In the American Revolution ---- the American attack and capture of the English Navy ship Gaspee was the first deliberate attack against the English.
The English Attorney General and Solicitor General called the capture and burning of the His Majesty's ship Gaspee--- "treason" and an "act of war". It was both. Joseph Bucklin's shooting of the English naval ship captain was part of that act of war.
It was after midnight on June 10, 1772. There was no useful moonlight and dark cloaked the Narragansett Bay, where the Gaspee, an English Navy schooner, had run aground on Namquid Point. Still, Joseph Bucklin could see the vessel's commander on the starboard gunwale, swinging his sword and preventing the 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, with a terrible wound 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 this Gaspee raid, and the shot by Joseph Bucklin, was the first Act of War in the American colonies.
The English King proclaimed a £1000 reward in the American colonies for information leading to Joseph's arrest for treason. Yet Rhode Island protected him and the Bucklin family.
Our research and education effort on the Gaspee Affair area of the Joseph Bucklin Society research and education effort is extensive. On this website alone, we have over 100 pages of information. Moreover, for more - and growing every month - take a look at our Gaspee.Info site. The greatest amount of information is found in this Gaspee. Info, a separate website that we maintain, devoted solely to the history of the 1772 Gaspee attack, plus an exclusive biographical list of the Gaspee Raiders, the men in the boats that captured and destroyed the Gaspee.