Weird Island

17. FORGOTTEN HISTORY: The First Violence of the American Revolution

Episode Summary

History books seem to have forgotten that Rhode Island was responsible for the first bloodshed of the American Revolution. On June 9, 1772, over a year before the Boston Tea Party, Rhode Islanders attacked, boarded, and burned the British HMS Gaspee--sparking the unification of the colonies against the crown.

Episode Notes

Controversy and Opinions on the Gaspee Affair:

Additional Episode Source Material:

Episode Transcription

Hi! I’m Sara, and you’re listening to Weird Island. And this week I’m going really history focused. We’re going back to the years just before the American Revolution. Because Rhode Island claims a historical first that history books have largely forgotten. And as I record this, the anniversary of the event is just around the corner. Today I’ll be telling you about the Gaspee Affair--an event pointed to as the first bloodshed of the American Revolution. Some people call it Rhode Island’s take on the Boston Tea Party--one that happened a year and a half before the Boston event. And very few people, especially those not from Rhode Island have heard about it.
If you’re from Rhode Island, perhaps you’ve been to the annual Gaspee Days events that happen in June in Pawtuxet Village. Each year, the Gaspee Days committee--a nonprofit organization that operates community events in and around Pawtuxet Village--commemorates Rhode Island’s place in American history with fireworks, a blessing of the fleet, a 5K and a parade. The goal of the event is to promote awareness of Rhode Island’s role in the American Revolution--but if you’ve been to the events, enjoyed the parade or watched the fireworks and you’re still not sure exactly what the history is behind the event, you’re probably not alone.
I, for one, didn’t know the story of the HMS Gaspee--though I knew bits and pieces. Like, I knew that there was something about a burning ship and it had to do with the revolution, but that was all. And even as I dug in to figure out the full story, I needed some serious refreshers on American history. So today, I’m going to tell you the story behind the Gaspee Days celebrations, so if you’re planning to check them out this year, you’ll know exactly what they’re about. Here’s the story of the Gaspee Affair. And a little of the events leading up to and following it.
It all started with Molasses, in a way--the goey, sweet substance most famous for its appearances in gingerbread cookies. So unassuming, right? Well, it turns out Molasses has kind of a sticky history when you really get into it. As a kid, I remember learning about the Great Molasses Flood in Boston. It seemed like a made up story. People died, but there was something oddly whimsical and make-believe to it--Just something about a flood of food. And it’s also possible I have that impression because I learned about it through an illustrated children’s book. But I could never figure out why there was a huge tank of molasses sitting around. After all, I thought molasses was something only grandmothers used--to bake cookies now and then. What I only just learned is that molasses is key to making rum. And that tank that burst in Boston in 1919, spilling 2.3MM gallons of molasses into the streets and killing 21 individuals, well it was owned by the US Industrial Alcohol Purity Distilling Company.
And it’s this role molasses plays in the production of rum that made it powerful, because it became extremely valuable. The abundance of molasses in the 1700s gave rise to trade that became the cornerstone of Rhode Island’s economy. In the 1700s, New England colonies (specifically Massachusetts and Rhode Island) were among the leading rum producers in the world. And molasses, produced at sugar plantations in the West Indies, was required to create that rum. But, molasses from the British West Indies was more expensive than molasses from competitors in, say, the French West Indies.
To encourage British colonies like Rhode Island to trade with plantation owners in the British West Indies, Britain enacted the Molasses Act of 1733 which taxed molasses traded between British subjects and non-British islands. However, the act was largely ineffective. It was very poorly enforced, and resulted in smuggling, corruption of local officials, and a general disrespect for British law.
Following the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763 and resulted in Britain gaining control of what were previously French territories in North America, the British crown levied additional taxes on the colonies to recover debts from the war. One such tax was the Sugar Act of 1764, which essentially updated the previous Molasses Act. The Sugar Act reduced the tax on molasses--that’s good news, right?--but on the flipside, enforcement of the act was increased. This seriously regulated the rum trade for the first time, and Rhode Islanders were not happy about it.
There were two elements to the increasing discontent--of course, there would be a severe economic impact, and this was central to the issue. But, there was also the issue of taxation without representation, which Rhode Islander’s felt was in opposition to the colony’s original 1663 charter, which granted Rhode Islander’s the same rights as British citizens born in England. In the 100 years since the charter was put in place, Rhode Island had evolved into a virtually independent state.
