September 19, 2019 • 23 mins
Most US residents are familiar with the famous Boston Tea Party - but it was far from the only conflict of this type. Join the guys as they explore Rhode Island’s Gaspee Affair, and why it’s sometimes called Rhode Island’s Boston Tea Party.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Holy Smokes.
(00:28):
Welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians. You could have been
anywhere in the world today, but you chose to be here,
and for that we are grateful. My name is Ben,
my name is nol Ben. Have you ever been to
Rhode Island? I have multiple times. Yeah, I haven't. It
seems really small on the map, though, what's it like?
It is? Uh, it is very small. Every time I've
been to Rhode Island, I've been driving through it, so
(00:49):
I've I've stopped at places that were convenient along the road,
but I have not spent any time there to one
of those places where you might you blink and you missed.
In super producer Casey Pegrum, have you ever been to
Rhode Island? I have not. I was just saying off
Mike that a band, I like a lot lightning Bolt
comes from Rhode Island, and then I kind of associate
(01:10):
them or Rhode Island with Risdy and like all the
cool stuff that came out of the Rhode Island School
of Design. Right, A lot of bands, uh turns out
go to art school first. Yeah, I think David Byrne, Right,
maybe I think Seth McFarland from Family Guy went to
Rhode Island School of Design. Did he really is Cohogan
(01:30):
Rhode Island? I think it is, Yes, Rhode Island School
of Design, prestigious academic institution. Today's story for those of
us following along at home, is one one more notch
in our quest. When we're step in our quest to
do an episode about all fifty states in the United States.
(01:52):
You see, years and years and years and years before
the Rhode Island School of Design existed, there was something
called the Gasp be a Fair. This took place in
Rhode Island, and it's it's an historical incident of great
importance and has some funny parts of the story. But
it's a story that's unfamiliar to a lot of us
(02:15):
in the modern US. It's sometimes regarded as what the
first naval engagement of the American Revolution. Uh, It's sometimes
called Rhode Island's version of the Boston Tea Party. Right,
but what happened exactly? Before I tell you what happened,
I tell you some other notable rizz de alarms. The
entire talking heads went to rizz D. I knew it, Yeah,
(02:36):
But apparently David Byrne only made it like a year
or something. That makes sense. He's to use too much
of a kupta, follow the rules of an art institution.
And also we've got James Franco's perfect, Perfect Sam Hide,
Remember Sam Hid. Yeah, anyway, I'll tell you what happened
during the Gaspy affair. So the ship in question, the
(02:57):
gasp was hot on the trail of the Hannah, which
was a smuggling ship from America, and it ran aground
off of the nam Quit Point in Providences nar Anga
Sette Bay. Wow, that's a tough one. What do you
think ben nar Ango, Sette Narain, Narragansett Boom. I'm going
with Narragansett, the Narragansett Bay. And that was on June nine.
(03:20):
Uh So John Brown, who's this American merchant um was
not feeling good about British taxes on on the things
that he was selling. So he rode out to the
gas Pop with some other guys colonists, and they took
over the ship. They got rid of the crew, and
then they set the ship on fire. When I say
(03:42):
got rid of, I don't mean that they killed them.
I just mean they escorted them off the vessel. Right,
So that's the that's the top level story, right, How
did we get here? The action kind of begins brewing
in seventeen sixty three. As a consequence of the French
and Indan War, England has gained control of Canada, Florida,
(04:04):
and the land west to the Mississippi River. To protect
these territories, the British need an army to you know,
they want to position an army along the frontier. It
makes sense, but it also requires some cold, hard cash.
And because the British Crown doesn't want to have to
foot the bill itself, they go to the thirteen colonies
(04:26):
of what would later become the United States and they say,
give us some scratch. The colonists say, heck no, how
dare you? For two reasons. First, they said, why are
we gonna pay for an army on the border when
the British won't let us settle in these new lands again,
they won't let us settle in Canada, Florida lands west
(04:48):
of the Mississippi. And then they said, second, why are
the British attempting to take more control over colonial trade
after they had already let us operate with a somewhat
free hand for over a century, right, and then these
taxes are getting past in seventeen sixty four. People in
(05:09):
the colonies generally did not like paying taxes. Rhode Island
gets super pod about this because the taxes target commerce,
and this is a very small colony and other than
the Bay, they don't have a lot going on. And
there was this whole practice that you might have read
(05:29):
about in history class called merketilism, where British colonies were
required or to only trade with England. And there had
been sort of a kind of a grace period, I
guess where folks in ports cities like Newport and Providence,
um in Rhode Island had been making a fair amount
of money and trading with partners from all over the world.
