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The history of Rhode Island is truly remarkable. The Story of Rhode Island is my humble attempt to tell you some of the stories about the people, places, and events that have made Rhode Island the state it is today.
To learn more about the show visit the Story of Rhode Island Podcast website at https://www.storyofrhodeisland.com/
It was the night of June 9th, 1772 when eight longboats departed the shores of Providence and slipped silently into the darkness of Narragansett Bay, beginning a five and a half mile journey south that would rouse a continent from a revolutionary slumber.
With muskets in hand, the men rowed their way south towards a British naval vessel that had run aground off the coast of Warwick — and they had no intention of just asking it to leave.
Over the past several months, the American Revolution that once ran so hot had cooled - protests stalled, leading patriots had gone silent, And it was beginning to look as though the colonies might never push back again.
But that was about to change.
By sunrise, the men in those rowboats would complete their mission — and the revolution that had grown so cold would once again be reignited.
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Rhode Island and Great Britain had been on a collision course long before the events of that fateful night — and it started with trade.
Throughout the first half of the 1700s, Britain and its American colonies had operated under an unspoken agreement.
Parliament would pass trade laws, that while strict on paper, were largely ignored by the American colonists. Whether it was taxes on imports going uncollected or trade restrictions with foreign nations exploited by loopholes, it was as if the laws didn’t exist.
And no colony took more advantage of this than Rhode Island.
With customs collectors based in England delegating their work to underpaid deputies, Rhode Islanders had no problem using bribes to bypass paying taxes.
And when it came to trading with the enemy — they were just as brazen.
Even while England was at war with France, Rhode Island merchants continued to trade freely with French Caribbean islands — exploiting a loophole called the “flag of truce”, which allowed colonial vessels to enter enemy ports under the pretense of exchanging prisoners. Some ships didn’t even bother with real prisoners and simply labeled French-speaking individuals as captives to satisfy the paperwork.
And at the center of this illicit trade was Rhode Island’s most valuable import, a commodity so cherished it was known as black gold — molasses.
Rhode Island’s thirty-two distilleries used molasses to produce rum. And That rum was the preferred drink of slavers on the coast of Africa, enabling Rhode Islanders to purchase enslaved men and women in large quantities. Those people were then sold in the Caribbean, where molasses was once again purchased to produce more rum. Although brutal it was an extraordinarily profitable cycle — and Rhode Island was able to participate in it largely because of molasses imported from outside of British-controlled islands. The Molasses Act of 1733 was meant to place a heavy tax on those imports but It was so widely ignored that by the mid-18th century, five-sixths of the molasses flowing into Rhode Island was smuggled in illegally from Dutch, French, and Spanish Caribbean islands.
And so This was the world Rhode Islanders had built for themselves. And it worked — or at least it did until Parliament decided it didn’t.
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In 1764, Great Britain, heavily in debt from the French and Indian War, decided it was time for a change.
One of their first measures was establishing a new Sugar Act that would actually be enforced. New customs officials arrived with real authority, Navy ships began patrolling colonial waters, and cases could now be tried in admiralty courts located all in Nova Scotia.
With the Americans feeling the weight of the British Empire pressing down on them they began to protest and before long the American Revolution was in full force.
And Standing at the forefront of that movement, often protesting sooner and more intensely than anyone else, was Rhode Island, a feisty little colony that stood to lose more than anyone from the British government’s new stance on trade.
Their revolt started In the summer of 1764, when colonists at a battery on Goat Island fired at a British naval vessel called the St. John. One of their shots even cut right through the vessel’s mainsail.
Think about that - over a decade before Lexington and concord, Rhode Islanders were already taking up arms against the British.
Then, later that year, Governor Stephen Hopkins published a pamphlet called The Rights of Colonies Examined — one of the earliest American arguments for a principle that would soon echo across the continent: no taxation without representation.
The following year, Newport exploded over the Stamp Act. Colonists destroyed loyalist property, hung tax collectors in effigy, and forced anyone who tried to enforce the tax to resign.
And to wrap up the decade they burned a royal vessel called the Liberty in 1769.
So as we’ve seen, from the jump Rhode Island was making it clear that no one — not even the most powerful government in the world — was going to dismantle their highly profitable trade.
But then, seemingly out of nowhere, something odd happened - The momentum of the American Revolution came to a halt.
In April of 1770, Parliament repealed most of the Townshend Acts and the British government turned its attention elsewhere. Before long, the protest quieted and a fragile calm settled across the colonies.
For the next couple of years it appeared, at least on the surface, as though the calamity might stop short of war and that the revolution might just fizzle out completely.
But then, in January of 1772 the ingredients for revolution once again began coming together. This time it came in the form of a British schooner named the Gaspee.
