Warwick, Rhode Island

[needs_review — scaffold only]

On the night of June 9–10, 1772 — three years before Lexington — a party of Providence and Warwick men rowed out to the grounded British revenue schooner Gaspee, shot its commander Lieutenant William Dudingston, and burned the ship to the waterline. The British inquiry failed to identify the perpetrators, who were protected by local silence. Many historians mark the Gaspee Affair as the first armed act of rebellion against British authority.