Expedition against the Gaspee. Her Destruction. Efforts to discover the Incendiaries. The Commissioners. discharge was returned by a musket from one of the boats.' Duddington was wounded in the groin, and carried below. The boats now came alongside the schooner, and the men boarded her without much opposition, the crew retreating below when their wounded commander was carried down. A medical student among the Americans dressed Duddington's wound, and he was carried on shore at Pawtuxet. The schooner's company were ordered to collect their clothing and leave the vessel, which they did; and all the effects of Lieutenant Duddington being carefully placed in one of the American boats to be delivered to the owner, the Gaspee was set on fire and at dawn blew up.' On being informed of this event, Governor Wanton issued a proclamation, orderJune 12. ing diligent search for persons having a knowledge of the crime, and offering a re ward of five hundred dollars for the discov Mantoy Dand Horsmanden Fr. Smyth. ery of the perpetrators of said villainy, to be Peters Pliver Brobs Curhmuty SIGNATURES OF THE COMMISSIONERS. Thomas Bucklin, a young man about nineteen years of age, fired the musket. He afterward assisted in dressing the wound which his bullet inflicted. 2 This was Dr. John Mawney. His kindness and attention to Duddington excited the gratitude of that officer, who offered young Mawney a gold stock-buckle; that being refused, a silver one was offered and accepted. 3 The principal actors in this affair were John Brown, Captain Abraham Whipple, John B. Hopkins, Benjamin Dunn, Dr. John Mawney, Benjamin Page, Joseph Bucklin, Turpin Smith, Ephraim Bowen, and Captain Joseph Tillinghast. The names were, of course, all kept secret at the time. The commission consisted of Governor Joseph Wanton, of Rhode Island; Daniel Horsmanden, chief justice of New York; Frederic Smyth, chief justice of New Jersey; Peter Oliver, chief justice of Massachusetts; and Robert Auchmuty, judge of the Vice-admiralty Court. 5 The drum was publicly beaten; the sixty-four boldly embarked on the expedition without disguise; and it is asserted by Mr. John Howland (still living), that on the morning after the affair, a young man, named Justin Jacobs, paraded on the "Great Bridge," a place of much resort, with Lieutenant Duddington's gold-laced beaver on his head, detailing the particulars of the transaction to a circle around him. 6 See Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee, by the Honorable William R. Staples; Providence, 1845. In a song written at the time, and composed of fifty-eight lines of doggerel verse, is ingeniously given the history of the affair. It closes with the following allusion to the rewards offered: Return to Providence. Visit to Mr. John Howland. His military Career in the Revolution. After finishing my sketch of Namquit, or Gaspee Point (page 60), we embarked for Providence, the wind blowing a gale from the northwest. It was with much difficulty that we managed our vessel; and before we reached the harbor we were drenched with the spray that dashed over the gunwale from the windward. In company with Mr. Weeden I visited the fine library of the Athenium Association,' and afterward had the pleasure of a brief interview, at his residence, with the venerable Mr. Howland, president of the Historical Society. So clear and vigorous was his well-cultivated mind, that I regretted the brevity of my visit, made necessary by the near approach of the hour of departure of the steam-packet, in which I was to proceed to Newport. Mr. Howland passed his ninety-first birth-day a few days before I saw him. He was a soldier early in the war for independence, having been drafted as a minute man in the winter of 1775, to go to Newport. He was afterward attached to the Rhode Island regiment under Colonel Lippincott, and joined the Continental army under Washington at Kingsbridge, at the upper end of York or Manhattan Island. He was in the retreat to White Plains in the autumn of 1776, and was engaged in the skirmish at Chatterton's Hill. He related an amusing circumstance which occurred during that retreat. While the Americans halted upon Chatterton's Hill, the British, in close pursuit, rested, for a short time, upon another eminence close by. An Irishman, one of Colonel Lippincott's servants, who was called "Daddy Hall," seemed quite uneasy on account of the presence of the enemy. He had charge of the colonel's horse, and frequently exclaimed, What are we doing here? Why do we stop here? Why don't we go on? I don't believe the colonel knows that the red-coated rascals are so near." Paymaster Dexter, seeing the perturbation of the poor fellow, said, "Daddy Hall, you're afraid! you're a trembling coward!" The Milesian's ire was aroused at these words, and looking the paymaster in the face with a scornful curl of his lips, he said, " Be jabers! no, Maisther Dexther, I'm not afeerd more nor yez be; but faith! ye'll find yourself that one good pair of heels is worth two of hands afore night; if ye don't, call Daddy Hall a spalpeen." And so he did; for before sunset the Americans were flying before their pursuers, more grateful to heels than hands for safety. 