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The Gaspee affair was a significant event in the lead-up to the American Revolution. HMS Gaspee was a Royal Navy revenue schooner that enforced the Navigation Acts around Newport, Rhode Island, in 1772. Bartlett: Destruction of the Gaspee – "His Britannic Majesty's Schooner Gaspee." Accessed June 9, 2009. It ran aground in shallow water while chasing the packet boat Hannah on June 9 off Warwick, Rhode Island. A group of men led by Abraham Whipple and John Brown I attacked, boarded, and burned the Gaspee to the waterline. This version of the story is told by Ephraim Bowen and John Mawney in William R. Staples' The Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee. The only other testimony from a contemporary is that of Aaron Biggs (sometimes Briggs), an escaped slave who told a slightly different version of the story. His telling of the events was later discredited, however, when it was found that it had been given under duress. (Bartlett, John Russell. A History of the Destruction of His Britannic Majesty's Schooner Gaspee, in Narragansett Bay, on the 10th of June 1772 (Providence, RI.: A. Crawford Greene, 1861), pp. 84–87). There is also testimony from the crew and officers of the Gaspee, who reported a larger number of attackers and more boats.
The event sharply increased tensions between American colonists and Crown officials, particularly given that it had followed the Boston Massacre in 1770. Crown officials in Rhode Island aimed to increase their control over the colony's legitimate trade and stamp out smuggling in order to increase their revenue from the colony. Concomitantly, Rhode Islanders increasingly protested the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts and other British policies that had interfered with the colony's traditional businesses, which primarily rested on involvement in the Triangular trade.
Along with similar events in Narragansett Bay, the affair marked the first acts of violent uprising against Crown authority in British North America, preceding the Boston Tea Party by more than a year and moving the Thirteen Colonies as a whole toward the coming war for independence.
One policy included deputizing the Royal Navy's officers to enforce customs laws in American ports.See Barrow, Thomas C. Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660–1775 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967) especially page 177. See also Gipson, Lawrence Henry, The British Empire Before the American Revolution, Vol. XII The Triumphant Empire: Britain Sails into the Storm, 1770–1776. (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1965) especially page 26 footnote 79. The Admiralty purchased six Marblehead sloops and schooners and gave them Anglicized French names based on their recent acquisitions in Canada, removing the French accents from St John, St Lawrence, Chaleur, Hope, Magdalen, and Gaspee.
The enforcements became increasingly intrusive and aggressive in Narragansett Bay. Rhode Islanders finally responded by attacking in 1764, and they burned the ship in 1768 on Goat Island in Newport harbor. Warships of the world to 1900, Volume 799, Ships of the World Series:Warships of the World to 1900, Lincoln P. Paine (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000) p. 95 [2]
This overbold move of sending Fortune to Boston brought outrage within the Rhode Island colony, because Duddingston had taken upon himself the authority to determine where the trial should take place concerning this seizure, completely superseding the authority of Governor Wanton by doing so. Furthermore, it was a direct violation of the Rhode Island Royal Charter of 1663 to hold a trial outside of Rhode Island on an arrest that took place within the colony.Samuel Greene Arnold, History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Vol. 2, New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1859.
After this, Duddingston and his crew became increasingly aggressive in their searches, boardings, and seizures, even going so far as to stop merchants who were on shore and force searches of their wares. Public resentment and outrage continued to escalate against Gaspee in particular and against the British in general. A local sheriff threatened Duddingston with arrest, and Admiral John Montagu responded with a letter threatening to hang as pirates anyone who made effort to rescue ships taken by Duddingston during his operations.
On March 21, Rhode Island Deputy Governor Darius Sessions wrote to Governor Wanton regarding Duddingston, and he requested that the basis of Duddingston's authority be examined. In the letter, Sessions includes the opinion of Chief Justice Stephen Hopkins, who argues that "no commander of any vessel has any right to use any authority in the Body of the Colony without previously applying to the Governor and showing his warrant for so doing." Wanton wrote to Duddingston the next day, demanding that he "produce me your commission and instructions, if any you have, which was your duty to have done when you first came within the jurisdiction of this Colony."Staples (1845), p. 4. Duddingston returned a rude reply to the Governor, refusing to leave his ship or to acknowledge Wanton's elected authority within Rhode Island.
