The Gaspee Affair

The Gaspee Affair was a key moment leading up to the American Revolution. In 1772, the HMS Gaspee, a Royal Navy revenue schooner enforcing the Navigation Acts near Newport, Rhode Island, ran aground in shallow waters while pursuing the packet boat Hannah on June 9 off Warwick. The Gaspee was pursuing the Hanna, an American smuggling ship, when it ran aground off Namquit Point in Providence’s Narragansett Bay on June 9th. That evening, John Brown, an American merchant angered by high British taxes on his goods, rowed out to the Gaspee with a number of other colonists, including Abraham Whipple, and seized control of the ship. After leading away its crew…they weren’t murderers, after all, the Americans set the Gaspee afire and burned the Gaspee down to the waterline.

The event greatly heightened tensions between American colonists and Crown officials, especially since it came on the heels of the Boston Massacre in 1770. In Rhode Island, Crown officials sought to tighten control over legitimate trade and crack down on smuggling to boost revenue from the colony. At the same time, Rhode Islanders grew more vocal in opposing the Townshend Acts and other British policies that disrupted the colony’s traditional businesses, many of which were tied to the triangular slave trade. Along with similar incidents in Narragansett Bay, the event marked one of the first violent uprisings against Crown authority in British North America, taking place over a year before the Boston Tea Party and pushing the Thirteen Colonies closer to the war for independence. The British Customs service had a history of facing strong resistance in the Thirteen Colonies in the 18th century. Britain was at war during much of this period and was not in a strategic position to risk antagonizing its overseas colonies.

When British officials attempted to prosecute the colonists involved in the so-called “Gaspee Affair,” they found no Americans willing to testify against their countrymen. It’s hard to prosecute people when no one will witness against the accused. The problem the British faced was that the Americans were done being told what to do, and so they were rebelling at every turn. Of course, this renewed the tension in British American relations and inspired the Boston Patriots to found the “Committee of Correspondence,” a propaganda group that rallied Americans to their cause by publicizing all anti-British activity that occurred throughout the 13 colonies. This further rebellion was quickly setting the stage for the Revolutionary War, which the British would inevitably lose.