Gaspee, The Sooner Schooner

Gaspee, The Sooner Schooner

 

Calling all Patriots!

 

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It’s time to ready your horses and sharpen your swords!

 

We call on the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to cease and desist all official communications proclaiming that the Boston Tea Party was the event that “started the American Revolution.”

 

We further demand that all official publications of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts be further instructed to reflect the fact that the dramatic “Burning of the Gaspee”, that took place on June 9-10, 1772, more than a full year-and-a-half before the merry pranksters from Massachusetts boarded the “Dartmouth”, a commercial vessel, and dumped some tea into the Boston Harbor (history is silent as to whether either of the accompanying boats (the “Beaver” and the “Eleanor”) had any crumpets on board), was the catalyst that catapulted the colonists into the War for Independence.

 

If the Honorable Governor, and if needed, an act of the Massachusetts General Court, do not provide such relief to the State of Rhode Island, then we shall be forced to deploy our militia, the Pawtuxet Rangers, to be accompanied by a full battalion of historians and lawyers, to secure such relief.

 

For too long, the State of Massachusetts has reaped billions of dollars in tourism money, proclaiming that the American Revolution started on the fateful night of December 16, 1773, more than 18 months after the daring Gaspee raid.

 

In fact, they are so brazen that the official Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum proclaims that visitors can “Re-enact the event that started a Revolution” and was “the single most important event leading up to the American Revolution.”

 

Rhode Island Historian Laureate Emeritus Dr. Patrick Conley described the Gaspee's significance in his booklet “Rhode Island’s Contribution to the Formation of the United States,” and in various periodicals as an event that Rhode Island calls (correctly) “the first blow for freedom.”  “On that evening (June 9, 1772), eight 12-man longboats led by Abraham Whipple rowed from Providence, and another came from Bristol under Simeon Potter to attack an armed customs schooner named the Gaspee.  That ship had run aground on a sandbar off the shore of the town of Warwick, about 6 miles south of Providence. There, the Gaspee raiders seized the English naval vessel, shot its commander, William Dudington, in the groin when he attempted to resist, removed the crew, and burned the vessel to the waterline – a daring attack on His Majesty’s Navy.”

 

Conley called the much later Boston Tea Party, or the dumping of 340 casks of tea into the Boston harbor, “far more famous, but far less bold than the burning of the Gaspee.”

 

For those national historians who ignore the significance of the Gaspee as a major catalyst for the armed rebellion, calling the latter Boston Tea Party the “spark”, Conley offered the following comparison.  “An attack in Narragansett Bay on June 9, 1772 by sailors in multiple longboats against a British naval vessel wherein the attackers at night seized the ship, burned and sank it, wounded the commander, and took the crew captive to protest acts against smuggling versus an evening attack 18 months later wherein a band of drunkards, some disguised as Native Americans, dumped casks of tea into Boston Harbor to protest the tax on that product.”

 

But Rhode Island, being who we are, could not help but join in the fun. In typical Rhode Island style, according to Conley, “on March 2, 1775, Providence had its own tea party by burning 300 pounds of that valuable leaf in its Market Square. Then on May 4, 1776, Rhode Island became the first colony to formally renounce allegiance to King George III – an act we now celebrate (with a little hyperbole) as Rhode Island Independence Day, or, in modern parlance, “No King’s Day.”  On July 19, we ratified the Declaration of Independence.

 

The word is spreading, and it certainly caught the attention of former State Democratic Party Chairman and State Representative Joseph McNamara, who resides in the Pawtuxet Village area.  He remarked, “The only reason that the Boston Harbor incident is so well recorded in our history is that most of our United States history books were published in Boston.  The burning of the Gaspee was a highly coordinated attack on a British revenue schooner.

It required coordination from the east and west bays of the Providence River.  Well-armed raiders apprehended the HMS Gaspee that had run aground on what was then known as Namquid Point in Warwick.  The action definitely fits the definition of “an act of war.”

“The Boston Tea Party was much closer to a fraternity prank than an act of war. 

 

There is no doubt that history is on our side.

 

As we approach our Nation's Semiquincentennial (the 250th Anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence), the time is now to join together (there have been efforts in the past) to “set the record straight.”

 

We are Rhode Islanders; therefore, we love to have a little fun and fight when there is no other course.

 

God knows we have knowledgeable historians who can help us in this crusade, and the Pawtuxet Rangers are standing ready to lead the charge.

 

In the words of Colonel Ron Barnes, former Commander of the Rangers and member of the Rhode Island 250th Commission, “the road to the Revolution started here in the Pawtuxet Village.  The Gaspee raiders did not disguise themselves and worry about tea.  They shot the captain of His Majesty’s ship in the groin, captured his crew, then set the ship ablaze – a year and a half prior to the tea party.  Lt. Dudington truly suffered the first bloodshed of our fight for Independence.”

 

The Boston Tea Party kept the pot brewing after the burning of the Gaspee had set the fire under it as the first spark that ignited the Revolution.

 

Let’s make sure the nation is reminded of the true course of events.

 

Rhode Island deserves its rightful place in our nation’s history.