The so-called “March to the American Revolution” comprised many more events than just the Stamp Act Riots, the Boston Massacre, and the Tea Crisis.
The Gaspee Affair is one we often overlook, but it played an essential and direct role in the events needed to draw the thirteen rebellious British North American colonies into a union of coordinated response.
Between the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773 — a period historians refer to as “the lull” — a group of prominent Rhode Islanders rowed out to His Majesty’s schooner Gaspee, which had run aground six miles south of Providence while on an anti-smuggling patrol.
After threatening and shooting its commanding officer, the raiders looted the vessel and burned it to the waterline. Despite colony-wide sympathy for the June 1772 raid, neither the government in Providence nor authorities in London could let this pass without a response.
As a result, a Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by Rhode Island governor Joseph Wanton zealously investigated the incident.
In The Burning of His Majesty’s Schooner Gaspee: An Attack on Crown Rule Before the American Revolution (Westholme Publishing, 2016), historian Steven Park revealed that what started out as a customs battle over the seizure of a prominent citizen’s rum was soon transformed into the spark that re-ignited Patriot fervor.
The significance of the raid was underscored by a fiery Thanksgiving Day sermon given by a little-known Baptist minister in Boston. His inflammatory message was reprinted in several colonies and was one of the most successful pamphlets of the pre-Independence period.
The commission turned out to be essentially a sham and made the administration in London look weak and ineffective.
And in the wake of the Gaspee affair, Committees of Correspondence soon formed in all but one of the original thirteen colonies, and later East India Company tea would be defiantly dumped into Boston Harbor.
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World’s podcast, historian Adrian Weimer leads listeners on an investigation of the Gaspee Affair.
You can listen to the podcast here.
Ben Franklin’s World is an award-winning podcast. It’s for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our world. Each episode features an interview with a historian who shares their unique insights into our early American past. It is a production of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios.
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Illustration: Gaspee Affair painting by Kipp Soldwedel.
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