(05:50):
Now that was not going to be happening anymore. So
adding additional tax to this already kind of simmering situation
of resentment was not a good thing. That's right. And
let's let's also paint the picture here. Rhode Island at
this time is a lot more edgy than the Rhode
Island of modern day. It's a notorious heighi hole for
(06:11):
smugglers and privateers, and people are evading taxes left and right.
The British government are pretty much just attempting to enforce
the law. Granted it is a law that they made
without much say so from the colonists. So they passed
specifically the Sugar Act, and then they bring six ships
across the pond two enforce this act, and one of
(06:37):
these vessels as a vessel called the Gaspy. The people
of Rhode Island did not dig the enforcement of these
new laws. Uh. They attacked the HMS St. John in
seventeen sixty four. Five years later they burned the HMS Liberty,
a customship as it was in Newport Harbor, and by
(06:59):
seventeen seventy to the gas b is a known problem
in the bay because they are almost working on commission.
They want to collect as much custom that as much
taxation as they can because they get a slice of
the pie. And a lot of this goes back to
(07:19):
a guy named Lieutenant William Duddingston. That's such a weird name. Uh,
I was going to pronounce it. Yeah, he feels like
it dud to me though. So he was the commander
of the gas and he was the one making the
call to be as aggressive as the gasby was, so
(07:40):
once they've moved up into the bay, his tactics really
start getting on the colonists nerves. He is hunting everybody ships,
from you know, the large merchant traders who sail across
the ocean, to really small traders who are just kind
of going up the coastline, even down to people who
are just trying to make a been catching fish. He's
(08:01):
a real pill. And they were even ordered to take
supplies from farmers in the area without asking them. They
were just stealing. It's not a good look, not a
good He was despised. He was universally despised, and rightly so.
So yeah, I mean and as time went on, um,
(08:22):
he kept using these really users, kind of mean spirited,
aggressive tactics, and it kept rilling up these colonists and
it was really an untenable situation, right. Yes, even the
governors of colonies wrote to the British saying that the
Gap Speak crew was out of pocket. This is my
(08:45):
one of my favorite parts. Uh, this goes back for years.
Seventeen seventy two, Governor Joseph Wanton says that in addition
to robbing the colonists, harassing them. They also insult the
colonist with quote the most abusive and contumelius language. Contumelius.
(09:06):
I'm not familiar with that word, but I think I
will adopt that one for myself. Um so it's true. Yeah,
kunchu melius c O N t U m E l
I O U s. And of course, as a guy
with the name like Dudingston, Duddingston would do. He refused,
and he kept this disruptive behavior going all throughout the
(09:27):
Narragansett Bay. And then on June nine, the gaspet chooses
the wrong customer right, they try to stop and search
the craft called the Hannah. The Hannah is a small
trader from Newport. It's going from Newport to Providence. The
captain of the Hannah as a fellow ben His name
(09:48):
is Benjamin Lindsay, and he says, first off, he says
heck na, and then they say okay, and they fire
some warning shots and he goes, whoa super nah. And
then Lynn See lures Lieutenant Duddingston into an area off
of nam Quid Point. And this is there's a there's
(10:09):
a method to the madness here. Because Captain Lindsay knows
that this part of the bay will be very shallow
at the low tide, and by two o'clock the Gatsby
is run aground, the Hannah races away making its escape,
and then as soon as Lindsay gets to Providence, he
(10:30):
tells person we mentioned at the top, John Brown, what happened.
This is important because John Brown was probably the most
well off man in the community, right he sure was. Alright. So,
starting here, we're gonna give you a little bit of
a re enactment type play by play that we got
from New England Historical Society dot com seventy two Gaspy
(10:54):
Affair Road Islands tea party ship burned. So it starts
with on ordering eight longboats to be delivered to Finner's wharf,
and he wanted them to be treated in a certain way.
He wanted them to have silencers applied to their oars
and oar locks. I can only imagine that that would
(11:15):
involve some sort of fabric or you know, some sort
of cushion that you would put there so they wouldn't
make those sounds. He then got a drummer, a little
drummer boy, to go around the town and announce that
the gaspe had run aground, and that anyone that wanted
to get in on the destruction should go to the
home of one James Saban, who lived right next to
(11:37):
Finner's Wharf. And this is where another player enters the game,
Efrem Bowen. I don't know any efforts nowadays. Yeah, he's
about nineteen years old, and he grabs his pops gun
and powder and shot and then he runs over to
James house and he sees there's a crowd of people around.
