Washington's General by Terry Golway Read Free Book Online Page A

to send to Rhode Island, the colony that had turned smuggling and evasion into an art form.
    Rhode Islanders, of course, had some experience in dealing with customs and revenue officials who had no appreciation for their local traditions. And, like Dudingston, they were not shy about expressing their feelings. In the summer of 1769, the warship
Liberty
had sailed to Newport to enforce laws against smuggling and evasion of duty. After several confrontations with vessels suspected of carrying contraband, the
Liberty
opened fire on a particularly quarrelsome captain and his crew. The next day, the
Liberty’s
captain was introduced to the ways and means of angry Rhode Islanders. As he set foot on a wharf in Newport, the captain was surrounded and was told to order his crew off the ship. He had little choice but to comply. A select committee of Newport citizens boarded the vessel, cut it loose, and scuttled it. A few days later, the
Liberty
made for a fine bonfire. Nobody was ever prosecuted for this daring display of dissent. Rhode Island authorities later described the suspects merely as “Persons unknown.”
    Lieutenant Dudingston would put an end to this kind of insolence.
    Dudingston and the
Gaspee
arrived in Narragansett Bay in early 1772, and Rhode Island’s merchants quickly discovered that he was a man who meant business. He disdained the tradition of presenting his commission to Rhode Island’s governor. He demanded that all ships lower their colors in tribute as they passed the
Gaspee.
Vessels of all sizes were subject to search, and Dudingston’s well-armed crew made sure that their searches were thorough.
    Dudingston had nothing but contempt for the colony and its merchants. He complained that Rhode Islanders acted as if “they have every right to carry on” their illicit trade “without interuption.” He was not wrong. But he was determined to change the way this irrascible colony conducted its business affairs. On February 17, 1772, he seized an opportunity to make his point.
    The merchant vessel
Fortune
was anchored in Narragansett Bay, its hold filled with fourteen hundred gallons of rum, a hogshead of brown sugar, and forty gallons of “Jamaican spirits.” At the vessel’s helm was Rufus Greene, a young cousin of Nathanael Greene and his brothers. The firm of Nathanael Greene & Company owned the
Fortune.
    An officer from the
Gaspee
set out from the mother ship and boarded the
Fortune,
instructing Rufus Greene to retreat into the cabin while the vessel was searched. Greene asked the officer under whose authority he was acting. “If you do not go into the cabin, I’ll let you know,” the officer replied. The officer’s drawn sword indicated the source of his authority,and Rufus Greene was hustled off toward the cabin, where he was roughed up and thrown against a chest of drawers. The
Gaspee
towed Greene’s ship into Newport Harbor.
    Dudingston decided to send the
Fortune
and its cargo to Boston, where an Admiralty Court–and not a local jury–could decide its fate. By law, however, the case should have been tried in Newport, but Dudingston decided that this was one evasion of the law that the Crown would support.
    Word of the
Fortune’s
seizure and of the rough treatment cousin Rufus suffered quickly made its way to Conventry. Nathanael Greene was furious. He put aside his pining for Nancy Ward and his endless exercises in self-improvement to win some measure of justice and compensation for what he regarded as an act of officially sanctioned piracy. In a letter to his friend Sammy Ward, Greene wrote that he was in pursuit of a “Searover,” or pirate, who had taken “a quantity of Our Rum and carried it round to Boston (contrary to the Express words of the Statute).” The “illegality of [the] measure,” he went on, “created such a Spirit of Resentment That I have devoted almost the whole of my Time in