A few days after being forced off the ship, Duddingston was arrested by a sheriff for an earlier seizure of colonial cargo. His commanding officer Montagu freed him by paying his fine and then promptly sent him back to England to face a court-martial on the incident.
Joseph Bucklin was the man who shot Duddingston; other men who participated included Brown's brother Joseph of Providence, Simeon Potter of Bristol, and Robert Wickes of Warwick.Staples (1845)
But in 1772, the Admiralty would not ignore the destruction of one of its military vessels on station. The American Department consulted the solicitor and attorneys general, who investigated and advised the Privy Council on the legal and constitutional options available. This included charges of arson in royal dockyards but the idea was dismissed as not legally credible, as Gaspee was not in a dockyard when it was burned. The Crown turned to a centuries-old institution of investigation: the Royal commission of Inquiry, made up of the chiefs of the supreme courts of Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey, the judge of the vice-admiralty of Boston, and Rhode Island Governor Wanton.
The Dockyard Act passed in April demanded that anyone suspected of burning British ships should be extradited and tried in England; however, the Gaspee raiders were charged with treason.Edward Thurlow and Alexander Wedderburn (the attorney and solicitor general) wrote to the Earl of Hillsborough on August 10, 1772, dismissing the Dockyard Act and demanding the charge of high treason instead for levying war against the king. National Archives (Public Record Office, United Kingdom) CO (Colonial Office Records) 5 159 folder 26. The task of the commission was to determine which colonists had sufficient evidence against them to warrant shipping them to England for trial. The commission was unable to obtain sufficient evidence and declared their inability to deal with the case.
The Reverend John Allen preached a sermon at the Second Baptist Church in Boston which utilized the Gaspee affair to warn listeners about greedy monarchs, corrupt judges, and conspiracies in the London government. This sermon was printed seven different times in four colonial cities, becoming one of the most popular pamphlets of Colonial America.G. Jack Gravelee and James R. Irvine, eds. Pamphlets and the American Revolution: Rhetoric, Politics, Literature, and the Popular Press (Delmare, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1976), viii. This pamphlet and editorials by numerous colonial newspaper editors awoke colonial Whigs from a lull of inactivity in 1772, thus inaugurating a series of conflicts that culminated in the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Admiral Montagu wrote to Governor Wanton on July 8, nearly a month after the burning of the schooner, and utilized the account of Aaron Briggs, an indentured servant claiming to have participated in the June 9 burning. Montagu identified five Rhode Islanders, in varying levels of detail, whom he wanted Wanton to investigate and bring to justice: John Brown I, Joseph Brown, Simeon Potter, Dr. Weeks, and Richmond.Staples (1845), p. 17.
Governor Wanton responded to this demand by examining the claims made by Aaron Briggs. Samuel Tompkins and Samuel Thurston, the proprietors of the Prudence Island farm where Briggs worked, gave testimony challenging his account of June 9. Both men stated that Briggs had been present at work the evening of June 9 and early in the morning on June 10. Additionally, Wanton received further evidence from two other indentured servants working with Briggs, and both stated that Briggs had been present throughout the night in question. Thus, Wanton believed that Briggs was no more than an imposter. Duddingston and Montagu challenged Wanton's assertions, Montagu saying that "it is clear to me from many corroborating circumstances, that he is no imposter."Staples (1845), pp. 17–20.
Historian Joey La Neve DeFrancesco argued that the Gaspee affair resulted from the desire of the colonial elite in Rhode Island to protect their involvement in the Triangular trade, which formed the backbone of the colony's economy. DeFrancesco noted that British regulations had threatened the ability of Rhode Island merchants, many of whom participated in the attack on the Gaspee, to profit from slavery and the industries which were dependent on the slave trade, such as the rum and molasses trades. DeFrancesco wrote that the colonists' "supposed fight for liberty was in fact a fight for the freedom to profit from the business of slavery", and claimed that celebrations of the incident in Rhode Island represent "New England’s historical amnesia on slavery."
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