Webmaster's Commentary:  The following letter was found in the Manuscripts Collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society, Gaspee Papers MSS434, and is evidently a handwritten copy made by a clerk at the Kent County Courthouse c1909 in an effort to preserve those documents that were deteriorating.   Charles Dudley was a tax collector for Newport, and an ardent loyalist. Admiral John Montagu was Chief of the Northeast sector of the American Coast for the Royal Navy during the period. The letter has not been published previously to our knowledge.

The letter is considered useful in several respects. First of all, the author reconfirms notions that the destruction of the Gaspee was planned long before it occurred. We are not familiar with the particular notice in the Newport Mercury referred to by Dudley.  Perhaps the newspaper had published copies of the letters heatedly exchanged between Governor Wanton and Admiral Montagu as related in Staples' Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee, pp 3-7. Lastly, Dudley calls for a British-sponsored investigation. He shows the disdain typical of loyalists towards the Rhode Island government and rightly concludes that its representatives would interfere with any subsequent investigation, which, in fact, they did.

Sir

I shall first of all premise that the Attack upon the Gaspee was not the effect of sudden Passion & forethought: her local circumstances at the time she was burnt did not raise the first emotion to that enormous act, it had been long determined she should be destroyed.

The paragraph in the inclosed News Paper under the Newport head was the prelude to the diabolical scene which followed. I dare appeal to every candid man in this country if he did not see it in that light.

The most public step was a memorial or petition from the merchants in Providence first laid before the superior court of Judicature then sitting in that Town & afterwards before the Governor, praying that the commander of an armed vessel then cruizing in the Bay should be called upon by the civil authority to know by what powers he was authorized to search ships and other vessels on the high seas; tho' it was notorious that the armed vessel in question sailed under British colours & belonged to His Britannic Majesty: what followed in consequence of this memorial I shall forbear to mention, as I have understood that whole Transaction has already canvassed between you and the Chief Magistrate.

These in my humble opinion are the two grand points on which a discovery must turn, corroborating Evidence of respectable men will not be wanting to prove that this insult on His Majesty's Crown & Dignity was begun in the most public & open manner, nor will you want good Testimony to shew that the intention was spoke of many days before the Event. If Admiral Montagu will interest himself in promoting an inquiry into these things: not under the influence of a Governor & Company of Rhode Island but under the high Authority of a British Senate. I will be bold to say that the destroyers of the Gaspee and the barbarous Assassins of Lieutenant Dudingston will be brought to light. Let the Printer of the Newport Mercury be called to account for the paragraph I have herein pointed at. Let the Governor be required to lay before His Majesty's Secretary of State all Papers, memorials, or petitions relating to the Schooner Gaspee, and you will no longer have doubt that the Government of Rhode Island bears no resemblance to any other Government under the Crown of England.

to Rear Adml. Montagu