Abraham Whipple

Abraham Whipple was born in Providence in 1733 and built his early career as a merchant mariner and privateer captain during the Seven Years' War, developing seamanship and aggressive maritime instincts that would serve him well in the Revolution. By the early 1770s he was a prominent figure in Providence's commercial seafaring community, known for his bold temperament and his intimate knowledge of Narragansett Bay's waters. Those qualities placed him at the center of one of the Revolution's most dramatic early incidents.

In June 1772 the British revenue schooner Gaspee ran aground on Namquid Point while chasing a colonial vessel. That night Whipple led a party of Providence men in small boats to the stranded ship, overcame its crew, wounded its commander Lieutenant William Dudingston, and burned the Gaspee to the waterline. It was one of the first acts of organized armed resistance against British authority in the colonies, preceding Lexington by nearly three years. When the Revolution began in earnest, Whipple received a captain's commission in the Continental Navy and commanded vessels including the Columbus and the Providence. He captured several valuable British prizes during the war's middle years, including a remarkable haul from a British merchant convoy in 1779, and his prizes added meaningful resources to the cash-starved American war effort. He was captured when Charleston fell to the British in May 1780 and spent the remainder of the war on parole.

Whipple's career bridged the informal colonial resistance of the early 1770s and the organized naval warfare of the Continental period, making him one of the most consequential maritime figures in Rhode Island's Revolutionary history. After the war he eventually settled in Ohio, part of the westward migration that carried many veterans beyond the seaboard. He died in 1819, remembered in Providence as the man who struck one of the Revolution's earliest blows against British authority on American waters.