The Gaspee affair was a significant event in the lead-up to the American Revolution. HMS Gaspee was a Royal Navy customs schooner that enforced the Navigation Acts around Newport, Rhode Island, in 1772. It ran aground in shallow water while chasing the packet boat Hannah on June 9 off of Warwick, Rhode Island. A group of men led by Abraham Whipple and John Brown I attacked, boarded, and burned the Gaspee to the waterline. The event sharply increased tensions between American colonists and Crown officials, particularly given that it had followed the Boston Massacre in 1770. The affair marked the first acts of violent uprising against Crown authority in British North America, preceding the Boston Tea Party by more than a year and moving the Thirteen Colonies as a whole toward the coming war for independence.