Gaspee
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Note: The following article appeared in The Bridge, Newspaper of the
Pawtuxet Village Association, Spring, 2003, p3-5, and is re-presented
here with permission of the author.
NO NEW
TAXES!: Conflicts That Led Up To the Burning of the Gaspee
By Susan Danforth
Curator of Maps & Prints/Assistant
Librarian for Library Operations
The John Carter Brown Library, Brown
University
The burning of the British customs schooner, Gaspee, on the dark and moonless
night of June 9/10, 1772, has been celebrated as America's "first blow
for freedom," pre-dating the outbreak of the American Revolution by
four years. But this event can also be seen as the culmination of
a series of violent maritime encounters between Rhode Islanders and
British law enforcement officials that had roiled the waters of
Narragansett Bay for almost a decade. The primary cause of this
conflict was British determination to collect duties on merchandise
imported into the colony, and to enforce old trade laws that Rhode
Islanders had effectively ignored for decades. At the same time,
Parliament's attempt to levy new taxes enraged the populace even
further. Rhode Islanders perceived these actions as an affront to the
rights granted them by their charter and as a threat to their
traditional trading patterns that, if unchecked, would cause sharp
financial pain to every merchant and consumer in the colony.
The
Rhode Island Charter of 1663
The Rhode Island charter of 1663
granted the inhabitants permission "to hold forth a livelie
experiment," to prove that a civil state allowing liberty of conscience
-- the right to practice whatever religion one chose -- could flourish,
and it guaranteed. Rhode Islanders the same rights as if they had been
born in England. The charter also established a design for colonial
self-government that by 1763 had been in effect for a hundred years
with little interference from the mother country.
The Rhode Island government
was led by a General Assembly, and according to the charter the only
check to its power was that its laws could not go counter to the laws
of England. As the colony matured politically it developed into a
virtually independent state that acknowledged, only when necessary, an
allegiance to the King -- and only the King. Members of the British
Parliament were empowered to represent and tax their constituents, to
be sure, but Rhode Islanders were not their constituents and they
refused to acknowledge Parliament's right to tax them.
Molasses
and Trade
The bulk of Rhode Island's commerce
was with the West Indies and Surinam, a Dutch colony on the coast of
South America. Rhode Island ships carried small quantities of local
cheese, fish, lumber, and horses (the celebrated "Narragansett
pacers"), and larger freights of lumber, beef, fish and flour from
neighboring colonies. At the British and foreign islands in the
Caribbean, the ships took on cargoes of molasses, which was the
cornerstone of the colony's economy. Rhode Islanders focused on the
French islands, taking advantage of lower sugar and molasses prices and
good markets for New England produce. But the planters in the English
West Indies complained bitterly about being undercut, and in 1733,
Parliament enacted the Molasses Act, which placed high duties on sugar
and molasses imported into the colonies from non-British islands.
However, enforcement was lax and haphazard, and colonial merchants
found the law fairly easy to circumvent.
Molasses was traded in
Boston, New York, and Philadelphia for British manufactures, food
supplies, and return cargoes for the West Indies trade and England. It
was distilled into rum used to barter for African slaves and to supply
the fishing and fur trade in North America. And of course, considerable
amounts were consumed at home. In 1764 there were more than thirty
distilleries in Rhode Island and several hundred people were directly
dependent on its production for their livelihood. Rhode Island's
business of making a living, then, depended to a large extent, directly
and indirectly, upon coastal and foreign trade. Molasses was king.
Aftermath
of the French and Indian War (1755-1763)
The French and Indian war saw an
epic struggle between the European powers. Great Britain and France,
for control of resources and territory in North America and the West
Indies. With Britain's victory in 1763 came the acquisition of vast
American territories that necessitated increased revenues for defense
and administration. To this end it was decided to enforce the
navigation laws already on the books (such as the Molasses Act of
1733), to tax the colonies directly, and to use this revenue to
maintain an army to protect British interests in America. The war had
been expensive, and maintaining the peace was going to be expensive as
well. The feeling in London was that those who were being protected by
British troops should contribute toward their upkeep. But the close of
the French and Indian War found Rhode Islanders in the middle of a
serious depression, although Rhode Island had in fact reaped commercial
benefits from the 18th-century conflicts between France and
England. Privateering and illicit trade with the French, the
Dutch, and the buccaneers in the West Indies was often lucrative,
though not without hazard. But, like Great Britain, the colony had
expended its own funds on the long and costly war as well and many
people had been adversely affected. Providence alone lost 65 vessels
between 1756 to 1764, and the struggle with the French put a damper on
trade, particularly in the West Indies. In addition, New England had
suffered long droughts in the summers of 1761 and 1762, with a severe
winter in between. Vigorous enforcement of the old Molasses Act of 1733
threatened to undercut what little trade had been salvaged from the
havoc of war, and merchants, customs officials, and naval officers were
at each other's throats from the very first attempt to force Rhode
Islanders to obey customs regulations on imports from foreign islands.
