THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9407290303
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Back to back, the summers of 1775 and 1776 were like no others in Virginia history.
One saw the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, desert the colonial capital of Williamsburg and the other witnessed Portsmouth's wealthiest Tory families turned into refugees in ``Dunmore's Floating Town.''
By the end of the summer of 1776, a majority of Dunmore's followers had buried most of their loved ones and neighbors in shallow, mass graves on Gwynn's Island - the scene of Dunmore's last stand.
Besides the predictable heat and humidity, Lord Dunmore had raised political temperatures to the boiling point by June 1775. After seizing the militia's powder from the powderhorn in Williamsburg, he canceled the House of Burgesses and then left the capital for the safety of the Tory enclave of Portsmouth and Andrew Sprowle's shipyard at Gosport.
No doubt many of those who sailed with Dunmore that day knew that once he deserted Williamsburg, the days in which Great Britain would rule Virginia were numbered.
However, Andrew Sprowle and Tories such as Charles Steuart, Alexander Mackenzie, William Scott and Angus McCoy were ready to entertain the royal governor and his ``floating town'' with their very best. And if there was a shilling to be made off the venture, so be it.
Dunmore and his friends were wined and dined for the remainder of 1775 in comfortable homes similar to Sprowle's.
But Dunmore was not about to allow things to remain status quo for long; he was the royal governor and he was determined to exact his influence on all about him including the farmers of nearby Norfolk and Princess Anne counties who had begun to side with the militia.
Referring to Sprowle as his ``Lieutenant-Governor of Gosport,'' Dunmore launched several raids, which included seizing the colonial press in Norfolk and emancipating the slaves, into the surrounding countryside. Dunmore's largest operation ended disastrously with his defeat at the Battle of Great Bridge on Dec. 9.
After several weeks of receiving sniper fire from the Norfolk waterfront, Dunmore ordered his ships to fire on warehouses used by the militiamen Jan. 1, 1776. Afterward, colonial militia burned the rest of the town, depriving his ships of needed supplies and leaving 1,298 buildings in ashes and nearly 6,000 homeless.
With the arrival of colonial forces under Major General Charles Lee, Dunmore's final supply line in Portsmouth was cut. As the population grew in Dunmore's ``Floating Town,'' water supplies were quickly depleted.
Near panic broke out among the inhabitants when smallpox was discovered among the troops. For Dunmore and the local Tories there was no choice now but to evacuate Hampton Roads and seek a better location to begin a new campaign to control Virginia.
On May 25, 1776, Dunmore's fleet, which now numbered some 100 ships with 700 soldiers and nearly 2,000 Royalists, sailed for the uncertain future of a small strip of sand and scraggly trees near the confluence of the Piankatank River and Chesapeake Bay known as Gwynn's Island.
From the time the fleet landed, things didn't go right.
Andrew Sprowle, Dunmore's oldest and closest adviser from Portsmouth, died. Once again smallpox broke out in their makeshift campsites and town. The well water was barely adequate for its 300 inhabitants, much less nearly 30 times that number.
And, as sanitary conditions grew worse, while the temperature and disease wore down Dunmore's troops, American troops under General Andrew Lewis continually harassed Dunmore's garrison.
Upon landing on the island July 10, 1776, colonial forces were ``struck with horror.'' More than 130 mass graves were found shortly thereafter as one American wrote, ``such a scene of misery, distress and cruelty my eyes never beheld . . .''
Again Dunmore's refuge took to their ``floating town,'' but this time in desperation, as there was little food or water left. For the governor, it was a humiliation, but for those who had followed, it was a tragedy to have left their loved ones behind on Gwynn's Island.
When they finally sailed from Virginia waters Aug. 7, 1776, it had to be for Dunmore and his band of survivors the hottest day of the year. ILLUSTRATION: The royal governor, Lord Dunmore, deserted the capital of
Williamsburg.
by CNB