The Night They Burned the King's Ship

The Gaspee ran aground on the evening of June 9, 1772, while chasing a Providence packet boat through the shallow waters of Narragansett Bay. By nightfall, word had spread through Providence that the hated revenue schooner was stuck on a sandbar near Warwick, helpless until the next high tide. The opportunity was too obvious to ignore.

Abraham Whipple — sea captain, merchant, and a man with no patience for British customs enforcement — led the party. Eight longboats carrying somewhere between fifty and seventy men rowed down the bay in darkness. The Gaspee's commander, Lieutenant William Dudingston, had made himself thoroughly despised by boarding and seizing colonial vessels, sometimes without proper authority. When the boats approached, a sentry called out. Someone on the boats told Dudingston to surrender. He refused. Someone shot him. The wound was serious but not fatal.

The raiders boarded, removed the crew, and set the ship on fire. By dawn, the Gaspee was gone — burned to the waterline. It was the most dramatic act of resistance to British authority yet seen in the colonies, more than a year before Boston dumped tea into its harbor.

What happened next was arguably more significant than the burning itself. The Crown established a royal commission to investigate and authorized transporting suspects to England for trial. Rhode Island said nothing. Despite rewards, threats, and months of inquiry, not a single person was identified. The entire colony closed ranks. Merchants, tavern-keepers, farmers, dock workers — everyone who must have known something chose to know nothing.

The commission's failure was a lesson in the limits of imperial power. You could send investigators, but you could not make people talk. You could threaten English trials, but you could not find witnesses. The Gaspee burned because Rhode Islanders were angry. The investigation failed because they were united. Both facts mattered for what came next.