HMS Gaspée (1763)

Gaspee Affair
Part of the events in the lead-up to the American Revolutionary War
Burning of HMS Gaspee
Date June 9, 1772 Location Near Gaspee Point, Warwick, Rhode Island Result American victory
Belligerents
Sons of Liberty	Kingdom of Great Britain
Commanders and leaders
Abraham Whipple John Brown	William Dudingston +
Casualties and losses
None	HMS Gaspee captured and burned

The Gaspee Affair was a very significant event in the lead-up to the American Revolution. HMS Gaspee was a British customs schooner that had been enforcing the Navigation Acts in and around Newport, Rhode Island in 1772. It ran aground in shallow water while chasing the packet ship Hannah on June 9 near what is now known as Gaspee Point in Warwick, Rhode Island. A group of men led by Abraham Whipple and John Brown attacked, boarded, and torched the ship.

The event increased hostilities between the American colonists and British officials, following the Boston Massacre in 1770. The British had hoped to reduce tensions with the colonies by repealing some aspects of the Townshend Acts and working to end the American boycott of British goods. British officials in Rhode Island wanted to increase their control over the trade that had defined the small colony—legitimate trade as well as smuggling—in order to increase their revenue from the colony. But Colonists increasingly began to protest the Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, and other British impositions that had clashed with the colony’s history of rum manufacturing, maritime trade, and slave trading.

This event marked the first act of violent uprising against the authority of the British crown in America, preceding the Boston tea party by more than a year and moving the Colonies as a whole toward the war for independence.

The customs service had a violent history in Britain’s North American colonies in the eighteenth century. The Treasury in London did little to correct known problems, and Britain itself was at war during much of this period and was not in a strategic position to risk antagonizing its overseas colonies. Several successive ministries implemented reforms following Britain’s victory in the Seven Years' War in an attempt to achieve more effective administrative control and to raise more revenue in the colonies.

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