New Book Tells The Local Stories Behind America’s Independence

ORLEANS – While most everyone knows the story of the Boston Tea Party, far fewer know the story of the William. But Ron Petersen says they should.

 “People just aren’t aware of it, and I think it’s a very significant story,” said Petersen, an Orleans resident and historian.

 The William was one of seven ships that left London for the American Colonies in the fall of 1773 carrying shipments of tea from the East India Tea Co. On Dec. 11 of that year, the ship wrecked in a storm off the shores of Provincetown. What transpired was a spirited fight over what to do with the tea, echoing similar fights that were taking place over the controversial product in Boston.

 “It was a tumultuous period for about six months,” Petersen said. “There were people that abhorred tea completely. It was a symbol, and you couldn’t have anything to do with it. But there were others on the other end of the spectrum just as committed to the patriot cause who believed that, well, as long as the tea isn’t taxed, it’s OK to buy it, to sell it and to consume it.”

 Differences of opinion on the issue led to violence, Petersen said. There were also cases in which homes were raided for their tea, which was then burned and destroyed in protest. In one case, Petersen said, an Eastham selectman was threatened with tarring and feathering.

“That kind of thing played out on the Cape, and that drama over tea didn’t play out anywhere else in any of the colonies. It was just here. It showed how people fought differently.” 

The story of the William is one of more than 40 laid out in “The Revolutionary War on Cape Cod and the Islands: Issues, Events And The People.” The book, curated and published by the Cape and Islands Historians’ Committee, gives a localized account of the Cape and Islands’ role in the Revolutionary War and the events leading up to it.

The book features the writings of 30 local historians and researchers, including Petersen, a member of the Cape and Islands Historians’ Committee, along with Jack Duggan, Karen Fojt, Duncan Oliver, Nancy Viall Shoemaker and David S. Martin. The idea of the book initially started through an effort to help commemorate Plymouth’s 400th anniversary, Petersen said. When that effort stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said the committee’s attention turned to the upcoming 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

After three years of work, the book came out in July ahead of next year’s 250th anniversary.

 “It’s been amazing,” Martin, a Marstons Mills resident who chairs the historians’ committee, said of the response to the book. “We’ve gotten some very good reviews, of course. But the people who have gotten the book have to my knowledge all said really positive things about it in terms of finding information that they didn’t know or telling a story that they never had thought of.”

A career educator, Martin has an interest in history that was spurred largely by a term paper he wrote while at boarding school, where he obtained one of the original logs from the famed American whaling vessel the Charles W. Morgan.

  “I analyzed that log and related it to things that were going on contemporaneously,” he said. “And that really sparked an interest in history, and I never lost it.”

 Petersen majored in history as an undergraduate and continued his studies in graduate school, and thought that he might one day teach the subject. Through his career with both the Justice Department and in corporate America, he found time to indulge in his passion. He’s dedicated more time still to history and research since retiring to Orleans with his wife 15 years ago.

 “My father’s brother was a history teacher in New Jersey, so I may have picked a little of that up from him,” he said. “It just intrigued me. It just grabbed me.”

 The new book shines a light on the events that transpired at the local level leading up to the American Revolution. While the history of the conflict is broadly colored as a battle between English loyalists and the colonists seeking their independence, Petersen said many had mixed feelings about the war.

 “When we look at the Revolution, we look at it as there were loyalists and there were patriots, that’s all,” he said. “But there was a spectrum there. Even within the patriot cause, there were differences of opinion. And those differences came out very clearly in the aftermath of the wreck of the William, with what to do with the tea on Cape Cod.”

 “As I’ve learned about the various parliamentary acts that led up to the final break, I’ve asked myself, ‘If I were going back 250 years living on the Cape, how would I feel?’ And I think I would have had very mixed emotions,” Martin added.

 The book also covers the colonies’ long road toward independence from Britain, a journey Petersen said started more than a hundred years before the American Revolution with the signing of the Mayflower Compact, which he said set the foundation for the operation of the largely self-governing colonies. 

 “Because that was the first instance in Western civilization where people got together and committed themselves to a government that they would form themselves, and obey laws that they would create themselves,” Petersen said. “To elect leaders that they would elect themselves. That got incorporated into the governance of Plymouth Colony.”

 That independent spirit also showed itself in conflicts that preceded the Revolution, including the Knowles Riot of 1747 in Boston, where colonists fought back against the impressment of 46 colonists into the British Navy by Admiral Charles Knowles.

 A presentation of the book will be given at the Eldredge Library on Dec. 4 at 1:30 p.m. That will be followed by a lecture series that will be held at the library on Thursdays in April that will dissect the book’s different sections and chapters. An additional event is planned for July 14 at the Atwood Museum in Chatham.

 While the Revolution is turning 250 years old, Petersen and Martin both say that the themes of the Revolution still have relevance today. America has since experienced periods of uprising and social unrest such as the Civil War, Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. The current political divide also hearkens back some to the spirit of 1776, they say.

 “My hope is as the year 2026 proceeds, there will be at least some reflection on the part of present day Americans on what this all meant, and what it means today,” said Martin. “Because there’s a continuum of history here.”

 Copies of “The Revolutionary War on Cape Cod and the Islands: Issues, Events And The People” are for sale at Umbrella Books in Chatham. They can also be ordered directly from Martin at davidmartindr@aol.com.