JOHN PAUL JONES AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN NAVAL IRREGULAR WARFARE

His Majesty's schooner Gaspee jerked to a stop in what Lieutenant William Dudingston thought was clear water. The schooner, on revenue and security patrols in the Narragansett Bay of Rhode Island, was following a suspicious packet sloop named Hanah toward Providence. But Gaspee had not been up the Providence River before, and her sailors and commander did not know the hazards of the sandbar off Namquid Point, a sandbar that Hanah's skipper Thomas Lindsey had purposely sailed close to in the hope that the falling tide might snare the British warship. It was June of 1772, and the relationship between the watermen of Rhode Island and the Royal Navy was at a low point after months of seizures, inspections, and tax collection.

Dudingston and his men tried to break Gaspee free from the sand, but to no avail. With the tide continuing to fall, and the sun setting, it would be hours until the water rose enough to free the schooner. The British sailors estimated that around 0200, in the early morning hours, the ship would lift off the bar. Dudingston ordered his watch to set a lookout and sent the rest of his crew below to get some sleep. He retired to his cabin and changed into his bedshirt to catch some needed rest himself.

Just after midnight, as the crew slept, Seaman Bartholomew Cheever spotted something in the darkness. He first thought he had simply seen the moonlight play off nearby rocks. However, a few moments later he looked again and the rocks appeared to be moving. He shouted a warning but received no response across the water. He hailed a second time, again with no answer. The lone watchstander headed aft and ducked into his skipper's cabin, waking Dudingston and William Dickinson, the midshipman who was Gaspee's second in command. As the seaman went back on deck, the lieutenant grabbed his officer's sword and followed him out into the night in his bedclothes.

Back on deck, the British made out a pair of boats approaching Gaspee from the north, the lead group of what would be a whole swarm. Dudingston shouted toward them, demanding that they identify themselves. A voice rose out of the night from Abraham Whipple, identifying himself as the sheriff of Kent County, Rhode Island, and announced that the boats were approaching to serve a warrant and arrest Dudingston. He was charged with overstepping his authority in pursuit of smugglers along Rhode Island's shores. Dudingston ordered them to depart and to return to discuss their issues at a more appropriate hour. He sent Dickinson to unlock the small-arms locker as more boats appeared and continued to approach Gaspee.

Whipple again shouted his intention to arrest the lieutenant, encouraging the men who rowed the boats to pull on toward the warship. Dudingston ordered Cheever to fire a warning shot with his musket. But the seaman's flint had become wet and the lock snapped without firing. As the boats rushed the final yards toward the sides of the ship, the lieutenant shouted down the hatch to awaken his crew and order them on deck. He rushed for the starboard bow, where the first boat approached, and swung his sword toward the ghostly men who were attempting to board his ship out of the night.

A musket shot rang out from the boats. Dudingston was hit in the left arm, the ball continued and ripped through his groin, and he fell back onto the deck in a pool of his own blood. The boarders swarmed over the schooner's low bulwarks, armed with axe handles and wooden staves, and beat the British crew back below decks, guarding the hatch to ensure they could not come out. The raiders thronged around Dudingston and Dickinson, menacing in the moonlight and threatening to beat them both further unless they begged for their lives. But Abraham Whipple and John Brown stopped them, the ship secured for the moment. Dudingston struck a deal with the colonials, he would order his men to surrender if they promised nobody else would be hurt. The men from Providence agreed.

Eight boats had gathered at Fenner's Wharf in Providence when Hanah arrived, telling the tale of Gaspee's grounding. Whipple, a former privateer skipper in the French and Indian Wars, and Brown had gathered and armed crews with muskets, knives, and clubs. Gaspee had been preying on Rhode Island merchantmen, stopping and delaying their voyages, seizing their cargo with what they considered questionable cause. They had had enough, and the local merchants had sworn out a complaint against Dudingston and a judge issued an arrest warrant. The eight boats had rowed the five miles south to Gaspee to launch their maritime raid.

The British sailors surrendered, under the lieutenant's orders, and the colonials began binding their hands and placing them into the boats. The Rhode Islanders treated Dudingston's wounds and carried him off the ship as well. With the schooner empty, they set combustibles and lit them before scrambling for the boats left alongside. Pulling hard for the shore, the raiders and their captives watched as Gaspee burst into flames, the fire climbing into the rigging and lighting up the night sky. They abandoned the sailors on the shore near Pawtucket, and the boats rowed back north toward home as the British warship burned through the night. Nothing but the hulk below the waterline remained.

American naval and maritime history has included irregular operations from the earliest days of the American Revolution. In the years before the exchange of gunfire at Lexington and Concord, traditionally seen as the start of the armed struggle, the colonists and British authorities had already experienced conflict and violence at sea. With the burning of the revenue privateer Liberty in Newport Harbor in 1769, and then the violent destruction of His Majesty's schooner Gaspee in 1772, American revolutionaries adopted maritime irregular warfare long before the conflict spread ashore.

Following the outbreak of the war on land, irregular warfare continued to play a part in American maritime operations. Most histories of the Continental Navy, however, have tended to focus on conventional blue- water operations like warship duels and attacks on enemy shipping, whether by Continental Navy ships or privateers. Some historians have examined the building and administration of the conventional naval force. Capt. John Paul Jones, held up by Roosevelt as the "father" of the American Navy,...