TYNG (Ting), EDWARD, merchant and naval officer; b. 1683 in Falmouth (now Portland, Maine), eldest son of Colonel Edward Tyng* and Elizabeth Clarke; married Elizabeth Parnel, a widow (daughter of Cyprian Southack), on 8 Jan. 1725 (o.s.); his second wife, Ann Waldo (sister of Samuel Waldo), whom he married on 27 Jan. 1731, bore him six children, only three of whom lived to maturity; d. 7 Sept. 1755 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Edward Tyng went to sea at an early age. He sailed as a merchant seaman and engaged in mercantile pursuits in Boston. In 1736 the General Court of Massachusetts granted him a tract of land on the Merrimack River, in consideration of his father’s services and tragic demise in a French prison.

On 16 April 1740 Governor Jonathan Belcher appointed Tyng captain of the batteries and fortifications of Boston, and on 26 August Tyng assumed command of the province’s new snow, Prince of Orange. For the next two years he cruised the New England coast in search of Spanish and French privateers. In the spring of 1744 Captain Tyng was sent to Annapolis Royal with news of the outbreak of war with France. He returned to Boston on 27 May, carrying 26 women and children refugees, as the Annapolis garrison feared an attack by the French and their Indian allies. In June Tyng set out in search of French privateers off the New England coast. While cruising off Cape Cod he met a French sloop, commanded by Captain Joannis-Galand d’Olobaratz*, and after a 12-hour engagement disabled the smaller vessel and brought it into Boston as a prize. In July he carried reinforcements to Annapolis Royal, breaking the siege of that fortress by Micmac and Malecite Indians. The rest of the year he spent in convoy duty between Boston and the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

On 27 Jan. 1744/45, Captain Tyng was elevated to the command of a new, larger vessel, the Massachusetts. He sailed from Boston on 16 March 1745 as commodore of the colonial flotilla of 13 armed and about 90 transport vessels engaged in the expedition against Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). During this campaign he performed blockade duty and was involved, along with ships commanded by Peter Warren, in the early stages of the chase that led to the capture of the French man-of-war Vigilant, commanded by Alexandre de La Maisonfort Du Boisdecourt. He participated in the destruction of Port-Dauphin (Englishtown, N.S.) and in June went to relieve Annapolis Royal which had been briefly besieged by the French and Indians in May. Tyng was still commanding the Massachusetts in April 1747.

One of the leading American naval officers of the colonial period, Tyng died in Boston on 7 Sept. 1755, after suffering for six years the effects of a paralytic stroke.

Robert L. Wagner

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