(11:57):
There are some people are working on musketballs in the kitchen,
and then he sees his pal kid around his age
Joseph Buckland was there too, And just remember that guy
for leader in the story. That night there's no moon, right,
it's really dark. So those muffled oars and oarlocks help
a lot. More than a hundred people row out in
(12:18):
long boats to the gaspeet. Old Lieutenant Duddingston is awake
and he leans over the gunwale. It sounds like he's
in his jammie's and he says, who goes there? And
then this guy, Abraham Whipple says, I'm the Sheriff of
the County of Kent. God you I have a warrant
(12:39):
to apprehend you. Damn you, so surrender mouth on this guy?
Al Right, what happens next to Duddingston? No doubt taken
aback by this? What's the word been? What kind of
languagelius language? He clutched his pearls, but he would clutch
something else in just a minute, because you see are pal.
(13:01):
Joseph Bucklin, who was standing aloft the main seat of
that long bow, one of the longboats that was surrounding
the ship, realized that he had Duddingston in his sights, right,
and so he be He calls to his buddy from
He calls him f E. I guess that's Feffy for sure.
F what have you? Uh? He says, reached we our
gun and I can kill that fellow. No, no, no doubt,
(13:23):
he said, quite loudly, And uh it's true. Buckland then
fired at Duddingston, hit him in the arm once and
then the lower abdomen. Uh, And he exclaimed again, according
to this account, which I love, this language is delightful,
I have killed the rascal. And that's when Duddington took
a fall um and he thought, uh that he he
(13:43):
was a goner. Yeah, I don't believe everything you see
in films and fictional television, even if someone has been
shot before, literally everyone on the planet is surprised and
horrified by the genuine pain of a gun shot. It's
always like the first time. So old Lieutenant Dudds thinks,
this is it no more for the Dudster. The dudster
(14:06):
bites the dust. Things like that. I'm sure he was thinking.
And people in Rhode Island today will sometimes still celebrate
this shot, the shot fired by Buckland, as the first
shot of the Revolutionary War. So the crewmen of the
Gatsby are captured and they're loaded onto these long boats
that have been surrounding them. This is shortly before dawn.
(14:28):
They had left one boat and the leaders of the
raid behind the Gatsby crew. The plan was to take
them to the cellar of a house and then uh
Old Duddies. Lieutenant Duddies was taken separately to see a doctor.
He was not, in fact mortally wounded. Uh The leaders
of the raid prominent Rhode Islanders like uh the opium
(14:52):
and slave trade kingpin John Brown, wealthy student town Abraham Whipple,
the foul mouth sheriff. They hang on then they start
going through stuff on the ship. Right, they go through
Lieutenant Duddington's papers, and then right is picture. This is
so cinematic. Right as dawn is breaching the horizon, they
(15:13):
set fire to the gaspee, they board their long boat,
and then they sail away while people are watching the show,
literally watching the show the way we watch fireworks. Because
the ship doesn't just slowly burn. We have to remember
this ship had gunpowder on it. So in the way
you see like a car, for example, in a movie,
(15:36):
go off a cliff, it sits for a second and
then explodes. That would never really happen with the car,
But a burning ship full of gunpowder, there's gonna be
a boom. Just wait for it. It's gonna be fun.
And this is where it takes a weird turn right
because it feels like the end of the story. That's
not quite the end, because you see the British is
(15:59):
the Porties were still around, They're still very much in play,
and they decide we are going to investigate this gusts
be affair, and they opened a case on it June
tenth two and this case winds on for a year,
but it runs into a big problem. Despite the numerous
(16:19):
people who participated in the raid. Despite the many more
people who watched the ship burned down and explode, new
one said they knew anything about what happened that night,
who was involved, how it happened. There was nobody would roll,
nobody would snitch. Everybody knew nothing. As soon as the
(16:41):
British came around. Yeah, and it wasn't even until America
got independence from Britain that the real story came out, right,
which is hilarious. Yeah, So here's the thing, the gasping
affair we heard about Governor Joseph Wanton. He really was
in hot water because he was a buddy of John
Brown and a simple theiser of the plight of the
(17:01):
colonists and the merchants, right, Yeah, he was in this
rock and hard place situation because Governor Joseph Wanton was
also a wealthy merchant. He was friends with other wealthy
merchants like John Brown, a ring leader of the raid,
and he sympathized with people other merchants in the colony.
And like these British customs officials are just jerks, they're
(17:24):
real heels. They are rude. They talked down to us.
But I don't want war with the British, says Governor Wanton.
So he appointed, he's appointed chairman of the Royal Commission
of Inquiry. He does his best to soft pedal the investigation,
to delay proceedings, to kind of play kate British authorities
(17:46):
like we're doing the best we can, will update you, etcetera.
And everybody in Rhode Island is a united front. Nobody
is going to roll on these raiders. And that is
why the official finding the committee was are you ready?
