Gaspee

by Alex Gabbard

Dozens of Rhode Islanders, gentlemen, sailors, businessmen, citizens, and patriots, launched their longboats under the cover of darkness to apprehend Lt. Dudingston of the HMS Gaspee, and quietly rowed themselves toward a hangman's noose for each of them. The sots exchanged, the clash of arms, the seizing of the ship and crew were such an insul to the King, and to the Royal Navy, that the Crown's magistrates threatened military occupation long before the fever of revolution swept the countryside from farm to village to town. The raid on the night of June 9, 1772 and its tenuous but clever cover-up perpetrated in court became an epic expression of the emerging American spirit that later burst into the long and bloody Book of the Year 2007

212 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2006