1776. Mr. Howland accompanied Washington in his retreat across New Jersey, and was in the division of Cadwallader, at Bristol, which was to go over the Delaware on the night when Washington crossed that river, and surprised the Hessians at Trenton. The December 25, ice prevented; but they crossed the next day, and were stationed at Crosswicks for a day or two. Mr. Howland was among those at Trenton who were driven across the Assanpink by the British on the evening of the 2d of January, the night before the 1777. battle of Princeton. The bridge across the Assanpink was much crowded, and Mr. Howland remembers having his arm scratched by one of Washington's spurs as he passed "Now, for to find these people out, But let him try his utmost skill, I'm apt to think he never will 'Mr. Weeden was formerly librarian of the institution. It is situated in a handsome building on the east side of Benefit Street, and contains about five thousand volumes, among which is a copy of the great work on Egypt, arranged under the superintendence of Denon, and published by Napoleon at the expense of the government of France. This copy belor ged to Prince Polignac, the minister of Charles X. Many of the plates were colored by his direction. It is a beautiful copy, bound in morocco. I was informed, after leaving Providence, that Mr. Dexter was yet living in the northern part of the town, at the age of ninety-two years. Departure for Newport. Appearance of Rhode Island. Old Tower at Newport. Mansion of Governor Gibbs. by the commander in the crowd, who sat upon his white horse at the south end of the bridge. He performed the dreary night march through the snow toward Princeton, and was in the battle there on the following morning. His term of service expired while the American army was at Morristown, whither it went from Princeton. From Morristown, himself and companions made their way on foot. through deep snows, back to Providence, crossing the Hudson River at King's Ferry (Stony Point), and the Connecticut at Hartford. Gladly would I have listened until sunset to the narrative of his great experience, but the first bell of the packet summoned me away. I left Providence at three o'clock in the Perry, and arrived at Newport, thirty miles distant, at about five, edified on the way by the conversation of the venerable William Cranston, of Attlebury, Massachusetts, then eighty-one years of age, who was a resident of Newport during the Revolution. The bald appearance of Rhode Island, relieved only by orchards, which showed like dark tufts of verdure in the distance, with a few wind-mills and scattered farm-houses, formed a singular and unfavorable feature in the view as we approached Newport; while upon small islands and the main land appeared the ruins of forts and batteries, indicating the military importance of the waters we were navigating. This was October 22, "Rhode Island, the land where the exile sought rest; "There Freedom's broad pinions our fathers unfurl'd, The fair promises of a pleasant morrow, sweetly expressed by a bright moonlight evening, were not realized, for at dawn heavy rain-drops were pattering upon my window, 1848. and the wind was piping with all the zeal of a sudden "sou'easter." I had intended to start early for the neighborhood of Quaker Hill, toward the north end of the island, the scene of conflict in 1778; but the storm frustrated my plans, and I passed the day in visiting places of interest in the city and its immediate vicinity. The object of greatest attraction to the visitor at Newport is the Old Tower, or wind-mill, as it is sometimes called. It stands within a vacant lot owned by Governor Gibbs, directly in front of his fine old mansion, which was erected in 1720, and was then one of the finest dwellings in the colony. It is a brick building, covered with red cedar. The main object in the picture is a representation of the tower as it appeared at the time of my visit. On the right of it is seen the residence of Governor Gibbs,' surrounded by shade-trees and flowering shrubs in abundance. I passed the stormy morning under its roof; and to the proprietor I am indebted for much kindness during my visit at Newport, and for valuable suggestions respecting the singular relic of the past that stands upon his grounds, mute and mysterious as a mummy. On the subject of its erection history and tradition are silent, and the object of its construction is alike unknown and conjectural. It is a huge cylinder, composed of unhewn stones -common granite, slate, sandstone, and pudding-stone-cemented with coarse mortar, made of the soil on which the structure stands, and shell lime. It rests upon eight round columns, a little more than three feet in diameter, and ten feet high from the ground to the spring of the arches. The wall is three feet thick, and the whole edifice, at the present time, is twenty-four feet high. The external diameter is twenty-three feet. Governor Gibbs informed me that, on excavating at the base of one of the pillars, he