[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 88 (Monday, June 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3504-S3505]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Gaspee Days

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am so glad to have you here 
because a recurring tradition on the Senate floor is about to take 
place, and it is always particularly good for a Senator from Rhode 
Island to have a Senator from Massachusetts presiding while I talk 
about this.
  Today I am here to recognize and celebrate one of the earliest acts 
of defiance against the British Crown in our great American struggle 
for independence. Most Americans remember the Boston Tea Party as one 
of the major events building up to the American Revolution. We learned 
the story of spirited Bostonians--and when I say ``spirited,'' I mean 
that in several senses; I gather that spirits had been served to those 
Bostonians before they embarked on this adventure--clambering onto the 
decks of the East India Company's ships and dumping bales of tea into 
Boston Harbor as a protest of British ``taxation without 
representation,'' which was a fine and worthy stunt, and I am certainly 
not here to defend taxation without representation.
  However, there is a milestone on the path to revolution that is 
frequently overlooked, and it is the story of 60 brave Rhode Islanders 
who challenged British rule more than a year before that Tea Party in 
Boston, and they did a little bit more than throw tea bags overboard. 
So every year I honor those little known Rhode Island heroes who risked 
their lives in defiance of oppression 1 dark night more than 240 years 
ago.
  In the years before the Revolutionary War, as tensions with the 
American Colonies grew, King George III stationed revenue cutters, 
armed customs patrol vessels, along the American coast. They were there 
to prevent smuggling, to enforce the payment of taxes, and to impose 
the authority of the Crown.
  One of the most notorious of these ships was the HMS Gaspee. Its 
captain, Lieutenant William Duddingston, was known for destroying 
fishing vessels, seizing cargo, and flagging down ships only to harass, 
humiliate, and interrogate the colonials.
  Outraged by this egregious abuse of power, the merchants and 
shipmasters of Rhode Island flooded civil and military officials with 
complaints about the Gaspee, exhausting every diplomatic and legal 
means to stir the British Crown to regulate Duddingston's conduct.
  Not only did British officials ignore the Rhode Islanders' concerns; 
they responded with open hostility. The commander of the local British 
fleet, ADM John Montagu, warned that anyone who dared attempt acts of 
resistance or retaliation against the Gaspee would be taken into 
custody and hanged as a pirate, which brings us to June 9, 1772, 242 
years ago.
  Rhode Island ship captain Benjamin Lindsey was en route to Providence 
from Newport, in his ship the Hannah, when he was accosted and ordered 
to yield for inspection by the Gaspee. Captain Lindsey ignored the 
Gaspee's command and raced away up Narragansett Bay--despite warning 
shots fired by the Gaspee. As the Gaspee gave chase, Captain Lindsey 
knew a little something about Narragansett Bay and he knew a little 
something about the Hannah. He knew that she was lighter and drew less 
water than the Gaspee. So he sped north toward Pawtuxet Cove, toward 
the shallow waters off Namquid Point. His Hannah shot over the shallows 
there, but the heavier Gaspee grounded and stuck firm. The British ship 
and her crew were caught stranded in a falling tide, and it would be 
many hours before a rising tide could free the hulking Gaspee.
  Presented with that irresistible opportunity, Captain Lindsey 
continued on his course to Providence and there enlisted the help of 
John Brown, a respected merchant from one of the most prominent 
Providence families. The two men rallied a group of Rhode Island 
patriots at Sabin's Tavern, in what is now the east side of Providence. 
So perhaps something the Bostonians at the Tea Party and the Rhode 
Islanders at the Gaspee had in common was spirits. Together, the group 
resolved to put an end to the Gaspee's threat to Rhode Island waters.
  That night, the men, led by Captain Lindsey and Abraham Whipple--
later to become a commander in the Revolutionary navy--embarked in 
eight longboats quietly down Narragansett Bay. They encircled the 
Gaspee, and they called on Lieutenant Duddingston to surrender his 
ship. Duddingston refused and ordered his men to fire upon anyone who 
tried to board.
  Undeterred, the Rhode Islanders forced their way onto the Gaspee's 
deck--in a hail of oaths and sword clashes and musketfire--and 
Lieutenant Duddingston fell with a musket ball in the midst of the 
struggle. Right there in the waters of Warwick, RI, the very first 
blood in the conflict that was to become the American Revolution was 
drawn.
  As the patriots commandeered the ship, Brown ordered one of his Rhode 
Islanders, a physician named John Mawney, to head to the ship's 
captain's cabin and tend to Duddingston's wound--a humane gesture in 
their moment of victory to help a man who had threatened to open fire 
on them only moments before.

