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NOTE 53. The Gaspée Incident

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Volume 3, Chapter 53, The Gas Pay Incident

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During the period of relative calm, trouble had not only been stirred by British aggressiveness

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against Massachusetts and South Carolina. The restrictive trade in navigation acts,

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to which were now added the sugar and tea duties, were always in danger of being enforced

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Now that the era of salutary neglect was gone forever, underneath the seeming calm there

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remained the inner contradictions of potential conflict over enforcement.

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Only a spark, only a minor incident was needed to bring this potential to the surface.

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Customs enforcement had been intensified since late 1771.

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Already in November, two incidents of resistance against the officials had occurred. The Comptroller

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of Customs at Falmouth, Massachusetts had been forced by a mob to tell them the name

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of an informer. And, off Philadelphia, thirty armed men captured the crew of a customs schooner

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and rescued a confiscated merchant vessel. It is not surprising, however, that the culminating

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with Customs Officials.

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We have already seen its struggles with the hated John Robinson.

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After Robinson became one of Boston's Customs Commissioners in late 1767,

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he was replaced as Rhode Island Collector of Customs by Charles Dudley Jr.

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And the Rhode Island resistance continued.

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In May 1769, the Customs Commissioners sent to Newport the Liberty,

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The Liberty, which had been converted to a naval sloop after being seized from John Hancock.

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The Liberty, commanded by the zealous captain William Reed, promptly began to seize merchant

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vessels right and left. This intensification of customs enforcement in Rhode Island swelled

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the resentment of its citizens. In mid-June 1769, Dudley's deputy collector, Jesse Seville,

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was seized as an informer by an angry mob and nearly beaten to death, whereupon the

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fiery Providence Gazette trenchantly declared that Seville was treated with more tenderness

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and leniency than is perhaps due an informer.

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In mid-July, Captain Reed called the attention of the townspeople of Newport to the depredations

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of his sloop, for in the harbor the Liberty fired brutally upon one of the ships it had

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Finally, by the spring of 1771, Rhode Islanders were moved to proceed against Dudley himself.

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The highest representative of royal authority in Rhode Island was beaten almost to death.

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Thus the stage was set in Rhode Island for the smashing of the relative lull of 1770-72.

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In March 1772, there sailed into Rhode Island waters the British naval schooner Gaspé,

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Commanded by Lieutenant William Duddingston, known to Rhode Islanders for having savagely

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beaten up a defenseless fisherman in Pennsylvania three years before. Duddingston lost no time

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in impressing his personality upon the public. Without even notifying Governor Joseph Wanton,

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Duddingston illegally launched a systematic campaign of hounding local vessels. Soon Duddingston

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Duddingston intensified the drive and arrogantly stopped, searched or fired upon everything

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afloat on the pretext of rigorously enforcing the laws. Duddingston and his men also stole

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livestock from Rhode Island farms and lumber from woodsmen. The public was understandably

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hard put to distinguish the British sailors from their pirates. The Rhode Island merchants

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was proposed to outfit an armed ship to rescue any vessel seized by the Gaspé, but Admiral

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John Montague, based at Boston, scotched the plan by threatening to hang all concerned

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as pirates. On June 9, 1772, the hated Gaspé ran aground off Warwick in the course of a

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fierce pursuit of a merchant vessel. When the people of Providence heard the good news of

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The town's wealthiest merchant and a son of liberty, John Brown, organized a joyous party

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of citizens to finish the job begun by nature. Brown and his party, which included James

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Saban and Captain Abraham Whipple, sailed to the gas-pay, shot and wounded Lieutenant

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Duddingston, removed the crew and burned the gas-pay to the ground. A satisfactory night's

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Ever since the attack on the British vessel St. John, eight years earlier, Rhode Islanders

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had been steeped in the pleasant tradition of a lack of strenuous search by the government

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for the parties responsible for such incidents. But in early September, the Crown suddenly

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decided to bypass Rhode Island authorities and to send the guilty parties to England

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for High Treason. A Royal Commission of Inquiry was appointed to find the culprits, deliver

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them to England via the Royal Navy, and to call on General Gage's troops, if necessary,

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for support. Appointed to the Commission was Governor Wanton of Rhode Island, who could

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be depended upon not to search too hard, but he was more than offset by the other members.

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Four of the top royally appointed judges in the colonies, specifically Robert Ock Moody,

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who was the Vice Admiralty Judge at Boston, and the Chief Justices of New Jersey, Massachusetts

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and New York.

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Now, here, in the escalation of law enforcement into the hands of British authorities by setting

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up a star chamber procedure and threatening trials for treason in England, was not only

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The Pennsylvania Journal, representing American sentiment, warned that such a commission could

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make the lot of the colonists worse than the subjects of the most despotic power on earth.

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Thus, in June 1772, the people of Rhode Island burned the British schooner Gaspé, and the

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The British reacted ominously by appointing a Royal Commission of Inquiry in early September.

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The latter move was followed later in the month by a step long feared by the citizens

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of Massachusetts, the announcement of a decision by the Crown to pay judicial salaries in Massachusetts

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out of customs revenue.

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No longer would judges be paid by, and therefore subject to, the control of the colonial assembly

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It is not surprising that these deeds, especially the appointing of the gaffer to the assembly,

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specifically the salaries to be paid permanently and securely by the Crown,

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were those of the Attorney General and the Solicitor General of Massachusetts

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and the five judges of the Superior Court of the colony,

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a reward to precisely those officials who had shown their tenderness for the British troops

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These deeds, especially the appointing of the Gaspe Commission, should have aroused

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the dormant radical movement in America, or that the first sign of revival should have

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come in Massachusetts, or that its first spokesman should have been Samuel Adams.