USS Providence was a sloop-of-war in the Continental Navy, originally chartered by the Rhode Island General Assembly as Katy. The ship took part in a number of campaigns during the first half of the American Revolutionary War before being destroyed by her own crew in 1779 to prevent her falling into the hands of the British after the failed Penobscot Expedition. Service as Katy From early 1775, Royal Navy warships, in particular the post ship , carried out anti-smuggling operations off the New England coast. They frequently searched Rhode Island merchant shipping, annoying the colony's merchants. On 13 June, Deputy Governor Nicholas Cooke wrote the frigate's Captain James Wallace demanding restoration of several ships which Rose had detained. Two days later, the Rhode Island General Assembly ordered the committee of safety to fit out two ships to defend the colony's shipping, and appointed a committee of three to obtain the vessels. That day, the committee chartered the sloop Katy from John Brown of Providence and the sloop Washington at the same time. The General Assembly appointed Abraham Whipple as commander of Katy, the larger ship, and made him commodore of the tiny fleet. Whipple had won fame in burning the British armed schooner Gaspee in 1772, and he captured a tender to HMS Rose before sunset that same day. Katy then cruised in Narragansett Bay through the summer protecting coastal shipping. Gunpowder was an essential commodity, scarce in the Continental Army throughout the Revolutionary War and desperately low during the first year of the struggle for independence. Late in the summer of 1775, the shortage in Washington's army besieging Boston became so severe that he was unable to use his artillery, and his riflemen would have been unable to repel an attack had the British taken the offensive. Cooke, therefore, ordered Whipple to cruise for two weeks off Sandy Hook, New Jersey to intercept a powder-laden packet expected from London. He was then to proceed to Bermuda to capture the powder stored in the British magazine there. Katy departed Narragansett Bay on 12 September but caught no sight of the packet. Upon reaching Bermuda, Whipple learned that the powder from the magazine was already en route to Philadelphia. Service as Providence Katy was purchased by Rhode Island 31 October 1775, soon after she returned to Providence. Late in November, she sailed for Philadelphia carrying seamen enlisted by Commodore Esek Hopkins