Wooster, Charles Whiting, , Connecticut 1780 1848 Male Naval Officer commander in chief of the Chilean navy, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Thomas and Lydia (Sheldon) Wooster, and the grandson of David Wooster [q. v. ] who was one of the eight brigadier-generals named by the Continental Congress in 1776.
Charles Wooster was also a descendant of President Thomas Clap [q. v. ] of Yale College.
At the age of eleven he went to sea, and at twenty-one he commanded the ship Fair American.
After the war he returned to service in the United States merchant marine until José Miguel Carrera and Manuel Hermenegildo de Aguirre interested him in the Chilean struggle for independence from Spain.
On Oct. 8, 1817, he was commissioned captain in the Chilean navy by the dictator, Bernardo O'Higgins, and soon afterward sailed from New York in command of the armed bark Columbus, which he stated that he had bought and outfitted personally.
On Feb. 4, 1818, he reached Buenos Aires, and on Apr. 25 arrived at his destination, Valparaiso, with his cargo of munitions of war.
On Nov. 27, 1825, he sailed from Valparaiso to attack the last stronghold of the Spaniards in Chile--the Island of Chiloé, which he successfully assaulted in cooperation with the land forces under General Freire on Jan. 11, 1826.
"Wooster, like an aroused lion, rose above the fire and death which were on all sides of him and concentrated all the enemy's fire on one place, " wrote President Vicuna of Chile (Chandler, post, p. 127), who commissioned Wooster rear admiral in the Chilean navy on Nov. 4, 1829.
[David Wooster, Geneal.
of the Woosters in America (1885); George Coggeshall, Hist.
of the Am.
Privateers (1856); Pub.
Papers of Daniel D. Tompkins (3 vols. , 1898 - 1902); C. L. Chandler, Inter-American Acquaintances (2nd ed. , 1917), with bibliog. , and "Admiral Charles Whiting Wooster in Chile, " Ann.
Report Am.
Hist.
Asso.
1916, vol.