This was undertaken by persons unknown. I love that expression
(18:08):
person is unknown, just in general. It's just kind of
ultimate absolution of let it go. It's up there with
Mistakes were made. Mistakes were indeed made, and you know,
we said Wanton was kind of looked at as a
sympathizer because he was pals with with Brown and his family, um.
But at the same time, when the American Revolution did
break out in seventeen seventy five, he was branded as
(18:30):
a loyalist because he didn't want war with Britain. But
he was actually a bit more neutral and that groundwork
that he laid during the Gasping Affair sort of protected
him from the Patriots when all hell broke loose, and
they did not ransack his home as they would have
with other governors. Yeah, they were. They were pretty much
(18:51):
from what we can tell, during the course of the war,
the patriots and the revolutionary forces. When it came to Wanton,
they pretty much told him to just stay out of it,
you know what I mean, mind your business, don't get
in our way, and we won't get in yours. Thanks
for having our back during that Gaspy thing, and it
did play a huge role. The possibility that the Gaspy
(19:15):
Raiders could be sent to Britain and tried for treason
and given the death penalty really scared the colonists, and
rightly so they started forming what they called committees of correspondence.
These things became kind of like shadow governments, and in
a very real way, they were catalysts for what we
call the American Revolution today. There's one last note to
(19:39):
this story for everybody worried about our buddy, our pal
the Dutters. He did survive. He had a close call,
he did almost bleed to death, but he was saved.
He continued his naval career and eventually he died a rich,
happy old man in Scotland. Not too at you know,
(20:00):
there were there were a lot of hurt feelings. There
was indeed a revolution, but in this city as televised.
The revolution was not televised at that point, was though
at least probably there was a blog. I think there
was a blog that was also mainly based on recipes.
But to read the actual recipe you had to go
through this uh five to tempt paragraph story about what
(20:21):
the recipe meant. Oh, that's the worst, and then you
get to the part where it like says show more,
and then it's a bunch of ads and then maybe
under that you get the recipe. But we digress. This
is kind of a parallel event to the Boston tea
party and that it represented Rhode Islands kind of we've
had at moment, right, Yeah, and there's this there's something
amazing to an inspirational about how communities can band together,
(20:48):
you know, to to enforce what they see as justice.
Because anybody at any point could have turned around and
given the British the evidence they needed for a species
where three people have a hard time uh cooperating right
in general, to have an entire community do that is
impressive and astonishing. We hope that you enjoyed today's episode,
(21:12):
and we would like to hear from you. What are
some more little known strange conflicts in American history that
you think your fellow listeners would enjoy. You can find
us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter. You
can find us on Instagram, not just as a show,
but as individuals. I am Ben Bolan on Instagram having
(21:34):
various uh strange adventures, and I am Ben Bolen hsw
on Twitter. You can find me at how Now, Noel
Brown on Instagram. I've got a Twitter, but I don't
really use it. I just use it to creep on
other Twitters, which is a legitimate use of Twitter. And also,
have you ever seen have you ever seen those uh
parody accounts where the idea is the American Revolution but
(21:57):
with Twitter, like what founding fathers would have said Twitter,
It's hilarious. I do follow a Frederick Nietzsche account though,
so it's probably along those lens. Yeah, yeah, I can
see that too, as always thinks to super producer Casey Pegram,
as well as Alex Williams, who composed that banging track
you hear at the beginning of every episode. Thanks to
research associate Gabe lose Here, and our good buddy Ryan Barrish,
(22:20):
who continues to give us a hand and hopefully we're
hearing from very soon thanks to Christopher haciotis here in spirit.
I have a surprise for you. Know, I did not
tell you about for a while. We've both been traveling
a lot, so it took me a second. As you know,
circumstances found me in Japan. Uh and as I like
to do when I get a chance, I got you
(22:41):
a souvenir. Se casey, I got you something too, but
I didn't bring it with me today. Words. It's a hat,
it says Nagoya. It's a sport cap of the snapback
of variety, and it has a lovely little stylized Japanese
a fish dragon creature on the side, and it's just lovely. Ben. Well,
(23:04):
there you go, switching it out right now, right, all right?
But yeah, yeah, I hope you enjoyed. Don't feel obligated.
You don't have to. I just thought of you when
I thought I had. It's in the sound of meat,
making it very large for my large head. Can I
here it goes? Oh it's still too Nope, still too small. No, No,
I've got I've got to put it on the last
(23:25):
little click here because quite alright, it's still a little tight.
Maybe it's for eating. No, it's perfect. There's like a
little splash of color on the brim to a little
splash of color. Yeah, yeah, all right, yea is it hypercolor? Yeah,
it is kind of iridescence, like the scales of a
Japanese dragonfish. There you go, Thank you very much, but
I love it. We'll see you next time Fox. For
(23:51):
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Holy Smokes.