This independence led Rhode Islanders to continue to smuggle molasses, even after the Sugar Act was put in place. But this time Britain sent several ships to patrol the Narragansett Bay and enforce the act by seizing smuggled goods and collecting the unpaid taxes.
There were a handful of conflicts between Rhode Islanders and British tax enforcers in the years following. Among these were the conflict between Newport citizens and the captain and crew of the St. John--which was fired upon in 1764. And in 1769, there was another confrontation between Newport citizens and Captain William Reid of the sloop HMS Liberty. Reid took custody of suspected smugglers from CT and brought them to Newport Harbor. The captain of one of the captured vessels argued the claim of smuggling, forcefully taking his possessions and fleeing to shore. As he fled, Reid opened fire on the captain. Newport citizens on shore witnessed the events unfolding, and were enraged. Later that evening, they stormed the HMS Liberty, dumped the ships armaments into the harbor, and cut the ships mooring lines and riggings so it couldn’t be operated. The boat drifted towards Goat Island, where it was set on fire and destroyed. Though a reward was offered up to find those responsible for the act, no one was ever found guilty or punished.
This is all to say that when HMS Gaspee was assigned to patrol Narragansett Bay by King George III in 1772 to enforce the Navigation Acts, Rhode Islanders already had some history with and were primed for conflict with British tax enforcers. The Gaspee was commanded by Lt. William Didingston, who immediately caused public outcry when he seized undeclared rum from the sloop Fortune just a month after his arrival. Believing any seized items left in RI would make their way back into the colonists hands, Dudingston had the ship and the seized rum sent to Boston to be tried. This enraged colonists. After this, Dudingston and his crew became increasingly aggressive in their searches and seizures.
This all led to the events of June 9, 1772. Around noon, local ship captain Benjamin Lindsey left Newport in his sloop, Hannah, bound for Province. When Lindsey refused to lower his ships flag in deference to the Gaspee, Dudingston pursued the ship. Records suggest the HMS Gaspee likely had never traveled up the Bay into the Providence River, and Lindsey, hoping Dudingston and his crew were unfamiliar with the waters, may have lured the HMS Gaspee to run aground on a sandbar at what was just off of what was then called Namquit Point, off the coast of Warwick. This area is now called Gaspee Point.
With the Gaspee stranded on the sandbar, waiting for tides to rise enough to free the ship, Lindsey continued on to Providence to spread the word.
Ephraim Bowen recalled, "a man passed along the main street, beating a drum, and informing the inhabitants of the fact that the Gaspee was aground on Namquit Point, and would not float off until three o'clock the next morning; and inviting those persons who felt a disposition to go and destroy the troublesome vessel."
John Brown, one of the most prominent merchants in RI and member of the famous Brown family, organized a group of men who gathered at Sabin’s Tavern in Pawtuxet to plan their course of attack.
When darkness fell, the band of men rowed 8 longboats towards the ship. Their oars were muffled, and they likely rowed out when the night was darkest to hide their approach. But as they came close, someone called out from the Gaspee. The sentinel was joined by Dudingston, who was wearing only a nightshirt. A young colonist, Joseph Bucklin, grabbed a musket and shot Dudingston--hitting him in the arm and the groin. Thinking himself mortally wounded, Dudingston surrendered the ship. While a doctor among the colonists tended to Dudingston’s wounds and saved his life, the remainder of the colonists boarded and then ransacked the ship and captured the crew, bringing them to land. They then lit the Gaspee on fire, and when the flames reached the powder magazine, the ship exploded, leaving nothing behind.
When King George III received news of the rebellion, he sent a royal proclamation calling for the trial of the guilty colonists in England, with a 500 pound reward for the arrest of each raider, plus 1,000 pound reward for the captain and self-appointed sheriff of the mob. But despite the reward, no one was turned in. None of the colonists were willing to testify against their fellow Rhode Islanders.
That changed when, in early July, a young man named Aaron Briggs, who was either an indentured servant to or enslaved by Samual Thompkins, a farmer on Prudence Island--fled by boat to the British HMS Beaver. Once aboard the Beaver, he confessed that he had unwillingly participated in the attack on the Gaspee, and implicated five men in planning the attack: Simeon Potter, John Brown, Joseph Brown, a Dr. Weeks of Newport and a Richmond of Newport. Despite his testimony before the investigating committee, no one was arrested. Other testimonies were offered up that discredited Briggs’ story, but they don’t necessarily reflect the truth. Today it’s unclear whether or not Briggs participated in the attack, but at the end of the day, no one was ever arrested.
