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Illustrated Episode · Volume III, chapter 15 · 6 July 1764

Fire on the King's schooner

Behind a stone fort wall, gunners beside a cannon wreathed in white smoke and townsmen with muskets watch a small two-masted schooner sail away across sunlit water below a far shore of roofs and steeples.
Fort George, Newport, July 1764. Gunners and fifty townsmen open fire on the naval schooner St. John as she leaves the harbor, after the people of Newport have stoned off her armed party and seized her commanding officer. Two members of the colony's Council gave the order, and Rothbard says the Council afterward scolded the gunners for not trying conscientiously to sink her. Chapter 15 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

Newport spent the summer of 1764 at odds with the Royal Navy. Three sailors from the naval schooner St. John came ashore and stole pigs and chickens, and when the sheriff rowed out to arrest them he was not allowed aboard. The same day one of her pressed seamen escaped to the town, and the St. John sent an armed party to recapture him as a deserter. A Newport mob seized the commanding officer, gave him a taste of impressment in reverse, and stoned and drove off the rest. In retaliation for the warship's defiance of the civil sheriff, two members of the Rhode Island Council ordered the gunners at Fort George to shell her as she left port, and fifty other Newporters enthusiastically joined in the firing. A shot went through her mainsail, but she got away. The Council then scolded the gunners for not trying conscientiously to sink her. Captain Richard Smith of the Royal Navy urged London to use the affair as a means of a coerced change of government in "this licentious republic." Such incidents, Rothbard says, polarized the conflict on both sides (CiL, pp. 829-830).

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. III, ch. 15, 'The Newport Case', pp. 829-830. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. The Battle of Rhode Island Association, 'Skirmishes in Narragansett Bay' (accessed 2026-09-30), quoting the naval accounts of July 1764 (the St. John's boat stoned; Captain Smith of the Squirrel; the gunner's order 'signed by two of the Council'; the witness's 'eight shot ... through our mainsail'); the underlying source is Naval Documents of the American Revolution, vol. 1. Secondary source
  3. Wikipedia, 'HMS St John (1764)' (accessed 2026-09-30): an 8-gun schooner; Newport residents took Fort George on Goat Island and fired thirteen shots from its 18-pounder long guns, under orders from Governor Hopkins and the Assembly; she escaped with minor damage; 6 July 1764. Secondary source
  4. Newport Historical Society, 'History Bytes: Fort George' (accessed 2026-09-30): Fort George on Goat Island, partly designed by Peter Harrison; gunners of the Newport Artillery Company fired on the St. John on 9 July 1764. Secondary source
  5. Wikipedia, 'Fort Wolcott' (accessed 2026-09-30): Fort George on Goat Island from 1730, a stone fortification of 1738 with perhaps fifty guns. Secondary source
  6. Era registry entry urban-colonial-1760-1775 (data/cil/registry/eras/), dress, arms, naval schooners and steeples; its own sources are listed in its notes. Secondary source