(00:28):
Welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians. You could have been
anywhere in the world today, but you chose to be here,
and for that we are grateful. My name is Ben,
my name is nol Ben. Have you ever been to
Rhode Island? I have multiple times. Yeah, I haven't. It
seems really small on the map, though, what's it like?
It is? Uh, it is very small. Every time I've
been to Rhode Island, I've been driving through it, so
(00:49):
I've I've stopped at places that were convenient along the road,
but I have not spent any time there to one
of those places where you might you blink and you missed.
In super producer Casey Pegrum, have you ever been to
Rhode Island? I have not. I was just saying off
Mike that a band, I like a lot lightning Bolt
comes from Rhode Island, and then I kind of associate
(01:10):
them or Rhode Island with Risdy and like all the
cool stuff that came out of the Rhode Island School
of Design. Right, A lot of bands, uh turns out
go to art school first. Yeah, I think David Byrne, Right,
maybe I think Seth McFarland from Family Guy went to
Rhode Island School of Design. Did he really is Cohogan
(01:30):
Rhode Island? I think it is, Yes, Rhode Island School
of Design, prestigious academic institution. Today's story for those of
us following along at home, is one one more notch
in our quest. When we're step in our quest to
do an episode about all fifty states in the United States.
(01:52):
You see, years and years and years and years before
the Rhode Island School of Design existed, there was something
called the Gasp be a Fair. This took place in
Rhode Island, and it's it's an historical incident of great
importance and has some funny parts of the story. But
it's a story that's unfamiliar to a lot of us
(02:15):
in the modern US. It's sometimes regarded as what the
first naval engagement of the American Revolution. Uh, It's sometimes
called Rhode Island's version of the Boston Tea Party. Right,
but what happened exactly? Before I tell you what happened,
I tell you some other notable rizz de alarms. The
entire talking heads went to rizz D. I knew it, Yeah,
(02:36):
But apparently David Byrne only made it like a year
or something. That makes sense. He's to use too much
of a kupta, follow the rules of an art institution.
And also we've got James Franco's perfect, Perfect Sam Hide,
Remember Sam Hid. Yeah, anyway, I'll tell you what happened
during the Gaspy affair. So the ship in question, the
(02:57):
gasp was hot on the trail of the Hannah, which
was a smuggling ship from America, and it ran aground
off of the nam Quit Point in Providences nar Anga
Sette Bay. Wow, that's a tough one. What do you
think ben nar Ango, Sette Narain, Narragansett Boom. I'm going
with Narragansett, the Narragansett Bay. And that was on June nine.
(03:20):
Uh So John Brown, who's this American merchant um was
not feeling good about British taxes on on the things
that he was selling. So he rode out to the
gas Pop with some other guys colonists, and they took
over the ship. They got rid of the crew, and
then they set the ship on fire. When I say
(03:42):
got rid of, I don't mean that they killed them.
I just mean they escorted them off the vessel. Right,
So that's the that's the top level story, right, How
did we get here? The action kind of begins brewing
in seventeen sixty three. As a consequence of the French
and Indan War, England has gained control of Canada, Florida,
(04:04):
and the land west to the Mississippi River. To protect
these territories, the British need an army to you know,
they want to position an army along the frontier. It
makes sense, but it also requires some cold, hard cash.
And because the British Crown doesn't want to have to
foot the bill itself, they go to the thirteen colonies
(04:26):
of what would later become the United States and they say,
give us some scratch. The colonists say, heck no, how
dare you? For two reasons. First, they said, why are
we gonna pay for an army on the border when
the British won't let us settle in these new lands again,
they won't let us settle in Canada, Florida lands west
(04:48):
of the Mississippi. And then they said, second, why are
the British attempting to take more control over colonial trade
after they had already let us operate with a somewhat
free hand for over a century, right, and then these
taxes are getting past in seventeen sixty four. People in
(05:09):
the colonies generally did not like paying taxes. Rhode Island
gets super pod about this because the taxes target commerce,
and this is a very small colony and other than
the Bay, they don't have a lot going on. And
there was this whole practice that you might have read
(05:29):
about in history class called merketilism, where British colonies were
required or to only trade with England. And there had
been sort of a kind of a grace period, I
guess where folks in ports cities like Newport and Providence,
um in Rhode Island had been making a fair amount
of money and trading with partners from all over the world.
