Gaspee Affair Dbq

BOOM! CRASH! Those are the sounds the colonists loved hearing when fighting for freedom against the British. The colonists were very active in fighting for freedom during the colonial times. One of those events was the Gaspee Affair, also known as the The Burning of the Gaspee. The Gaspee Affair was one of many signs to King George and Parliament that they needed to do something about the colonies before the colonies could strike against England. The colonists were slowly becoming aggravated with Parliament. The Gaspee Affair was evidence of the colonists frustration with King George and Parliament.
The HMS Gaspee was a schooner warship; a sailing ship with two or more masts, typically with the foremast smaller than the mainmast, and having

gaff-rigged lower masts (Schooner). Schooner ships were only supposed to carry up to twenty-five men but the HMS Gaspee carried more than thirty men.The commander of the ship was Scottish Lieutenant William Dudingston. Dudingston was around the age of thirty to forty while commanding the ship.Through the one hundred six months of existence the HMS Gaspee had over two hundred forty-two men assigned to the Gaspee one time or another (Crew). Out of two hundred thirty-four men, over one hundred forty-two abandoned the ship and eight of those men died (Crew). Some men who abandoned the ship were fishermen who were abducted from their dockyards or from other ships and were forced without say of HMS Gaspee. Others were probably starving and looking for work and bored the Gaspee temporarily (Crew). Some even bored to run away from things in their lives such as wives, ex lovers, debts and the law (Crew). Most men were least likely to stay when the light at the end of the escape tunnel was there. One escape strategy was getting a ticket to go somewhere else, possibly trying to leave Europe to new possibilities in the New World. After escaping the men did not have to worry about being recaptured because, the land so was too large for most search parties. Lieutenant Dudingston decided to take the first man he saw that could work on the ship then waste his time looking for the missing. Most men who escaped, either ended up on other ships most likely getting paid more, or stayed in America and became part of the American society.
The HMS Gaspee was stationed in Newport Harbor in Rhode Island by the British Government .

The men on the ship we ordered to collect taxes at gunpoint from every ship that entered the harbor (Woman). Over half of the ships in Rhode Island had smuggle tea onboard, putting every ship in danger (Woman). The bay had many nooks and crannies that allowed cover for the seamen determined to destroy Britain’s Acts of Trade Navigation (Woman). In February 1772, the Gaspee sailed into Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay to help in the enforcement of customs collection and and the inspection of cargo (Woman). Rhode Island was known for smuggling with the enemy of the British during wartime and Dudingston and his men quickly irritated dominate merchant interests in the small colony (Woman). Dudingston immediately stopped and took away one of the packet sloop ships owned by the dominate Greene family of East Greenwich, and he and his crew beat the packet’s sloop commander, Rufus Greene (Woman). Dudingston then made the sloop and her cargo as a prize of customs enforcement, and sent the sloop to Boston to be sold by the Admiralty there (Woman). This infuriated the colonists in Rhode Island (Woman). The Gaspee men were even ordered to take goods from farmers without permission (Woman). When the news of these incidents got to the Governor of Rhode Island, Joseph Wanton, Wanton called for a meeting with Dudingston, but Dudingston refused to show (Woman). Instead Dudingston continued his game of

disrupting commerce throughout the Narragansett Bay (Woman). He chased every ship, from the large merchantmen to the small traders and fishermen, and continued to provoke the colonists (Woman).
Under the command of Captain Benjamin Lindsay, the packet sloop Hannah had properly passed the customs inspection at Newport, but Dudingston felt something was off and gave the okay to his men to chase Hannah (Woman). Lindsay purposely lead the Gaspee across the shallows off Namquid Point (Woman). As the Gaspee chased the Hannah, the Gaspee got caught around a sandbar (Woman). The Gaspee wouldn’t be able to move until the flood tide of the following day (Woman). The Gaspee had been ruling over the seas for four months now and the colonist were getting more mad by the days (Woman). When Captain Lindsay arrived in Providence, he alerted officials about the Gaspee mishap (Woman). A town crier was sent out inviting all interested parties to a meeting at Sabin’s Tavern to decide on a course of action (Woman). June ninth, seventeen seventy-two was the night the colonists snapped (Woman) . Right around midnight, sixty-four armed men from Rhode Island in eight longboard boats with muffled oars rowed to the stranded Gaspee (Woman). Dressed with black-smeared faces or Indian headdresses, the men were part of the social elite of Providence (Woman). Led by a wealthy merchant and a leading Providence member, John Brown called for the Gaspee and Dudingston to surrender (Woman). Dudingston refused to surrender and instead gave the crew the okay to open fire on anyone who attempted to come aboard (Woman). The Rhode Islanders rushed aboard and Dudingston was shot in the arm and feel on the deck (Woman). Most crew men were asleep below the deck and were awoken in commotion. The rest of the men were put in the longboats and taken to a the nearby Pawtuxet Village (Woman).Dudingston was taken to the house of Joseph Rhodes (Woman). The colonists rowed away with the imprisoned crewmen, leaving one boat the leaders of the undertaking to remove most of the documents aboard the ship, and ordered the Gaspee to be burned (Woman). June tenth seventeen seventy-two, at dawn the Gaspee took its last breaths and sunk, utterly destroyed (Woman).
The Gaspee Affair was definitely a breaking point for the colonists, making it a event leading up to the Revolutionary War.

In the end Lieutenant Dudingston was taken care of by Henry Sterling and later moved to the house Brenton in Newport where he finished he recovery. The trial of The Gaspee Affair lasted from June tenth seventeen seventy two to June tenth seventeen seventy three. No ever came clean with what exactly happened that night, not even Dudingston. We do know one thing though, The Gaspee Affair was the first bloodshed for American independence

(Woman).