The Gaspee Affair was one of the earliest acts of rebellion in the colonies, and it had a significant impact on the events that followed. Handwritten notes from Thomas Jefferson’s autobiography state that the Gaspee attack started the path of unity, and led to the creation of the permanent Committees of Correspondence to share information between the colonies--a body that eventually became the first Continental Congress. And there were several grievances against King George III included in the Declaration of Independence that were directly attributed to the Gaspee Affair. Of course, the real first battle of the Revolution was at Lexington and Concord in 1775--but many argue the Gaspee Affair was the very first bloodshed between American colonists and the British.
So this event, which gets little coverage in history books, and gets overshadowed by other acts of rebellion like the Boston Tea Party, did have a significant role in the American Revolution.
Today many locals and history buffs feel frustrated about the fact that Rhode Island’s role in this important moment in American history gets overlooked. In a Boston 25 News article, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of RI is characterized as saying that the Gaspee story is a cool story about an extraordinary action. By comparison, the article states, the Massachusetts patriots mustered the courage to push tea off the deck of a British boat more than a year later. You can feel how it’s almost become a competition between the two states for who did it first or who did it best. But when it comes to legacy and how we should feel about these events, I think they both have their place.
And I think it’s worth knowing this story. But the truth is that as I researched the event, I had to grapple a little bit with the story. Because there’s something very appealing about the idea of these rebels rowing out under cover of darkness to take on the big, bad British ship and stand up for their freedom. But, that’s not exactly the whole story.
Remember how I said it all started with the sticky history of molasses and the reaction to those taxes on molasses? Well, that’s true, and it’s more--complicated--than I made it out to be. Because here’s the thing. Rhode Islanders were outraged over the taxes and the impact they had on the local economy--as well as their implications about the rights of the colonies. But, the molasses and the rum that were so foundational to the Rhode Island economy. Well, they were also foundational in the very profitable and problematic Triangle Trade. Rhode Island brought molasses from the West Indies to be made into rum, then brought that rum to Europe... and West Africa, where it was traded for slaves. Those slaves were then brought to the West Indies to work on the sugar plantations where the molasses came from. So, molasses--and Rhode Island--played a significant role in the perpetuation of human slavery. And the Rhode Islanders who organized the Gaspee Attack, well they were largely merchants who were pretty closely tied to the business of slavery as well.
John Brown was a notoriously vocal advocate for slavery--even after it was illegal under the 1794 Slave Trade Act. And he was actually the first person to be tried in court under that law because he continued to participate in the business of slavery after it was illegal. And it makes you ask, “Was preserving the slave economy a central issue motivating the attack?”
And suddenly this event feels like something maybe you would like to gloss over and skip in a history book, especially if you’re trying to avoid dealing with complicated emotions, like guilt or shame--or if you don’t know how to present the story in a balanced and nuanced way that both identifies its important role in the revolution while also calling out those elements of the story that are deeply problematic.
And that’s where I find myself right now, because I am having a very hard time wrapping this up. Was this a fight for liberty? Or was it in defense of slavery? Or was it both? And if it was truly both, what does that even mean?
Some have pointed out that the Sugar Act itself was repealed in 1766, years before the Gaspee Attack, thus the attack could not have been motivated by slavery. And perhaps by the time of this attack, motivations had shifted from the purely economic to the ideological. But it seems apparent that concern over protecting Rhode Island’s economic independence did impact the state’s earliest acts of revolution.
I certainly don’t know what the true motivations were or the right way to handle this kind of morally grey history. But, there are people out there who can do a much better job than I can, and I’m linking some of them in the show notes for you to check out for yourself.
I still think it’s an important part of history, and part of that does include recognizing the involvement of the New England states in slavery. And I recommend checking out the Gaspee Days events--but it’s worth going in with the whole story.
Thanks so much for listening! As always, all episodes are researched and written by me, Sara Corben, and all of my source material is linked in the show notes! If you enjoyed this episode, or if you have thoughts, feel free to write me a note at weird rhode island @ gmail.com. See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island.