A question posed to me very often: Is this the wreck of the HMS Gaspee?

Off the shore of the Gaspee Point peninsular at the foot of Namquid Drive are the skeletal remains of a wooden ship, adjacent to the shore, exposed at a moon low tide. It’s a wonderful place to catch blue crabs and stripe bass in the summer and a natural blind for duck hunting. To the southeast 2,000 feet is another barge, the bow, partially exposed lying buried in the sandy beach of what was Greene's Island. The island formerly owned by Surgeon John Greene (purchased from Narragansett sachem Miantonomo in October 1642) and surveyed by Benjamin West in 1782 contained 14 acres, extending far into Narragansett Bay, for the new owner the wealthy Providence merchant, John Brown, known as the ringleader who burned the HMS Gaspee in June 1772. The island embraced an area of 14 acres, but by yearly erosion was reduced to five acres of upland meadow, barren and sandy, as survey in 1898 by my great uncle Charles Francis, brother of the owner, and his sister Alice Francis Brown, my grandmother.

The inland shore facing Coles' farm on Occupastuxet Cove contained a small inlet where the barge came to rest about 84 years ago.

As World War 1 (1914-1918) was winding down, the City of Providence witnessed an extremely cold period. During the winter of 1917, Narragansett Bay was frozen solid to Newport, thereby closing Narragansett Bay to the shipments of coal so necessary for industry and homeowners. Furthermore, German U-boats continued to take a dreadful toll of USA shipping. To offset the losses of ships, the United States Government war work began with the construction by Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation of a fleet of ocean-going wooden vessels known as "Victory" ships. The first one was delivered to Field's Point to be outfitted for service on May 20, 1918.

The European conflict came to an end on Nov. 11, 1918. The construction of a fleet of wooden ships came to an abrupt end. Field's Point in Providence had outfitted a number of ships that lay at anchor – coal was no longer a distressed commodity – the "victory" fleet became surplus property and purchased for the price of scrap metal. Once stripped, the barges became a liability to the owners. By 1924, several of the victory wooden ships were moved down river from their anchorage in the upper river to Occupastuxet Cove and run up into the shoal water of the "High Banks" (Gaspee Point) at Spring Green farm and one into the fishhook inlet of Greene's Island and abandoned. Within a few years the ships were occupied by drifters – the barge’s doghouse became a summer residence.

The barge adjacent to the peninsula had a long wooden plank allowing the resident to have newspaper delivery as related to me by Tom Campbell, World War II, U.S. Army Air Force captain and a former paperboy. On an evening in early December 1941 my brother Francis and I watched the ship burn to the waterline. We heard the barge was torched by irate neighbors.

The grounded barge at the shoals of Greene's Island was burned by "the toughs" living at Mark Rock on the evening of July 3, 1935. Independence Day, July 4th, was celebrated in grand fashion. Whispers of smoke continued for days. I being a small boy yet recall standing with my father in the meadow overlooking the cove viewing the scene of the burning.

During the summers we often rowed or sailed out to Greene's Island fishing for crabs or catching mummy chogs. Walking barefoot on the sunken barge was hazardous as an enormous coil of rusting cable left sharp frayed cable ends. Storms and hurricanes buried the barge with sand for 40 years, now slowly revealed today as erosion uncovers the rotting shell.

The island today, only a tiny fraction of its past, has extensive mud flats that were home to the finest soft shell clams and conch in upper Narragansett Bay. An old time clammer, Harry Austin, related to me of digging hundreds of bushels of clams with his father for the Rocky Point Shore Amusement Park.