The List of the Raiders.

American History Mystery - Identities Hidden During the Revolution
 - Being Solved by The Gaspee Scholars.

The participants in the first act of war in the American Revolution deserve commemoration.  We present here the most complete List of the Gaspee Raiders.  These are the Rhode Island men who actually were in the raiding party that in 1772 attacked and destroyed the English Navy ship Gaspee.

About the List

The Rhode Island Men Who Attacked the Gaspee: List triples the number previously identified by historians.

Until 1999 most historians had identified only about ten of the raiders (the listed names vary). During the Revolutionary War the people of Rhode Island had kept secret the names of the men involved to protect them from capture by the English. After the War, no organized effort was made to list their names for history. Today, it is obvious that we do not know the names of most of them..

Until 1999, most accounts of the Gaspee attack adopted a legend (based on a popular song of the Revolution that there were about 60 men in the boats of Rhode Island that attacked the Gaspee.  Actually, there were more than 100 men in the attacking force.  Read how this has been discovered.  Starting in 1999, Leonard Bucklin, of the Joseph Bucklin Society, and John Concannon, of the Gaspee Virtual Archives, have identified other Rhode Island men who probably were in the attacking party.  Although we still have identified less men than the legendary number of 60, or the actual number of 100 plus, that John Brown assembled--- our Society's present list more than triples the number of previously known participants in the Gaspee raiding party! 

The history and biographical information at this site
was last  on Sunday, 28 June 2009.

There are four main reasons why the Joseph Bucklin Society's list has more than triple the identities published by historians before 1999.   

1. Research by our society, made possible by donated funds, plus dedicated, long term, research aimed at this effort. The two greatest collections of publicly and freely available information about the Gaspee Affair are (1) the Joseph Bucklin Society and this website, and (2) the Gaspee Virtual Archives.
    
2. Great aid from Gaspee.Org.  The Gaspee Virtual Archives has been a twin driver of research. Like Gaspee Info, the Gaspee Virtual Archives has had the advantages of being constant in its research, and being publicly available.  Our Gaspee Info research has been greatly aided by John Concannon, the tireless Rhode Island researcher and intelligent webmaster at the Gaspee Virtual Archives. Much of our research and critical analysis started with items gathered by Concannon.  Much or our research started with items gathered by Concannon.  We owe him much.
    
3. The use of forensic history investigatory methods. This site (Gaspee.Info) focuses on finding the evidence of the "who" and "how" and "why", of the attack. Some of the research is called "forensic investigation" or "forensic history" because it is uses the methods of forensics in reconstructing events. We do not rely exclusively on a preserved contemporaneous direct statement of the event sought. Rather we include other evidence of what happened during the relevant time period and see if the total body of evidence allows a reasonably certain judgment of what in fact occurred.
    
4. Decision to list all possible Gaspee Raiders. We have chosen to list all those who have been identified by any researcher, author, or historian, amateur or not, as long as the claim is rational, based on historical fact, and reasonably justified. Each of the  persons on our Raiders list has been identified either by us or by at least one outside researcher.  We have reasonable doubts regarding some of them, but we recognize that there are reasonable arguments for inclusion of the person. We have decided that by listing all who are probable raiders, we assist future research.

Our list of the Gaspee Raiders includes biographical information on the individuals in the Gaspee raiding party.  It also is the place where we discuss the inter-relations among the individuals in the raiding party. What if you are looking for some information on persons who were not in the raiding party, but who influenced events of the time? 

Information about persons other than the raiders is found at our page on the "History" portion of this site, at our page titled Cast of Characters.  That page has the information about some other persons, both on the American side and on the English side, who did not actually participate in the raid but are noteworthy if you are want more of the full Gaspee story and events leading to the American Revolution.

Colonists we still are investigating as "possible" raiders.

John Howland wrote a short list of persons who were Gaspee Raiders, but he did not document his sources.  John Howland  was a boy about 12 years old during the Gaspee Affair.  After the end of the War he wrote that he was at the Providence waterfront  when the boats rowed away for the attack in June 1772.  He included the names of individuals in the raid. and he grew up among many of them.  Because Howland grew up in Providence and probably knew many persons personally,  and because  Howland 67 years later (in 1839) was the first director of the RI Historical Society, we take his lately written, and undocumented, list seriously.

A second source of likely suspects comes from the signatures of the Providence merchants who signed the complaint against Dudingston, claiming he was acting without authority.  These merchants, or their ship captains likely were eager to join the expedition and rid Narragansett Bar of English Navy enforcement of customs laws.  In addition to John Brown, the other persons signing the complaint were:

Evidence and respected authority suggest investigation of those involved in legal proceedings about the time of the attack.  Indeed, three lawyers, a judge, and a court clerk were accused of being participants in the affair, but they successfully escaped arrest by each furnishing alibis for the others.  At a minimum, they may well have been involved as  participants in legal planning -- before the attack -- for the justification of the attack.  They were named by the English navy, based on millitary intelligence given by a well-placed spy in Rhode Island society, as:  "John Andrews, Esq., Judge of the court of Vice Admiralty within the Colony of Rhode Island; Mr. Arthur Fenner, Clerk in the Supreme Court in the county of Providence; Messrs. John Cole, George Brown, and Daniel Hitchcock, Attorneys at Law in the town of Providence."

Now, look at our  List of Gaspee Raiders.