Seized by customs officials in Boston in 1768, it was commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Liberty, and she was burned the next year by American colonists in Newport, Rhode Island in one of the first acts of open defiance against the British crown by American colonists.

[2] In response, the British authorities confiscated Liberty, and she was towed away by HMS Halifax.

In retribution, Packwood and a mob of Rhode Islanders confronted Reid, then boarded, scuttled, and later burned the ship on the north end of Goat Island in Newport harbor as one of the first overt American acts of defiance against the British Crown.

[3][4][5] This article includes data released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported UK: England & Wales Licence, by the National Maritime Museum, as part of the Warship Histories project.

This article about a specific naval ship or boat of the United Kingdom is a stub.