Immortal youth shall crown their deathless fame;
And as their country's glories shall advance,
Shall brighter blaze, o'er all the earth, thy name,
Thou first-fought field of Freedom—Alamance.
Seymour W. Whiting.
The first American "victory" occurred on the night of June 9, 1772, when the British eight-gun schooner Gaspee was captured and burned to the water's edge. For some months the crew of the Gaspee, commissioned to enforce the revenue acts in Narragansett Bay, had been stopping vessels, seizing goods, stealing sheep and hogs, and committing other depredations along the shore. On June 9, while pursuing the Providence Packet, the schooner ran aground, and that night was boarded by a party of Rhode Islanders, the crew overpowered, and the boat burned.
[A NEW SONG CALLED THE GASPEE]
[June 9-10, 1772]
'Twas in the reign of George the Third
The public peace was much disturb'd
By ships of war, that came and laid
Within our ports to stop our trade.
In seventeen hundred seventy-two,
In Newport harbor lay a crew
That play'd the parts of pirates there,
The sons of Freedom could not bear.
Sometimes they'd weigh and give them chase—
Such actions, sure, were very base;
No honest coasters could pass by
But what they would let some shot fly.
Which did provoke to high degree
Those true-born sons of Liberty,
So that they could no longer bear
Those sons of Belial staying there.
But 'twas not long 'fore it fell out,
That William Doddington so stout,
Commander of the Gaspee tender,
Which he had reason to remember—