Confrontation
Begins
Parliament's imposition of new
taxes, the appointment of more determined customs officials, and the
increase in British naval presence in Narragansett Bay were perceived
as challenges to the colony's charter and its independent
spirit. Commissioners of customs tried to put a stop to smuggling
by placing armed vessels in Narragansett Bay and at other places along
the North American coast, from Casco Bay to Cape Henlopen. But the Bay
proved ideal for smuggling and Rhode Islanders displayed unusual
ingenuity, regularly managing to outwit or bribe British revenue
officials at Newport. During one period, Newport
distilleries consumed 12,000 hogsheads of molasses (a hogshead varies,
but is probably the equivalent of about 54 U.S. gallons), only 2,500 of
which had arrived legitimately from British West India islands.
Real trouble began in
January, of 1764, when John Temple, the official responsible for the
enforcement of the trade acts, blustered into Rhode Island from his
headquarters in Boston declaring that he intended to enforce the
Molasses Act of 1733 with the utmost vigor. This was a surprise, since
two months earlier he had implied he would turn the usual blind eye.
The British vessel assigned to Narragansett Bay in 1764 was the
schooner St. John, who made
her presence felt shortly after her arrival by the seizure of the
sloop, Rhoda, from Surinam,
with her cargo of molasses. This incident so enraged Newporters that
they proceeded to fit out an armed sloop with the intention of
destroying the St. John.
Although several rounds were actually fired at the ship, the
presence in the Bay of the British man of war, Squirrel, caused cooler heads to
prevail. Two days later, after sundown, the Rhoda was "got under Sail and
carried off by Persons unknown." A reward was posted for the capture of
the offenders, but there were no takers.
That same year, the Maidstone, a British navy vessel,
aroused the populace by its aggressive impressment tactics (capturing
and forcing Rhode Island seamen into the British navy). The last straw
occurred when a brig entered Newport harbor and had her entire crew
pressed into naval service. That night a mob of about five
hundred seized one of the Maidstone's
boats, paraded it through the town, and set it on fire in front of the
court house.
More
Taxes and a Shaky Non-Importation Agreement
In 1765 the British Parliament
tightened the screws again with the Stamp Act. This was a tax on
commercial and legal documents, pamphlets, newspapers, almanacs,
playing cards, and dice. After a huge outcry by the colonists and their
supporters inside and outside the British government, the tax was
repealed in March of 1766. In that same year, Parliament reduced taxes
on molasses to a penny a gallon, but charged this tax on all molasses
coming into the colonies, whether it's origin was the British Caribbean
or foreign islands. Rhode Island merchants, with their dependence on
molasses, were very unhappy. In 1767, Parliament struck again by
enacting the Townshend Acts, which imposed duties on glass, lead,
painters' colors, tea and paper. That this produced an outcry comes as
no surprise.
In Rhode Island, colonial
theorists, waving the charter of 1663, produced petitions, protests,
constitutional arguments and debates. Newspapers printed patriotic
letters. An article in the Newport
Mercury (January 11, 1768), claimed that the act undercut the
"natural equality" of men and, interestingly enough at this early date,
compared the status of the colonists to "negro slavery." Colonial
pragmatists, on the other hand, supported "non-importation," an
agreement between all the colonies to refuse to buy British goods.
For as long as possible,
Rhode Island merchants put off joining the non-importation agreement
because it would cut so deeply into one of the colony's few means of
support -- trade with the West Indies. In the fall of 1767, however,
they caved in to pressure, but left as many loop-holes as they could.
