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Gaspee

Gaspee , British revenue cutter, burned (June 10, 1772) at Namquit (now Gaspee) Point in the present-day city of Warwick on the western shore of Narragansett Bay, R.I. The vessel arrived in Mar., 1772, to enforce the revenue laws in an area where virtually the whole citizenry was engaged in smuggling, and her presence was decidedly unwelcome. Her commander, Lieutenant Dudingston, provoked the navigators of the bay further by the manner in which he carried out his duties. On June 9, 1772, the Gaspee was lured aground c.7 mi (11 km) S of Providence while giving chase to a suspect. A group of prominent Providence men, including John Brown and Joseph Bucklin, decided to burn the ship, and Capt. Abraham Whipple led the raiders. They boarded the Gaspee, wounded the commander, captured the crew, and then burned the vessel at the water's edge. Gov. Joseph Wanton, in the difficult position of having to enforce British regulations without offending his constituents (Rhode Island elected its own governor), admirably solved the problem by issuing proclamations for the arrest of the officially unknown offenders and then doing virtually nothing about them. Despite a large reward offered by the British, the names of the men involved, though well known in Providence, were not revealed until after the outbreak of the American Revolution. The incident was one of the most famous colonial acts of defiance in the troubled years before independence.

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	Warwick Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition ...was nearly destroyed (1676) in King Philip's War . Gaspee Point, S of Pawtuxet, was the scene of the burning of the British revenue cutter Gaspee in 1772; annual Gaspee Days commemorate the event. Warwick has a very large... Read more
	Warwick: Recreation Encyclopedia entry from: Cities of the United States ...historic Pawtuxet Village is the oldest in New England and was home to the rabble-rousers who burned the British customs ship, The Gaspee, at the start of the American Revolutionary War. Pawtuxet also served as a stop on the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves... Read more
	Abraham Whipple Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition ...captured numerous prizes. Whipple commanded the party of Rhode Islanders that captured and burned the British revenue cutter Gaspee in Narragansett Bay in 1772, one of the most provocative instances of resistance to the British in the pre-Revolutionary period... Read more
	Committees of Correspondence Book article from: American Eras ...long for a new crisis to emerge. Tension mounted following the Gaspee incident of 9 June 1772, when inhabitants of Providence, Rhode...intercolonial. While House members discussed the fallout of the Gaspee incident, Thomas Jefferson remembered that “ We were... Read more
	Narragansett Bay Dictionary entry from: Dictionary of American History ...goods such as molasses, was the site of several key confrontations between the colonists and British officials. In 1772 HMS Gaspee, charged with pursuing colonial smugglers, was burned to the waterline. BIBLIOGRAPHY Daniels, Bruce Colin. Dissent and Conformity... Read more

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