<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> Casualties and losses </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> None </Td> <Td> HMS Gaspee captured and burned </Td> </Tr> <P> The Gaspee Affair was a significant event in the lead - up to the American Revolution . HMS Gaspee was a British customs schooner that had been enforcing the Navigation Acts in and around Newport, Rhode Island, in 1772 . It ran aground in shallow water while chasing the packet ship Hannah on June 9 near what is now known as Gaspee Point in Warwick, Rhode Island . A group of men led by Abraham Whipple and John Brown attacked, boarded, and torched the ship . </P> <P> The event increased hostilities between the American colonists and British officials, following the Boston Massacre in 1770 . British officials in Rhode Island wanted to increase their control over the trade that had defined the small colony--legitimate trade as well as smuggling--in order to increase their revenue from the colony . But Colonists increasingly protested the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and other British impositions that had clashed with the colony's history of rum manufacturing, maritime trade, and slave trading . </P>

Who led the attack on the british schooner the gaspee