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Joseph Bucklin Society
Site Summary. A national history center both for the Gaspee Affair of 1772 and also for Bucklin History 1600-1899. We emphasize the pre-Revolutionary history of Massachusetts and Rhode Island and the events and people involved in the Americans' 1772 attack on the Royal Navy ship Gaspee. We maintain a 4,000 person biography and genealogy database and history for the Bucklin family. This is Gaspee History Edition: 2010 - J Copyright, |
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In the American Revolution ---- the American assault on the English Navy
ship Gaspee was the
first planned attack against the English.|
It was after midnight on June 10, 1772. There was no moonlight and dark cloaked the Narragansett Bay, where the Gaspee, an English Navy schooner, had run aground on Namquid Point. Over a hundred men, in ten large boats, had silently approached and now were trying to board and capture the Gaspee. In one of the boats, a few yards away from the Gaspee, by dim starlight Joseph Bucklin could see the vessel's commander on the starboard gunwale, swinging his sword and preventing the American attackers from boarding the Gaspee. "Ephe," Bucklin said to his friend Ephraim Bowen, "reach me your gun, and I can kill that fellow." Bucklin fired. The English ship commander, Lt. Dudingston, fell back on the deck, with a terrible wound in the femoral artery in his groin. The colonists boarded the schooner, and took its crew prisoner. Joseph Mawney, a doctor among the raiders, together with Bucklin, tended to Dudingston's wounds, saving his life. The raiders with their prisoners rowed away, leaving one longboat for the leaders of the American raiders. The leaders carefully set the English Navy vessel on fire, before themselves leaving, just as dawn came. The English Attorney General gave King George the legal opinion that the Gaspee raid was treason, and the deliberate shooting of the English ship captain was an act of war. The American Revolution had started! |
The English King proclaimed a £1000 reward in the American colonies for information leading to Joseph's arrest for treason. Rhode Island protected Bucklin and his family. The Rhode Island government and the people of Providence banded together. No one told the King's Royal Commission or the English forces who had shot Lt. Dudingston.
Why did this attack occur? Who was involved in the planning? How many Americans were in the attack force? Those are the sorts of questions answered at this site. Use the links in the left margin to several pages of describing and the events that involved, affected, or resulted from, the Gaspee attack.
However --- for detailed
Gaspee history --- see our Gaspee.Info, a separate website devoted solely to the
background, the planning, the events, and the results and aftermath of the 1772 Gaspee attack.
Plus that site has a unique and extensive biographical
list of
the men in the boats that captured and destroyed the Royal Navy ship Gaspee.
Our "Gaspee Info" site, includes: including:
- More extensive information on the capture and burning of the Gaspee.
- Analysis of the known facts - forensic history.
- More of the background of events before the raid on the Gaspee.
- Full text of the accounts by eye-witness to the events.
- List, and individual biographical information on each of
the known
persons in the boats that attacked the Royal Navy ship Gaspee. - Description of the construction, armaments, and crew of the Gaspee.
- Number of men in the attacking American force, and the number and type of boats involved.
- The colonists use of law and the courts as a weapon against the English navy.
- In depth historical research about the event, the causes, and the aftermath.
- Original - first time done - research on the geography, tides, and moonlight of the attack.
- Research and analysis of what John Brown intended to use to justify the attack.