  Brown and Whipple took the captive English crew back to shore and 
then returned to the Gaspee to rid Narragansett Bay of her despised 
presence once and for all. They set her afire. The blaze spread through 
the ship, and ultimately to the ship's powder magazine, which went off 
with an explosion like fireworks, the blast echoing through the night 
across the bay, the flash lighting the sea up like daylight, and 
fragments of the ship splashing down into the water all around.
  The site of this audacious act is now named Gaspee Point in honor of 
these brave Rhode Islanders. So I come again here to share this story 
and to commemorate this night so many years ago--June 9, 1772--and the 
names of Benjamin Lindsey, John Brown, and Abraham Whipple, and those 
men not known to history who fought beside them that night.
  The Gaspee Affair, as it was called, generated furor in the British 
Government, which appointed a royal commission of inquiry based in 
Newport to gather evidence for indictment. The indicted men were then 
to be sent to England for trial.
  Well, not so fast. Rhode Island's colonial charter guaranteed its 
citizens the right to a trial in the vicinity in which the crime was 
alleged to have occurred. And beyond that, these Rhode Islanders 
presumed they were entitled to the

[[Page S3505]]

same rights as Englishmen in their mother country. Some went so far to 
say that this proposal to try them overseas violated ancient rights 
outlined in the Magna Carta.
  This breach of the rights that colonists believed were enshrined in 
the British Constitution created continent-wide uproar. Young members 
of Virginia's House of Burgesses, such as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick 
Henry, yearning to protest, pushed the body to create a committee of 
correspondence to gather information from around the Colonies 
concerning the British Parliament's actions, while also urging other 
Colonies to do the same. By December 1773, 11 Colonies had set up 
committees of correspondence. These committees played a vital role in 
enflaming discontent. They were the first permanent modes of 
communication among the Thirteen Colonies and allowed abuses by 
Parliament to be quickly known throughout the Colonies.
  John Allen, a little-known visiting minister in the Second Baptist 
Church in Boston, gave a sermon on the Gaspee Affair. It went the 
revolutionary equivalent of viral--widely published. In this sermon, 
Allen rejected the proposition that Parliament had a right to tax and 
enforce laws like the ones implicated in the Gaspee Affair on Americans 
without the consent of their colonial representatives--a position that 
would come to define colonial discontent and reverberates to this day 
through the slogan ``no taxation without representation.''
  Allen concluded his sermon with the provoking and revolutionary 
question whether the British King had a right to rule over America in 
the first place. Reverend Allen asserted there was no parliamentary 
right to reign as in Britain, nor a right by conquest, as the American 
colonists had only signed compacts with the Crown for protection of 
their religious and civil rights. Allen espoused Enlightenment ideals 
of social compacts and political rights, stating that if the British 
Government enacted laws that were oppressive to the rights of American 
colonists, as it had with the creation of a commission of inquiry 
intending to send the Gaspee raiders to England for trial, then it lost 
its right to rule over them.
  The sermon was published eight separate times in three different 
colonial cities and spread widely through the Colonies. Through that, 
the Gaspee Affair sparked in the minds of Americans ideas about 
parliamentary abuses and the King's right to rule that would seed a 
spirit of discontent and eventually boil over into revolution. The 
sermon, along with fiery editorials published in the wake of the 
affair, inspired colonial leaders to speak openly about the British 
Government's abuses, instigating conflict that would culminate in the 
battles of Lexington and Concord.
  The Gaspee Affair galvanized colonial discontent and led to greater 
unity among the Thirteen Colonies. After Rhode Islanders defiantly set 
fire to the Gaspee, the American Colonies came together for a common 
cause for the first time in their history, a formative step in the 
birth of our new Nation.
  I know these events, and the patriots whose efforts allowed for their 
success, are not forgotten in my home State. Over the years, I have 
enjoyed marching in the annual Gaspee Days Parade through Warwick, RI, 
as every year we recall the courage and zeal of these men who fired the 
first shots that drew the first blood in that great contest for the 
freedoms we enjoy today.
  They set a precedent for future patriots to follow, including those 
in Boston who more than 1 year later would have their tea party. But do 
not forget, as my home State prepares once again to celebrate the 
anniversary of the Gaspee incident, Massachusetts colonists threw tea 
bags off the deck of their British ship. We blew ours up and shot its 
captain more than 1 year earlier. We are little in Rhode Island, but as 
Lieutenant Duddingston discovered, we pack a punch.

                          ____________________