Of the acts of the British government in connection with the Stamp Act, the duty on tea, and the other efforts to tax the American colonists contrary to their constitutional rights as British citizens, nothing need be said here except to remind the reader that ships of the royal navy were commissioned as revenue cutters and stationed on the American coast (1764), from Casco Bay to Cape Henlopen. To illustrate the conditions that prevailed thereafter until the War of the Revolution, here is a brief account of the events in Rhode Island waters that led to the destruction of the British naval revenue cutter _Gaspé_. The schooner _St. John_, Lieutenant Hill commanding, was the first of the naval fleet stationed in Rhode Island waters. It was the duty of Lieutenant Hill to examine every vessel trading in those waters to learn whether she were violating the laws. A brig that had discharged cargo at Howland's Ferry was suspected of being a smuggler, but she was not molested until she had gone to sea. Then she was followed, brought back, and found to be entirely innocent. If examined before sailing, no injury to her owners would have resulted, but to bring her back when well under way, and that, too, at the whim of a supercilious naval officer, not only caused loss but roused indignation. A mob of Newport people gathered to attack the schooner, but they were prevented doing so by the arrival of another man-o'-war in the harbor. While the people were yet fretted by the needless interference with the brig, the man-o'-war _Maidstone_ came to port, and began impressing seamen from the merchant ships in the bay, and finally took the entire crew from a ship just home from the year-long voyage to the coast of Africa. It seems impossible, now, that a naval officer should be guilty of such needless cruelty as taking men under such circumstances, but the truth is that the naval officers of that period found pleasure in cruelty. It was because of inhumanity--the harshness with which men were treated in the navy--that impressment was necessary. The friends and relatives of the impressed seamen were unable to obtain redress, but they expressed their feelings by burning one of the _Maidstone's_ small boats. In 1769 Captain William Reid, commanding the war-sloop _Liberty_, seized a merchant brig on Long Island Sound and brought her to Newport, where, although it was found that she was not, and had not been, violating the law in any way, she was held for several days. And when the captain of the brig went to the _Liberty_ in an effort to secure release, and, on failing, expressed his indignation in sailor language, a number of muskets were fired at him. To avenge this indignity, a mob boarded the _Liberty_ that night, cut away her mast, threw her guns overboard, and when she drifted ashore on Goat Island, burned her.