Talk:William Day (sea captain)

A fact from William Day (sea captain) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 13 December 2007, and was viewed approximately 6,807 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that shortly after Captain William Day received the first gun salute to an American fighting vessel in a European port, at Brest, France, in July 1777, he sailed home and effectively vanished from history?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/December.

Wikipedia

Untitled

This page exists mainly to encourage others with easier access to American resources to fill in a few of the blanks in Day's life! David Trochos (talk) 00:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excelent article. Very informative about the nature of prizes taken. That is something a lot of historians ignore even though it would seem to be the central point when talking about privateers. I believe there may be one inaccuracy however. According to noted historian Barabara Tuchman (The Guns of August, A Distant Mirror, etc.)in her book The First Salute the first salute to an American vesel was to an American ship by the governor of the tiny Dutch island of St. Eustasia in the Carribean. It was in 1776 I beleive. I don't have the book with me right now but I will look it up.Tuelj (talk) 18:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first gun salute to an American vessel was indeed to the Andrew Doria on St. Eustatius. That's why I specified "in a European port". St. Eusuatius was an interesting case, a Dutch colonial possession arguably out of control of the Dutch government- except of course that, like the French before 1778, the Dutch were secretly doing everything they could to cause problems for the Brits. In the end, in 1780, despite already being at war with France and Spain, Britain had to declare war on the Dutch so that retaliation would be legally possible (the Dutch were about to sign a "neutrality" treaty with several other European nations). David Trochos (talk) 19:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed you did; I sometimes read through the introductory paragraph of articles too quick. In fact I may have skipped over it. Again, good article.Tuelj (talk) 12:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Identification

Could this Captain William Day be the same as the one buried in Springfield, Massachusetts? [1] There could certainly be two contemporaneous men, both sea captains, of the same name. I'll check my research and see if I can confirm. The one from Springfield was a hero in the French and Indian War for capturing French ships. - Dunc0029 (talk) 23:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody has stated that the two cannot be the same person (although there is one very late family anecdote claiming that Springfield William asked for parole during the Revolutionary War) so I've added the basics of his 1750s adventures. David Trochos (talk) 19:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]