(05:50):
Now that was not going to be happening anymore. So
adding additional tax to this already kind of simmering situation
of resentment was not a good thing. That's right. And
let's let's also paint the picture here. Rhode Island at
this time is a lot more edgy than the Rhode
Island of modern day. It's a notorious heighi hole for
(06:11):
smugglers and privateers, and people are evading taxes left and right.
The British government are pretty much just attempting to enforce
the law. Granted it is a law that they made
without much say so from the colonists. So they passed
specifically the Sugar Act, and then they bring six ships
across the pond two enforce this act, and one of
(06:37):
these vessels as a vessel called the Gaspy. The people
of Rhode Island did not dig the enforcement of these
new laws. Uh. They attacked the HMS St. John in
seventeen sixty four. Five years later they burned the HMS Liberty,
a customship as it was in Newport Harbor, and by
(06:59):
seventeen seventy to the gas b is a known problem
in the bay because they are almost working on commission.
They want to collect as much custom that as much
taxation as they can because they get a slice of
the pie. And a lot of this goes back to
(07:19):
a guy named Lieutenant William Duddingston. That's such a weird name. Uh,
I was going to pronounce it. Yeah, he feels like
it dud to me though. So he was the commander
of the gas and he was the one making the
call to be as aggressive as the gasby was, so
(07:40):
once they've moved up into the bay, his tactics really
start getting on the colonists nerves. He is hunting everybody ships,
from you know, the large merchant traders who sail across
the ocean, to really small traders who are just kind
of going up the coastline, even down to people who
are just trying to make a been catching fish. He's
(08:01):
a real pill. And they were even ordered to take
supplies from farmers in the area without asking them. They
were just stealing. It's not a good look, not a
good He was despised. He was universally despised, and rightly so.
So yeah, I mean and as time went on, um,
(08:22):
he kept using these really users, kind of mean spirited,
aggressive tactics, and it kept rilling up these colonists and
it was really an untenable situation, right. Yes, even the
governors of colonies wrote to the British saying that the
Gap Speak crew was out of pocket. This is my
(08:45):
one of my favorite parts. Uh, this goes back for years.
Seventeen seventy two, Governor Joseph Wanton says that in addition
to robbing the colonists, harassing them. They also insult the
colonist with quote the most abusive and contumelius language. Contumelius.
(09:06):
I'm not familiar with that word, but I think I
will adopt that one for myself. Um so it's true. Yeah,
kunchu melius c O N t U m E l
I O U s. And of course, as a guy
with the name like Dudingston, Duddingston would do. He refused,
and he kept this disruptive behavior going all throughout the
(09:27):
Narragansett Bay. And then on June nine, the gaspet chooses
the wrong customer right, they try to stop and search
the craft called the Hannah. The Hannah is a small
trader from Newport. It's going from Newport to Providence. The
captain of the Hannah as a fellow ben His name
(09:48):
is Benjamin Lindsay, and he says, first off, he says
heck na, and then they say okay, and they fire
some warning shots and he goes, whoa super nah. And
then Lynn See lures Lieutenant Duddingston into an area off
of nam Quid Point. And this is there's a there's
(10:09):
a method to the madness here. Because Captain Lindsay knows
that this part of the bay will be very shallow
at the low tide, and by two o'clock the Gatsby
is run aground, the Hannah races away making its escape,
and then as soon as Lindsay gets to Providence, he
(10:30):
tells person we mentioned at the top, John Brown, what happened.
This is important because John Brown was probably the most
well off man in the community, right he sure was. Alright. So,
starting here, we're gonna give you a little bit of
a re enactment type play by play that we got
from New England Historical Society dot com seventy two Gaspy
(10:54):
Affair Road Islands tea party ship burned. So it starts
with on ordering eight longboats to be delivered to Finner's wharf,
and he wanted them to be treated in a certain way.
He wanted them to have silencers applied to their oars
and oar locks. I can only imagine that that would
(11:15):
involve some sort of fabric or you know, some sort
of cushion that you would put there so they wouldn't
make those sounds. He then got a drummer, a little
drummer boy, to go around the town and announce that
the gaspe had run aground, and that anyone that wanted
to get in on the destruction should go to the
home of one James Saban, who lived right next to
(11:37):
Finner's Wharf. And this is where another player enters the game,
Efrem Bowen. I don't know any efforts nowadays. Yeah, he's
about nineteen years old, and he grabs his pops gun
and powder and shot and then he runs over to
James house and he sees there's a crowd of people around.
(11:57):
There are some people are working on musketballs in the kitchen,
and then he sees his pal kid around his age
Joseph Buckland was there too, And just remember that guy
for leader in the story. That night there's no moon, right,
it's really dark. So those muffled oars and oarlocks help
a lot. More than a hundred people row out in
(12:18):
long boats to the gaspeet. Old Lieutenant Duddingston is awake
and he leans over the gunwale. It sounds like he's
in his jammie's and he says, who goes there? And
then this guy, Abraham Whipple says, I'm the Sheriff of
the County of Kent. God you I have a warrant
(12:39):
to apprehend you. Damn you, so surrender mouth on this guy?
