in circulation, and issuing new ones.

Townsend also discovered that the British had learned that the French, who had joined the war on America’s side, were sending a fleet to land French troops in Rhode Island. The British and their more powerful Royal Navy planned to intercept and capture or sink the French at the sea before they disembarked their troops. Townsend’s timely warning enabled George Washington to bluff the British into staying put in New York, by feeding them false information about a nonexistent plan to attack New York. So the British prepared to defend New York against an attack that never came, while the French safely landed their troops in Rhode Island. That link up between French and American armies would ultimately doom the British. The allied Franco-American forces would effectively decide the war in 1781 by trapping a British army in Yorktown, Virginia, and forcing its surrender.

One of Townsend’s greatest coups resulted from the unwelcome, but as it turned out fortuitous, quartering of British officers in the Townsend family home in Oyster Bay. During the British stay, one of Townsend’s sisters overheard a visiting officer, John Andre -Benjamin Tallmadge’s British counterpart in charge of intelligence gathering – discussing the defection of a high ranking American hero. She passed that on to her brother, and from there it worked its way through the Culper Ring to Tallmadge. It eventually contributed to the unmasking of Benedict Arnold as a traitor.

At the "Wreck of the USS Plymouth" search for two secret symbols. Match the symbols to the following coordinates to his secret treasure.

NORTH COORDINATES: N 40 42. XXX ( SYMBOL BELOW )

In the center of the Plymouth where the windshield would be, what symbol?

A. SPYGLASS = .105

B. SKULL AND CROSS BONES = .017

C. CANNON = .095

WEST COORDINATES: W 074 31.XXX ( NUMBER BELOW )

In rear passenger side of the Plymouth find Mall Rats, what number is under it?

D. 07 = .077

E. 50 = .142

F. 92 = .024

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