REVOLUTIONARY SHORE: Dunmore abandons Virginia as the Eastern Shore braces for new threats

Pictured: Lord George Germain, British Secretary of State for the Colonies.

September 4, 1776

On this very day, 250 years ago . . . 

Shore soldiers and most citizens breathed a collective sigh of relief—Lord Dunmore’s British Fleet was gone!  Fellow Patriots had chased Dunmore’s enfeebled force from Gwynn’s Island in July and the desperate Dunmore felt he had no choice but to abandon Virginia. He sailed north for supplies, repairs, reinforcements, and a chance to deliver the hundreds of Virginia Loyalists and former slaves to some hope of health and safety.  Dunmore’s Fleet arrived in New York in time to celebrate the Lord Richard Howe’s great British victory at Long Island (August 17, 1776).  New York was the immediate focus of British forces, not Virginia and not Dunmore’s beleaguered fleet.  

The British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord George Germain, was a hardliner against this “rebellion” and wanted Dunmore’s force back in Virginia. What did Germain know, Dunmore must have thought, of the disastrous circumstances they had just escaped?  Typhus, malaria, smallpox, and summer sicknesses had decimated both Dunmore’s British forces and the civilians with him, especially the formerly enslaved. On September 4, 1776, Dunmore wrote Germain that he could not keep track of the many bodies thrown overboard each night and that an immediate return to Virginia  would have no good end to His Majesty’s Service, but on the contrary would be giving fresh vigour, and Spirits to the Rebels, who would have it in their power to drive us from every spot whence we might endeavour to Land for Water, and if we run up any of the Rivers for Water they are thence so Narrow, that the Rebels may Annoy a Ship from either side with Cannon with impunity.

Dunmore did not return to Virginia.  He soon sailed to England and resumed his seat in the House of Lords.  

Virginia’s Patriot leaders in Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and on the Shore knew the incursions would continue and certainly escalate as more British forces reached North America.  All understood the vulnerable and strategic position of Virginia’s Eastern Shore coasts, especially as an entrance to the Chesapeake Bay.  Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, Southey Simpson, and others pressed for improved coastal defenses and the construction of gunboats and war vessels nimble in shallow coastal waters.  On September 15, 1776, Lee advised Henry that “sea gallies” strategically placed  at the mouth of the Chesapeake would be better than 50,000 men in “securing our Shores.”  What were these “gallies” and who would authorize, fund, construct, and man them?  New enemies were coming.  Could the Shoremen be ready? 

Find out in the October issue of The Revolutionary Shore!

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