Al Right, what happens next to Duddingston? No doubt taken
aback by this? What's the word been? What kind of
languagelius language? He clutched his pearls, but he would clutch
something else in just a minute, because you see are pal.
(13:01):
Joseph Bucklin, who was standing aloft the main seat of
that long bow, one of the longboats that was surrounding
the ship, realized that he had Duddingston in his sights, right,
and so he be He calls to his buddy from
He calls him f E. I guess that's Feffy for sure.
F what have you? Uh? He says, reached we our
gun and I can kill that fellow. No, no, no doubt,
(13:23):
he said, quite loudly, And uh it's true. Buckland then
fired at Duddingston, hit him in the arm once and
then the lower abdomen. Uh, And he exclaimed again, according
to this account, which I love, this language is delightful,
I have killed the rascal. And that's when Duddington took
a fall um and he thought, uh that he he
(13:43):
was a goner. Yeah, I don't believe everything you see
in films and fictional television, even if someone has been
shot before, literally everyone on the planet is surprised and
horrified by the genuine pain of a gun shot. It's
always like the first time. So old Lieutenant Dudds thinks,
this is it no more for the Dudster. The dudster
(14:06):
bites the dust. Things like that. I'm sure he was thinking.
And people in Rhode Island today will sometimes still celebrate
this shot, the shot fired by Buckland, as the first
shot of the Revolutionary War. So the crewmen of the
Gatsby are captured and they're loaded onto these long boats
that have been surrounding them. This is shortly before dawn.
(14:28):
They had left one boat and the leaders of the
raid behind the Gatsby crew. The plan was to take
them to the cellar of a house and then uh
Old Duddies. Lieutenant Duddies was taken separately to see a doctor.
He was not, in fact mortally wounded. Uh The leaders
of the raid prominent Rhode Islanders like uh the opium
(14:52):
and slave trade kingpin John Brown, wealthy student town Abraham Whipple,
the foul mouth sheriff. They hang on then they start
going through stuff on the ship. Right, they go through
Lieutenant Duddington's papers, and then right is picture. This is
so cinematic. Right as dawn is breaching the horizon, they
(15:13):
set fire to the gaspee, they board their long boat,
and then they sail away while people are watching the show,
literally watching the show the way we watch fireworks. Because
the ship doesn't just slowly burn. We have to remember
this ship had gunpowder on it. So in the way
you see like a car, for example, in a movie,
(15:36):
go off a cliff, it sits for a second and
then explodes. That would never really happen with the car,
But a burning ship full of gunpowder, there's gonna be
a boom. Just wait for it. It's gonna be fun.
And this is where it takes a weird turn right
because it feels like the end of the story. That's
not quite the end, because you see the British is
(15:59):
the Porties were still around, They're still very much in play,
and they decide we are going to investigate this gusts
be affair, and they opened a case on it June
tenth two and this case winds on for a year,
but it runs into a big problem. Despite the numerous
(16:19):
people who participated in the raid. Despite the many more
people who watched the ship burned down and explode, new
one said they knew anything about what happened that night,
who was involved, how it happened. There was nobody would roll,
nobody would snitch. Everybody knew nothing. As soon as the
(16:41):
British came around. Yeah, and it wasn't even until America
got independence from Britain that the real story came out, right,
which is hilarious. Yeah, So here's the thing, the gasping
affair we heard about Governor Joseph Wanton. He really was
in hot water because he was a buddy of John
Brown and a simple theiser of the plight of the
(17:01):
colonists and the merchants, right, Yeah, he was in this
rock and hard place situation because Governor Joseph Wanton was
also a wealthy merchant. He was friends with other wealthy
merchants like John Brown, a ring leader of the raid,
and he sympathized with people other merchants in the colony.
And like these British customs officials are just jerks, they're
(17:24):
real heels. They are rude. They talked down to us.
But I don't want war with the British, says Governor Wanton.
So he appointed, he's appointed chairman of the Royal Commission
of Inquiry. He does his best to soft pedal the investigation,
to delay proceedings, to kind of play kate British authorities
(17:46):
like we're doing the best we can, will update you, etcetera.
And everybody in Rhode Island is a united front. Nobody
is going to roll on these raiders. And that is
why the official finding the committee was are you ready?
