Career
In the raid, Stoddard led four other privateer vessels and attacked the British settlement at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on July 1, 1782. In Nova Scotia, the assault on Lunenburg was the most spectacular raid of the war. Stoddard was involved in the first naval engagement of the, Battle off Fairhaven, when patriots retrieved two vessels that had been captured by the British sloop of war, Falcon, in Buzzards Bay.
On May 14, 1775, American Captain Daniel Egery and Captain
Nathaniel Pope of Fairhaven in the sloop Success (40 guns, 30 men) retrieved two vessels captured by the British crew of Captain John Linzee (Lindsey), Royal Navy commander of HMS Falcon (14 guns, 110 men). Stoddard and the others took the first naval prisoners of the war, 13 British crew, two were wounded and one died.
Stoddard"s vessel, the Scammell, was commissioned in April 1782. Soon after, he rescued the 60 American prisoners on board HMS Blonde, which was wrecked on Seal Island, Nova Scotia.
Stoddard allowed the British crew to return to Halifax in HMS Observer (which was involved in the Naval battle off Halifax en route).
In 1785, Stoddard was detained while visiting Halifax and sued in Halifax Supreme Court by the Cochran brothers for the theft of rum. Stoddard also participated in founding the New Bedford Academy (later named the Fairhaven Academy) (1800). During the War of 1812, Stoddard captured a traitor at Fort Phoenix.
Stoddard died in New Bedford, January 29, 1850, aged 95, and is buried at the Riverside Cemetery, Fairhaven.
