THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9606280056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 58 lines
WHEN THE Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, war had been going on in Virginia for eight months.
And it already had made for a hot time in Norfolk, which was to pay a heavier price for independence than any other Colonial city.
In the autumn of 1775, the royal governor, John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, took the offensive against the Virginia patriots, whose activities had driven him out of the capital at Williamsburg.
At the head of British troops and a few local recruits, the governor entered Norfolk, the colony's largest community, where he hoped to find loyalist sympathizers because of the city's commercial ties with Great Britain.
He declared Virginia to be in rebellion and issued two proclamations: one calling on all able-bodied men to join his forces or be branded traitors, the other freeing all slaves owned by rebels. Together the proclamations alienated most of the free population.
On Dec. 9, 1775, Col. William Woodford's Virginia riflemen, together with some North Carolina troops, whipped the British regulars at Great Bridge. Five days later Woodford marched his Second Virginia Regiment into Norfolk.
Lord Dunmore responded with a New Year's Day naval bombardment - a relic of this remains embedded in the south wall of St. Paul's Church, the only surviving structure - and sent landing parties ashore to start fires. Woodford's men, suspicious of the people of Norfolk for having received Dunmore in the first place, began torching buildings the British had not burned. Two-thirds of the city went up in flames.
Two months later, on a decision by Virginia's first revolutionary convention, the rest of the city was destroyed out of concern that it might someday be of value to the British.
Meanwhile, Dunmore had retreated with his little fleet to an anchorage near Gwynn's Island off the eastern tip of the Middle Peninsula. About the same time the Declaration of Independence was being ratified in Philadelphia, Gen. Andrew Lewis' Virginia militia cannons on the mainland began to shell Dunmore's ships.
According to Virginia Gazette reports, one of the cannonballs tore through the cabin of Dunmore's flagship and wounded the governor in the leg. Worse, ``all his valuable china smashed about his ears.''
With that final indignity, the last royal governor disappeared from Virginia. ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTOS
Lord Dunmore, the royal governor, ordered a New Year's Day naval
bombardment of Norfolk after a defeat at Great Bridge.
This cannonball remains embedded in the south wall of St. Paul's
Church, located in what is now downtown Norfolk.
St. Paul's Church is the only structure that survived the massive
destruction of 1776. by CNB