Before the Tea Party: A forgotten rebellion in Rhode Island

PROVIDENCE, R.I. » Rhode Islanders feel slighted that Bostonians get all the glory for helping spark the American Revolution with the Boston Tea Party. After all, more than a year before any tea was tossed, Rhode Island colonists burned a British ship.

Saturday is the 246th anniversary of the day a local ship captain lured the British schooner HMS Gaspee into shallow waters a few miles south of Providence, where it ran aground. A smaller model of a ship will be burned Sunday to commemorate the forgotten act of rebellion.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse often recounts the story of how colonists waited till night fell, rowed out to the stranded Gaspee, shot the ship’s captain and burned the boat. It’s a cool story about an extraordinary act, said the Rhode Island Democrat. By comparison, he said, Massachusetts patriots mustered the courage to push tea bags off the deck of a British boat more than a year later.

“It’s going to be a long, slow process to try to correct 240 years of the Massachusetts megaphone, but I think it is important to stick up for historic deeds that were done by Rhode Islanders,” said Whitehouse, who spoke about the Gaspee Affair Monday on the Senate floor.

Many Rhode Island residents feel similarly aggrieved.

Historians say the affair reignited patriotic fervor at a time when it had cooled off, and em-

GASPEE DAYS COMMITTEE VIA AP Spectators watch an annual ceremonial burning of a replica of the ship HMS Gaspee in Warwick, R.I. The British customs schooner Gaspee had been sent in March 1772 to enforce maritime trade laws and prevent smuggling around Newport, R.I. In June 1772, a...

JENNIFER MCDERMOTT — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Rhode Island State Archivist Ashley Selima points to the seal of King George III on a September 1772 proclamation in Providence, R.I. The document established a commission to investigate the burning of the British schooner HMS Gaspee by colonists in...