The Battle of Rhode Island Association (BoRIA) has released a new documentary film on the Battle of Rhode Island, fought on August 29, 1778. It was the largest engagement fought in the state—and it New England—during the Revolutionary War. The film has already found a wide audience, drawing over 30,000 YouTube views and 350 in-person viewers in the month since its release.
The film traces Rhode Island’s path from a colony anchored by the bustling seaport of Newport and the communities around Narragansett Bay to a new state newly established as a result of the American Revolution. Beginning before the British occupation, it highlights a thriving Newport and Narragansett Bay, where intense Atlantic trade collides with rising tensions with the Crown trying to regulate the trade.
As British troops seize Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island on December 8, 1776, the story moves into years of occupation and upheaval — fortified streets, divided neighbors, and ultimately the 1778 Battle of Rhode Island that brings the war directly to Aquidneck Island. Featured are the contributions of the First Rhode Island Regiment (known as the “Black Regiment”), a unique Continental regiment mostly consisting of formerly enslaved men who gained their freedom by enlisting in the first half of 1778, and thereafter bravely fought for the duration of the war. The regiment also had free Black and Indigenous veterans who had fought in campaigns to the south in 1777. It was the only segregated regiment in the war. The regiment was assisted by more than 2,500 Continental soldiers from other New England regiments, as well as state regiments and militia. This battle, importantly, also marked the first engagement of the American and French alliance, which was key to the Revolution’s victory.
The film relies heavily on Christian McBurney’s book, The Rhode Island Campaign: The First French and American Operation in the Revolutionary War. Michelle Girasole was in effect the film’s director. The writers were primarily Joseph Studlick and Christian McBurney. The narrators are Girasole, McBurney, Rebecca Sattel, and Jim Stearns. It was produced by BoRIA together with Fresh LLC and ParMedia, funded by grants from the RI250 Commission and the Papitto Opportunity Connection.
The film is part of BoRIA’s broader effort to document and share Rhode Island’s significant role in the Revolutionary War.
The view the eighteen-minute film, click on this link (if that does not work, copy it and paste it into your browser):
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