Patrolling Narragansett Bay like a hawk, the vessel was commanded by Lieutenant William Dudingston, a man who took his job a bit too seriously. In his early thirties, the Gaspee was his very first command and he saw the position as an opportunity to prove himself. Unfortunately, that decision would end up backfiring on him.
Almost immediately, Dudingston and his crew became infamous throughout the region. They stopped nearly every vessel they encountered, seized cargo without justification, and were accused of stealing livestock and firewood from local farmers.
Then in February of 1772, the Gaspee made its boldest move yet — seizing an entire shipment of goods belonging to the well-connected Greene family, including twelve hogsheads of West India rum, Jamaica spirits, and brown sugar.
Rhode Island’s merchant community was furious.
Governor Joseph Wanton fired off a letter to Dudingston demanding to see his naval orders. Until those orders were produced and verified, Wanton argued, Dudingston had no legal authority to patrol the bay. For all anyone knew, he could be a pirate — a claim that was more legal leverage than literal accusation, but one that set the tone for everything that followed.
Admiral John Montagu (Mon-ta-gue) Dudingston’s superior, responded with barely concealed contempt. He made clear he had no interest in Rhode Island’s complaints, that he was pleased with Dudingston’s disruptions to their illicit trade, and that anyone who interfered with a Gaspee seizure would be hanged as a pirate. He specifically warned that the local sheriff had no business setting foot aboard any of His Majesty’s vessels.
Wanton’s reply was immediate and direct. He informed Montagu that he would send the sheriff wherever and whenever he pleased.
Tensions continued to rise over the ensuing months and by the summer, the two sides were locked in open confrontation. With the stage set, all that was needed now was a spark.
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When captain Benjamin Lindsey set sail in his packet boat the Hannah on the afternoon of June 9th 1772, he had no idea what he was about to set in motion.
While making his way north toward Providence, Lindsey was spotted by Dudingston and a chase between the Hannah and the Gaspee ensued.
Dudingston commanded the faster vessel and was gaining ground fast. But Lindsey knew these waters far better than his pursuer — and he had a plan.
That plan led him to this very spot — a stretch of shallow water off the coast of Warwick that Rhode Islanders knew as Namquid Point. Sailing with little to no cargo, the Hannah rode higher in the water than the Gaspee. Lindsey steered her straight through the shallows and The Gaspee took the bait — running hard aground almost instantly.
Dudingston’s crew worked for hours trying to free the vessel but They couldn’t, leaving the most despised ship in Rhode Island helplessly stranded in the bay.
When Lindsey reached Providence, he tied up at Fenner’s Wharf and reported what had happened to his employer — a wealthy merchant and one of Rhode Island’s most influential individuals — John Brown.
Brown moved quickly.
He called for eight longboats and eighty oarsmen, to assemble at Fenner’s Wharf. He put his employee Abraham Whipple — a thirty-nine year old accomplished seaman — in charge of the operation. Across town, a man named Daniel Pearce walked along Main Street beating a drum, calling the men to gather at Sabin’s Tavern. No written record survives of exactly what was said inside. But when the men departed around ten o’clock, there was no doubt where they were headed.
Then, After rowing south roughly five and a half miles, they reached Namquid Point just after midnight on June 10th.
Meanwhile, Still sitting helplessly in the shallows, with nobody to turn to for help, was the Gaspee.
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At 12:45 in the morning, the Gaspee’s deck sentinel spotted the approaching longboats and called out for them to identify themselves.
When the order was ignored, Dudingston went on deck in his nightshirt and repeated the demand.
Unpleased by the order, Abraham Whipple shouted back. “I am sheriff of the county of Kent, God damn you. I have a warrant to apprehend you, God damn you.”
Dudingston replied, telling Whipple to return at a more appropriate hour, But The Rhode Islanders had other plans.
When they moved to board the vessel, Dudingston drew his sword, struck one of the men, and called all hands on deck. The raiders responded with three cheers — and then both sides opened fire.
In the exchange, Dudingston was shot in the left arm and groin.
A minute later, the Rhode Islanders boarded without further opposition. And With the Gaspee’s commander down, the crew surrendered.
Dudingston’s wounds were eventually tended to — but only after the men spent about 30 minutes securing their boats.
Then Dudingston and his crew were herded into the longboats, and the Gaspee was set on fire.
When the flames reached the powder magazine buried deep in the hull, the Gaspee exploded, sending a blast through the night that echoed deep into Rhode Island’s coastal towns.
With flames from the explosion still burning in the bay, the Rhode Islanders slipped back into the darkness unnoticed and made their way back home.. But what came next would prove to be far more explosive than anything that happened on the water that night.
