Talk:Historiography of the Gaspee affair

Dr. Horne's work on the Gaspee

Dr. Horne's writing on the Gaspee in his "The Counter-Revolution of 1776" gets almost nothing right in terms of basic facts about the Gaspee, and possibly plagiarizes Bartlett writing about an entirely different incident. The relevant passage in Horne's work is:

A climax was reached on 10 June 1772 in the wee hours of the morning, when a brig arriving from Africa, the Gaspee, entered Newport and was boarded by officers of the Crown. In response a mob of about five hundred male settlers rioted, burning the British ship.

The Gaspee was not a brig, it was at Narragansett Bay not Newport, it was not arriving from Africa, and it was not boarded by officers of the Crown but by Patriots who destroyed it. Dr. Horne does not provide a single citation here despite vastly differing with all common knowledge on the Gaspee. The passage of Bartlett's "A History of the Destruction of His Britannic Majesty's Schooner Gaspee" (which ironically is also accused of plagiarism) which seems to be where all of these errors, and in some cases exact phrasing, is:

Other ships of the royal navy, which visited Newport, also had difficulties with the people there, all of which tended to arouse them, and lead to some measures of retaliation. The climax was reached, when a brig from Africa, entering the port, was boarded by the officers from the Maidstone, and her entire crew pressed into the naval service. The same night, a mob of about five hundred men and boys, exasperated by the affair, seized one of the boats belonging to the Maidstone, which lay at the wharf, pulled her on shore, and after dragging her through the streets to the Common, in front of the court house, burnt her, amid the shouts of an immense crowd, which the occasion had brought together.

Given all this, I've removed the passage from the article referring to Dr. Horne's work on the Gaspee. -- SatanicSanta 15:25, 6 July 2021 (UTC)