This was undertaken by persons unknown. I love that expression
(18:08):
person is unknown, just in general. It's just kind of
ultimate absolution of let it go. It's up there with
Mistakes were made. Mistakes were indeed made, and you know,
we said Wanton was kind of looked at as a
sympathizer because he was pals with with Brown and his family, um.
But at the same time, when the American Revolution did
break out in seventeen seventy five, he was branded as
(18:30):
a loyalist because he didn't want war with Britain. But
he was actually a bit more neutral and that groundwork
that he laid during the Gasping Affair sort of protected
him from the Patriots when all hell broke loose, and
they did not ransack his home as they would have
with other governors. Yeah, they were. They were pretty much
(18:51):
from what we can tell, during the course of the war,
the patriots and the revolutionary forces. When it came to Wanton,
they pretty much told him to just stay out of it,
you know what I mean, mind your business, don't get
in our way, and we won't get in yours. Thanks
for having our back during that Gaspy thing, and it
did play a huge role. The possibility that the Gaspy
(19:15):
Raiders could be sent to Britain and tried for treason
and given the death penalty really scared the colonists, and
rightly so they started forming what they called committees of correspondence.
These things became kind of like shadow governments, and in
a very real way, they were catalysts for what we
call the American Revolution today. There's one last note to
(19:39):
this story for everybody worried about our buddy, our pal
the Dutters. He did survive. He had a close call,
he did almost bleed to death, but he was saved.
He continued his naval career and eventually he died a rich,
happy old man in Scotland. Not too at you know,
(20:00):
there were there were a lot of hurt feelings. There
was indeed a revolution, but in this city as televised.
The revolution was not televised at that point, was though
at least probably there was a blog. I think there
was a blog that was also mainly based on recipes.
But to read the actual recipe you had to go
through this uh five to tempt paragraph story about what
(20:21):
the recipe meant. Oh, that's the worst, and then you
get to the part where it like says show more,
and then it's a bunch of ads and then maybe
under that you get the recipe. But we digress. This
is kind of a parallel event to the Boston tea
party and that it represented Rhode Islands kind of we've
had at moment, right, Yeah, and there's this there's something
amazing to an inspirational about how communities can band together,
(20:48):
you know, to to enforce what they see as justice.
Because anybody at any point could have turned around and
given the British the evidence they needed for a species
where three people have a hard time uh cooperating right
in general, to have an entire community do that is
impressive and astonishing. We hope that you enjoyed today's episode,
(21:12):
and we would like to hear from you. What are
some more little known strange conflicts in American history that
you think your fellow listeners would enjoy. You can find
us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter. You
can find us on Instagram, not just as a show,
but as individuals. I am Ben Bolan on Instagram having
(21:34):
various uh strange adventures, and I am Ben Bolen hsw
on Twitter. You can find me at how Now, Noel
Brown on Instagram. I've got a Twitter, but I don't
really use it. I just use it to creep on
other Twitters, which is a legitimate use of Twitter. And also,
have you ever seen have you ever seen those uh
parody accounts where the idea is the American Revolution but
(21:57):
with Twitter, like what founding fathers would have said Twitter,
It's hilarious. I do follow a Frederick Nietzsche account though,
so it's probably along those lens. Yeah, yeah, I can
see that too, as always thinks to super producer Casey Pegram,
as well as Alex Williams, who composed that banging track
you hear at the beginning of every episode. Thanks to
research associate Gabe lose Here, and our good buddy Ryan Barrish,
(22:20):
who continues to give us a hand and hopefully we're
hearing from very soon thanks to Christopher haciotis here in spirit.
I have a surprise for you. Know, I did not
tell you about for a while. We've both been traveling
a lot, so it took me a second. As you know,
circumstances found me in Japan. Uh and as I like
to do when I get a chance, I got you
(22:41):
a souvenir. Se casey, I got you something too, but
I didn't bring it with me today. Words. It's a hat,
it says Nagoya. It's a sport cap of the snapback
of variety, and it has a lovely little stylized Japanese
a fish dragon creature on the side, and it's just lovely. Ben. Well,
(23:04):
there you go, switching it out right now, right, all right?
But yeah, yeah, I hope you enjoyed. Don't feel obligated.
You don't have to. I just thought of you when
I thought I had. It's in the sound of meat,
making it very large for my large head. Can I
here it goes? Oh it's still too Nope, still too small. No, No,
I've got I've got to put it on the last
(23:25):
little click here because quite alright, it's still a little tight.
Maybe it's for eating. No, it's perfect. There's like a
little splash of color on the brim to a little
splash of color. Yeah, yeah, all right, yea is it hypercolor? Yeah,
it is kind of iridescence, like the scales of a
Japanese dragonfish. There you go, Thank you very much, but
I love it. We'll see you next time Fox. For
(23:51):
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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