This all meant that the only way to destroy a wooden ship was to burn it and that ship-burning carried with it a powerful symbolic element. Decisive, determined and greatly feared, to burn a ship was to kill a ship. Ship-burning was also symbolic because neither the activity or the remains could be easily concealed. The spectacle created y a burning ship is similar to that created by a burning church, because both create a vast pyramid of fire: the masts and sails of the ship conduct the fire in the same way as the steeple of the church, and the ship's hull feeds the fire in the same way as the church's nave. Depending on the size of the hull, the masts of a warship could be anywhere between 50 and 220 feet above sea level, and the flames would burn higher still, 20 or even 30 feet above the top of the mast. The thick black smoke of burning timber and tar would then drift with the breeze for miles. Given the right landscape and atmospheric conditions, such a fire could be seen for 30 miles in any direction. But perhaps most importantly of all, a ship burned in a shallow river would not disappear. Ships' timbers are too large and too damp to be destroyed completely, and the waters are too shallow to cloak the evidence. Either the entire ribcage of the hull's beams or a few significant chunky timbers would survive as an enduring reminder of the violence that once destroyed her, as well as the method chosen for that destruction. To burn a ship was therefore... a statement as much as an action and a symbol as much as a tactic. It was intensely and consciously provocative.
Sam Willis, The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution.
This is such a gripping introduction, and really well-worded! He then goes on to discuss the burning of the Gaspee, which was an act of rebellion prior to the Revolution, and also super interesting.