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News of the incident spread quickly, reaching Boston the same day.
To save face, Governor Wanton posted a reward of one hundred pounds sterling for anyone who could identify the perpetrators. The British government, deeply skeptical that Rhode Island would make any meaningful effort to catch the criminals, offered its own reward — five hundred pounds for information leading to the arrest of any participant, and another five hundred for the man who had led the raid. They made one thing unmistakably clear: the ringleaders would not be pardoned. If caught, they would be tried for high treason.
Then a witness came forward.
Aaron Biggs was eighteen years old, described as Black or partially indigenous, and from Prudence Island. He claimed to have witnessed the raid firsthand — and named John Brown as one of the men involved. Speaking against one of the most powerful men in Rhode Island was an extremely daring act — and Biggs knew it. He immediately fled to the British Navy for protection.
Governor Wanton’s response was to gather affidavits from four separate witnesses to discredit him.
It was exactly the kind of response the British government had expected. And so the Privy Council decided that if there were to be any chance of justice, they would have to take matters into their own hands.
They did so by establishing a Royal Commission of Inquiry — and made clear that the men responsible could be seized, removed from their home colony, and tried for high treason on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Three thousand miles from their families, their neighbors, and any jury that might know their name.
In reality, the British government couldn’t remove a single colonist to England for trial without the consent of the Rhode Island governor — something that was about as likely as Dudingston receiving a hero's welcome in Providence. But that didn't matter - The threat alone was enough.
The colonists saw it as a direct threat to their rights as Englishmen and it would use it as fuel to once again set the colonies on fire.
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To the colonists, the threat of a trial in England wasn't just an inconvenience. It was an attack on one of the most sacred rights they possessed as Englishmen — the right to face a jury of one's peers.
It was a right guaranteed by the Magna Carta, explicitly written into Rhode Island's own charter, And reaffirmed as recently as 1769, when Rhode Island endorsed the Virginia Resolves, which stated that all treason trials ought to be held within the colony where the crime occurred.
But Now they believed Britain was threatening to strip that right away — not just from the men who burned the Gaspee, but from any colonist, anywhere, at any time.
The response was as immediate as it was fierce.
The Providence Gazette and the Newport Mercury hammered the point relentlessly. As did other colonial newspapers up and down the eastern seaboard, causing the story to spread like wildfire.
And just like that The quiet that had settled over the colonies for the past two years evaporated almost overnight. The patriot cause — dormant, drifting, cooling — was suddenly alive again.
Then, that passion grew even greater when the leading voices of the movement began to pour fuel on the fire.
Samuel Adams called the commission a court of inquisition — a Star Chamber transplanted into the heart of America. He reminded his fellow colonists that an attack upon the liberties of one colony was an attack upon the liberties of all.
Richard Henry Lee was so alarmed by what he was hearing that it initiated him to start a direct correspondence with Adams so that he could gather more details about what was unfolding in Rhode Island.
Britain had intended the commission to bring order. But Instead it had handed the patriots exactly what they needed — proof that the Crown was willing to dismantle the very foundations of colonial liberty.
And the colonies responded with a unity that hadn't been seen since the Stamp Act crisis.
That collective outrage demanded action. In March of 1773, the Virginia House of Burgesses established a standing intercolonial committee of correspondence — a permanent network through which colonies could monitor Parliament and coordinate their response. Other colonies followed. For the first time, the American colonies had the communication infrastructure they needed to act as one.
The Royal Commission Britain dispatched to find the perpetrators, meanwhile, never stood a chance. Witnesses refused to talk. Rhode Island's wall of silence held completely. By the time the commission submitted its final report with no arrests and no convictions, it almost didn't matter. The damage was already done.
The revolution Britain had tried to suppress with a royal inquiry was back — and louder than ever. And it would continue to burn right up until a British regiment and American militia opened fire on each other in the town of Lexington, Massachusetts.
And so perhaps that’s the true legacy of the Gaspee affair. Not just that a group of Rhode Islanders had the audacity to board a Royal Navy vessel and burn it to the waterline — though that alone was an act of defiance worth noting. It was that Britain's response reaffirmed to the colonists that the British government was attempting to strip them of their rights, something they initially learned through taxation.
Samuel Adams, a man who always felt the embers of revolution in his soul, captured it best — writing that the Gaspee commission had awakened American colonies that had too long been dozing on the brink of ruin. Thomas Jefferson, looking back on it all years later, called the events surrounding the Gaspee the catalyst that finally lifted the colonists from their lull.
And when Americans saw that — really saw it — there was no going back.
All it took was one stranded schooner, eight longboats full of Rhode Island patriots, and a government that once again underestimated the people it ruled — to reignite a revolution that would change the world forever.