found the soil about four feet deep, lying upon a stratum of hard rock, and that the foundation of the column, which rested upon this rock, was composed of rough-hewn spheres of stone, the lower ones about four feet in circumference. On the interior, a little above the arches, are small square 1 Mr. Gibbs was Governor of Rhode Island in 1819. Old Tower at Newport. Its former Appearance. Attempt to destroy it. Obscurity of its Origin. niches, in depth about half the thickness of the wall, designed, apparently, to receive floortimbers. In several places within, as well as upon the inner surface of some of the columus, are patches of stucco, which, like the mortar, is made of coarse sand and shell lime, and as hard as the stones it covers. Governor Gibbs remembers the appearance of the tower more than forty years ago, when it was partially covered with the same hard stucco upon its exterior surface. Doubtless it was originally covered within and without with plaster, and the now rough columns, with mere indications of capitals and bases of the Doric form, were handsomely wrought, the whole structure exhibiting taste and beauty. During the possession of Rhode Island by the British, in the Revolution, the tower was more perfect than now, having a roof, and the walls were three or four feet higher than at present.' The British used it for an ammunition magazine, and when they evacuated the island, they attempted to demolish the old "mill" by igniting a keg of powder within it! But the strong walls resisted the Vandals, and the only damage the edifice sustained was the loss of its roof and two or three feet of its upper masonry. Such is the Old Tower at Newport at the present time. Its early history is yet unwritten, and may forever remain so." 1 Governor Gibbs showed me a Continental bill of the denomination of five dollars (not signed), which his son found in a crevice in the tower. 'There has been much patient investigation, with a great deal of speculation, concerning this ancient edifice, but no satisfactory conclusion has yet been obtained. Of its existence prior to the English emigration to America there is now but little doubt; and it is asserted that the Indians, of whom Mr. Coddington and other early settlers upon Aquitneck (now Rhode Island) solicited information concerning the structure, had no tradition respecting its origin. Because it was called a "mill" in some old documents, some have argued, or, rather, have flippantly asserted, that it was built by the early English settlers for a wind-mill. Thus Mr. Cooper disposes of the matter in his preface to Red Rover. A little patient inquiry would have given him a different conclusion; and if the structure is really ante-colonial, and perhaps ante-Columbian, its history surely is worthy of investigation. That it was converted into and used for a wind-mill by some of the early settlers of Newport, there is no doubt, for it was easily convertible to such use, although not by a favorable arrangement. The English settlement upon the island was commenced in 1636, at the north end, and in 1639 the first house was erected on the site of Newport, by Nicholas Easton. Mention is made in the colonial records of the erection of a wind-mill by Peter Easton, in 1663, twenty-five years after the founding of Newport; and this was evidently the first mill erected there, from the fact that it was considered of sufficient importance to the colony to induce the General Court to reward Mr. Easton for his enterprise, by a grant of a tract of fine land, a mile in length, lying along what is still known as Easton's First Wind-mill at Newport. Inquiries respecting the Tower. "Antiquitates Americana." Inscription on Dighton Rock. The rain ceased at ten o'clock, and a westerly wind dispersed the clouds, but made the day unpleasant by its blustering breath. I sketched the house on the corner of Spring and PeckBeach. That mill was a wooden structure, and stood upon the land now occupied by the North Buryingground, in the upper suburbs of Newport. The land on which the Old Tower stands once belonged to Governor Benedict Arnold, and in his will, bearing the date of 1678, forty years after the settlement, he mentions the "stone mill," the tower having evidently been used for that purpose. Its form, its great solidity, and its construction upon columns, forbid the idea that it was originally erected for a mill; and certainly, if a common wind-mill, made of timber, was so highly esteemed by the people, as we have seen, the construction of such an edifice, so superior to any dwelling or church in the colony, would have received special attention from the magistrates, and the historians of the day. And wherefore, for such a purpose, were the foundation-stones wrought into spheres, and the whole structure stuccoed within and without? When, in 1837, the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries of Copenhagen published the result of their ten years' investigations concerning the discovery of America by the Northmen in the tenth century, in a volume entitled "Antiquitates Americana," the old "mill" at