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This task the Government, now for the first time effectively controlled by the king, was quite willing to undertake, all the more so on account of the recent burning of the Gaspée and the dishonorable publication of Hutchinson's letters.
On the occasion of which I began just now to speak, my Aunt Gainor entered, with a graver face than common, and I rising to leave her with my father, she put her whip across my breast as I turned, and said, "No; I want you to hear what I have to say." "What is it, Gainor?" "This business of the ship 'Gaspee' the Rhode Island men burned is making trouble in the East.
Unde per imaginariam directam lineam quae pergere per terram seu currere versus septentrionem concipietur ad proximam navium stationem fluvium vel scaturiginem in magno fluvio de Canada sese exonerantem. Et ab eo pergendo versus orientem per maris oris littorales ejusdem fluvii de Canada ad fluvium stationem navium portum aut littus communiter nomine de Gathepe vel Gaspee notum et appellatum."
On March 12, 1773 the House of Burgesses, on a motion by Dabney Carr, burgess from Albemarle County and brother-in-law to Jefferson, established a Committee of Correspondence composed of Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Henry, Jefferson, Robert Carter Nicholas, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Dudley Digges, Carr, and Archibald Cary to inquire into the Gaspee affair.
His wounds were dressed: he and his men were put on shore with all their belongings, and then and there the "Gaspee" was set fire to and watched till she was consumed. Though a large money reward was offered for the apprehension of the offenders, no one of the assailants was ever brought before the King's justice.
The "Gaspee," a royal vessel of war, had interfered legally and illegally with the smuggling trade. On June 9, 1772, while in pursuit a vessel, she ran aground. That night the ship was attacked by armed men, who captured and burned her. The colonial authorities were indifferent: the perpetrators were not tried; they were not prosecuted; they were not even arrested.
But none of the actors in the affair were betrayed at the time, though hundreds in the town must have had positive knowledge of their identity. Names, like those of the burners of the Gaspee eighteen months before, were not given out until after the Revolution, and even to-day the list of them is not complete. The project of the king and the East India Company was a failure.
The news of her insolence to the Providence packet and of her present plight flew abroad all over Providence. After sundown a number of the townspeople of Providence, well armed and stern of purpose, rowed from the town to the stranded "Gaspee," boarded her, and overcame the ineffectual resistance of her crew. In the scuffle Duddington was badly wounded.
Two years later, on June 9, 1772, the Gaspee, a naval schooner, which had been very active in chasing smugglers in Rhode Island waters, was burned by a mob, and its captain taken prisoner. The utmost efforts of the home government failed to secure the detection or punishment of any one of the perpetrators. Finally, in December, 1773, a still more serious explosion occurred.
Its commander, Lieutenant Duddington, took an active delight in his duty which brought him into perpetual antagonism with a people who regarded elusion of the revenue laws as their privilege and prerogative. One night the "Gaspee," pursuing the Providence packet, that had refused to lower her colors in salutation as she passed, ran aground in shallow water and lay fast bound for the night.
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