[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 9, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6358-S6359]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               GASPEE DAY

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the Boston Tea Party is one of the 
celebrated events in American history. From a young age, Americans 
learn the story of the men who crept onto British ships moored in 
Boston harbor on December 16, 1773, to toss overboard

[[Page S6359]]

shipments of tea that the English sought to tax. These Massachusetts 
patriots yearned for liberty, opposed ``taxation without 
representation,'' and stepped into history books with this simple act 
of defiance.
  But conspicuously absent from too many of those same history books is 
a group of Rhode Island men who took on the British Crown in a bold, 
insubordinate gesture matching the temper of their bold and 
insubordinate colony more than a year earlier than the Boston Tea 
Party. This evening, I would like to share the story of the H.M.S. 
Gaspee, a daring group of Rhode Islanders, and the real beginning of 
the fight for American independence.
  In the early 1770s, as tensions between England and her American 
colonies grew increasingly strained, King George III stationed the 
H.M.S. Gaspee, under the command of Lieutenant William Dudingston, in 
the waters of Rhode Island. Its mission was to search incoming ships 
for smuggled goods and contraband and to enforce the payment of taxes.
  On June 9, 1772, 237 years ago tonight, the sailing vessel Hannah was 
traveling from Newport to Providence, when it was intercepted by the 
Gaspee and ordered to stop to allow a search. On board the Hannah, CAPT 
Benjamin Lindsey refused and continued on his course, despite warning 
shots fired by the Gaspee. Under full sail and into a falling tide, the 
Hannah pressed north up Narragansett Bay with the Gaspee in hot 
pursuit. Overmatched in size, Captain Lindsey found advantage in guile 
and in his greater knowledge of Rhode Island waters. He led the Gaspee 
to the shallow water of Pawtuxet Cove. There, the lighter Hannah sped 
over the shallows, but the heavier Gaspee ran aground in the shallow 
waters off Namquid Point. The Gaspee was stuck, until the higher tides 
of the following day would lift her from the mud.
  Captain Lindsey proceeded on his course to Providence, where he met 
with a group of Rhode Islanders, including John Brown, a community 
leader whose family helped found Brown University. The two men arranged 
for a meeting of local patriots at Sabin's Tavern, on what is now 
Providence's east side, later that evening. At the meeting, the 
assembled Rhode Islanders decided to act. The HMS Gaspee was a symbol 
of their oppression and she was helplessly stranded in Pawtuxet Cove. 
The opportunity was too good to pass up.
  That night, there was no moonlight on the waters of Pawtuxet Cove. 
The Gaspee lay silent on the sandbar. Down the bay from Providence came 
60 men in longboats, led by John Brown and Abraham Whipple, armed and 
headed through those dark waters for the Gaspee.
  When the men reached the Gaspee and surrounded it, Brown called out 
and demanded that Lieutenant Dudingston surrender his vessel. 
Dudingston refused and instead ordered his men to fire upon anyone who 
attempted to board the Gaspee.
  That was all these Rhode Islanders needed to hear, and they rushed 
the Gaspee and forced their way aboard her. In the violent melee, 
Lieutenant Dudingston was shot in the arm by a musket ball. Rhode 
Islanders had drawn the first blood of the conflict that would lead to 
American independence, right there in Pawtuxet Cove, 16 months before 
the ``Tea Party'' in Boston.
  Brown and Whipple's men seized control of the Gaspee from its British 
crew and transported the captive Englishman safely to shore. They then 
returned to the abandoned Gaspee to set her afire and watched as the 
powder magazine exploded, blowing the ship apart and leaving her 
remains to burn to the water line. That historic location is now called 
Gaspee Point.
  Since that night in June, 237 years ago tonight when the Gaspee 
burned, Rhode Islanders have marked the event with celebration. This 
year, as I do every year, I will march in the annual Gaspee Days Parade 
in Warwick, RI. Every year, I think about what it must have been like 
to be among those 60 men: muffled oars on dark waters; comrades pulling 
with voices hushed; a shouted demand, the indignant response, and then 
a pell-mell rush to clamber aboard; the oaths and shouts of struggle, 
gun shots and powder smoke, the clash of sword and cutlass; and when it 
was over, the bright fire of the ship in the night, the explosion 
turning night to day and reverberating across the bay and the hiss and 
splash as the pieces fell and the water claimed the flames.
  I hope that one day the tale of the brave Rhode Islanders who stormed 
the HMS Gaspee will be remembered among the other stories of the 
Revolution and that they will be given their due place in our Nation's 
history beside the tea partiers of Boston.
  I hope, frankly, on an annual basis, to come back to this floor and 
relate that story over and over and over again. It is a proud part of 
Rhode Island's heritage.

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