Newport, the rock inscription at Dighton, in Massachusetts, and the discovery of skeletons, evidently of a race different from the Indians,* elicited the earnest attention of inquirers, as subjects in some way connected with those early discoveries. Dr. Webb (whom I have mentioned as extending to me his friendly services at the rooms of the Historical Society of Massachusetts), who was then a resident of Providence, and secretary to the Rhode Island Historical Society, opened a correspondence with Charles C. Rafn, the secretary to the Royal Society of Copenhagen. Dr. Webb employed Mr. Catherwood to make drawings of the "mill,” and these, with a particular account of the structure, he transmitted to Professor Rafn. Here was opened for the society a new field of inquiry, the products of which were published, with engravings from Mr. Catherwood's drawings. According to Professor Rafn, the architecture of this building is in the ante-Gothic style, which was common in the north and west of Europe from the eighth to the twelfth century. "The circular form, the low columns, their thickness in proportion to their distance from each other, and the entire want of ornament," he says, "all point out this epoch." He imagines that it was used for a baptistry, and accounts for the absence of buildings of a similar character by the abundance of wood in America. The brevity of the sojourn of the Northmen here was doubtless another, and perhaps principal reason, why similar structures were not erected. The fact that the navigators of Sweden, Norway, and Iceland visited and explored the American coast as far as the shores of Connecticut, and probably more southerly, during the tenth and eleventh centuries (five hundred years before the voyages of Columbus), appears to be too well attested to need further notice here. For the proofs, the reader is referred to the interesting work alluded to, "Antiquitates Americana." The inscription upon the rock at Dighton has given rise to much speculation and to many theories. The rock lies upon the east side of Taunton River, between high and low water marks, so that it is covered- and exposed at every ebb and flow of the tide. It is an insulated mass of fine-grained granite, or grunstein, lying northwest and southeast on the sands of the river. Its length is eleven feet, and its height four and a half feet. It has a regular surface and nearly smooth, whereon the inscription is carved. The inscription presents four parts or divisions, and evidently refers to a combat. On the left is a figure armed with a bow and arrow, and may represent an Indian. Next to it is an inscription composed of Runic or Phoenician characters, doubtless a history of the event there partially pictured. Further to the right is a vessel, and on the extreme right are two figures, differing from the one on the left, without bows and arrows, and evidently connected with the vessel. These and the vessel doubtless indicate them as voyagers from a distant land.† Between the figures and the boat are Runic or Phonician characters. The question arises, By whom was the inscription made? The Phoenician characters seem to be proof that those ancient navigators visited the American coast and made this record of combat INSCRIPTION ON DIGHTON ROCK. * Dr. J. C. V. Smith, of Boston, has written an account of a remarkable stone cemetery, discovered about fifty years ago on Rainsford Island, in Boston Bay, which contained a skeleton and sword-hilt of iron. Dr. Webb has also published an interesting account of a skeleton discovered at Fall River, in Massachusetts, on or near which were found a bronze breast-plate, bronze tubes belonging to a belt, &c., none of which appear to be of Indian, or of comparatively modern European manufacture. Drs. Smith and Webb both concluded that these skeletons were those of Scandinavian voyagers. † Kendall, in his Travels, published in 1809, describes this rock and the inscription, and gives the following Indian tradition: "Some ages past, a number of white men arrived in the river in a bird (sailing vessel], when the white men took Indians into the bird as hostages. They took fresh water for their consumption at a neighboring spring, and while procuring it, the Indians fell upon and murdered some of them. During the affray, thunder and lightning issued from the bird, and frightened the Indians away. Their hostages, however, escaped." The thunder and lightning spoken of evidently refers to fire-arms, and, if the tra dition is true, the occurrence must have taken place as late as the latter part of the fourteenth century, for gunpowder, for warlike purposes, was not used in Europe previous to 1350. In a representation of the battle of Cressy (which was fought in 1343) upon a manuscript Froissart, there are no pictures of fire-arms, and probably they were not in common use at that time; yet there is a piece of ordnance at Amberg, in Germany, on which is inscribed the year 1303. Roger Bacon, who died in 1292, was acquainted with gunpowder, and the Chinese and other Eastern nations were familiar with it long before that time. |