But by 1769, British goods were still coming into Rhode Island,
although they were turned away at other colonial ports. Boston and New
York threatened to stop doing business with the colony, and New York
eventually instituted a general boycott of Rhode Island trade.
Reluctantly, the merchants were forced to cooperate when they suffered
the loss of coasting trade with the other colonies, and when the
general population began to demand it, as happened in Providence. Early
in 1770, Parliament repealed all the taxes included in the Townshend
Acts, except for that on tea. While the other colonies were determined
to maintain non-importation until all taxes were removed, Rhode Island
merchants were desperate to resume trade, and they did.
Confrontation
Escalates
Charles Dudley, British Collector of
Customs, arrived in Newport in the spring of 1768. Rhode Islanders lost
no time in asserting themselves; they stole molasses from under his
nose and spirited away several seized vessels. In May of 1769, His
Majesty's sloop, Liberty,
Captain Reid commanding, was sent to Newport to aid customs officers in
enforcing trade and customs acts, and he immediately seized a
Providence vessel arriving from the West Indies with an undeclared
cargo of molasses. In mid-July he seized a brig and sloop from
Connecticut, which he insisted had illegal cargo as well. The outraged
captain of one of the seized vessels argued the matter, and the Liberty opened fire as the
Connecticut captain sought to escape in an open boat. Unfortunately for
Reid, this action took place in front of the townspeople of Newport who
lined the wharves. That evening a mob of "persons unknown, chiefly from
Connecticut," removed the Liberty's
crew, cut her loose, drove her ashore, cut her masts, and scuttled her.
The tide took her to Goat Island, where she was set on fire. No arrests
were made in spite of "inquiries" into the matter made by Governor
Wanton. Then, in April of 1771, Collector of Customs, Charles Dudley,
was attacked. The colonists' version of the story stated that he had
boarded a vessel in Newport, alone and at night, and was attacked and
severely beaten by "drunken sailors and lawless seamen," not, of
course, by law-abiding Rhode Islanders.
The
Burning of the Gaspee
So, when H. M. Schooner, Gaspee, Lieutenant Dudingston commander,
arrived in Narragansett Bay in March of 1772, there had already been
considerable "history" in the contest between Rhode Island merchants
and smugglers and British would-be tax enforcers. And Dudingston proved
to be every bit as problematic as Captain Reid of the Liberty had been. His harassment of
general commerce in the Bay caused public outcry, and his seizure and
disposition of cargoes was often outside the law. At noon on June 9,
1772, Benjamin Lindsey left Newport
in his sloop, Hannah, bound
for Providence, and the Gaspee
took up pursuit as far as Namquit Point, when Lindsey feinted and the Gaspee ran aground in low water.
Lindsey continued to Providence, arriving about sunset, and spread the
alarm. In the words of Ephraim Bowen, one of
the participants in the affair, "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 vessell." The invitation was accepted. From here (at least)
the story is most likely familiar to our readers. The boats from
Providence were rowed with muffled oars until they reached the stranded
ship. Dudingston was hailed and told to surrender.
Impatient shots were fired and Dudingston went down with bullet wounds
to his arm and groin. The schooner was boarded and, while a medic was
found to dress the captain's wounds, the Rhode Islanders went through
his papers and sacked the ship. The crew and Dudingston were brought
ashore at the Still-House Cove in Pawtuxet and the schooner was burned
to the waterline.
Governor Wanton again offered a
reward ₤100 for information leading to the conviction of the
perpetrators of this latest blow to British naval power, but no arrests
were made. A commission was called to look into the affair but it
had difficulty getting subpoenaed witnesses to appear before them. The
one weak link in the episode, an indentured servant named Aaron Briggs, who confessed under duress to
being a part of the action, was "proved" a liar by several "reputable"
witnesses. The commission gradually faded away. In
fact, from the time Newporters had fired on His Majesty's vessel St. John, in 1764 to the burning of
the Gaspee in 1772, Rhode
Islanders had never been made accountable for their violent attacks
upon the King's officers and vessels. The colony's government had never
punished or even apprehended anyone connected with these offenses, but
had achieved great success by playing "dumb," and doing all in its
power to exhaust the opposition with delay.
This article is based on the
following publications:
Originally
Posted
to Gaspee Virtual Archives 10/2004
DanforthGaspee.html