The Chesapeake Bay: Avenue for Attack

Until the advent of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM's) in the 1950's, the greatest military threat to Virginia was a military force attacking via the Chesapeake Bay. The Virginians knew the Atlantic Ocean was not a perfect barrier, just as England worried about invasion across the English Channel by the Spanish in 1688, the French in 1779, and the Germans in 1941.

The earliest English settlers in 1607 chose to sail past the excellent harbors on the Elizabeth River. They went 30 miles upstream to Jamestown, to reduce the potential of a surprise attack by the Spanish, French, or Dutch. For 350 years after Jamestown, there was an organized threat by a nation at war to the American ships and cargoes in the Bay (which were far more valuable than the public buildings at Jamestown...).

In addition, the plantations along the shorelines in Tidewater had to be wary of pirate attacks. Ships flew clearly-identifiable flags to announce their allegiances, but there was always the potential that a sail spotted downstream really meant the arrival of a pirate masquerading as a merchant from England or the West Indies - or a rebel.

During Bacon's Rebellion in 1675-76, Governor Berkeley fled Jamestown to safety in Accomack County on the Eastern Shore. Bacon sent a ship to Accomack under Captain Carver and Squire Bland to arrest the governor. While Carver negotiated on land, Berkeley's forces secretly rowed out to the ship and captured it before Bland could react - after all, "all's fair in love and war..." With control of the seas, Berkeley could safely return to the Peninsula and challenge Bacon - who died before there was any climactic battle.

Guarding the Mouth of the Bay

The Jamestown settlers built Fort Algernourne in 1609, at the end of the Peninsula where Fort Monroe is now located. Moving some starving settlers away from Jamestown reduced the demand on the fort's food supplies, and may have reduced transmission of density-dependent disease. The fort also provided an early warning system of Spanish, Dutch, and pirate ships. It was abandoned in 1667 after Charles II made peace with the Netherlands leader, William of Orange.

[The end of the Cold War in the 1990's led to the closure of Vint Hill and the Harry Diamond Laboratory bases in Fauquier and Prince William counties, but that was certainly not the first time Virginia faced demobilization of military bases after international tensions were relaxed...]

Fort George was built on the same site 1727. Fort George was destroyed by the 1749 hurricane that first created Willoughby Spit (see image). Since the 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle had ended the War of Austrian Succession (known as King George's War) between France and England, the fort was not rebuilt. During the Seven Years War (which started in 1753, three years earlier as measured in the colonies, and is known as the French and Indian War), Virginia focused on defending its western borders rather than building maginally-useful forts at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay

The forts at Hampton Roads were inadequate because the cannon of the colonial days were not powerful enough to block a ship from sailing up the James River or the Chesapeake Bay. The channel was so wide in Hampton Roads that an enemy ship could sail next to the southern shoreline of the James River, out of range from the artillery on the Peninsula. The colonial gunpowder lacked the "oomph" to push cannonballs across the river. Besides, the iron used for cannon barrels in colonial days could not have contained and channeled stronger explosions. Though the English technology far surpassed that of the Algonquians, it was limited...

Fort Wool

Rip-Raps got its name from the rippling of the water, as the Chesapeake Bay encountered a shalow a shoal off the Peninsula. After seven years of reinforcing the shoal with heavy stone, the army began construction of Fort Calhoun on the new man-made island. Robert E. Lee's first assignment after graduating from West Point in 1829 was to serve as an engineer on that project.

The island kept sinking, and the project continued for 30 more years after Lee moved on. If you're cynical about government waste, the conversion of the Rip-Raps into a military fort will reinforce your opinion. Fort Calhoun was not finished when Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, but it and Fort Monroe were too strong to be captured by the Confederates. The Confederates burned Hampton in 1861 to provide a clear field of fire against the Yankee-controlled fort - but naturally they blamed the destruction on the Union side.

This wasn't the first time a Hampton Roads community was destroyed by the "locals." In January and February, 1776, the Virginians burned Norfolk to eliminate its potential of being a military base for Lord Dunmore. The British were blamed for that destruction, and it took decades for the historical truth to be revealed. (Lord Dunmore had destroyed 5-10% of Norfolk on January 1, 1776. He burned the houses that sheltered snipers firing at his ships in the harbor, and the Virginians then burned the rest of the largest town in the colony.)

Fort Calhoun was renamed Fort Wool in 1862, shifting the honor from a South Carolinian who advocated secession to the Union General, John Wool, who finally captured Norfolk on May 9, 1862. Three months after the Monitor and the Virginia had dueled to a draw on March 9, McClellan was building up his forces on the Peninsula and had finally marched to Williamsburg - but was ignoring the threat of the Confederates across the James River.

Abraham Lincoln is given credit by some for directing the Union Army and Navy to cooperate and join forces to eliminate the Confederates from the south bank of the James. In 1862, Yankee cannon on the island had sufficient range to reach the Confederate fortifications across Hampton Roads at Sewell's Point (now the location of the Norfolk Naval Base with aircraft carriers). Lincoln helped plan the operation. The Union Navy ferried 6,000 troops to Ocean View east of Willoughby Spit, Norfolk surrendered quickly, and the Confederates burned the Virginia because the James River upstream of Newport News was too shallow for the ship weighted down with iron.

By capturing Portsmouth and Norfolk, the Yankees forced the Confederates to destroy their ironclad, the Virginia, and to abandon their last efforts to control the sea lanes at Hampton Roads. Had the British army and navy cooperated in 1781, who knows what might have happened at Hampton Roads in the 1860's...

Key Naval Events Near the Bay

Three major sea battles near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay shaped the development of America as a nation:

1) The Battle of the Capes

In 1781, sufficient sea power was finally assembled with the help of France. A victory on the water enabled the Virginians and other rebels to win the battle of Yorktown, establishing the United States of America as an independent nation.

2) Leopard vs. the Chesapeake

American naval unpreparedness in 1807 led to a disaster, when the Leopard captured the Chesapeake and almost triggered a premature war with England. After war actually started in 1812, the British easily sailed up the Chesapeake Bay, capturing Alexandria on the Potomac River and landing the troops that burned Washington, DC on the Patuxent River. No Virginia fort or flotilla gained any military honors. Only one Chesapeake Bay fort managed to block the British - Fort McHenry, where the "bombs bursting in air" over the Chesapeake Bay stirred Francis Scott Key to write the lyrics to what became the national athem.

3) The Monitor vs. the Virginia (Merrimack)

Technological naval innovation in 1862 almost enabled the Virginians to change the balance of sea power on the Chesapeake Bay - and perhaps win a second rebellion.

Virginia has always needed some sort of a navy to defend itself from sea-borne attack. Weapons capable of actually blocking entrance into the Chesapeake Bay were not available until World War II. Ships were needed to engage other ships on the water - and the failure to have a defensive naval force until the Spanish-American War left Virginia open to invasion more than once.

Virginia and the United States declined to invest in building and maintaining a standing navy to guard the bay for the first 300 years of European settlement. In the colonial era and during the Confederacy, Virginia assembled the best sailing fleet it could on short notice only after a threat was clearly recognized - and always too late to provide much protection. Just as Powhatan was unable to block the English from sailing up the James River in 1607, the Virginians were unable to block the British in early 1781 or the Yankees in 1862.

It's surprising to realize that the defense of the mouth of the Bay and Hampton Roads has been so essential to blocking enemy military advances. In the Revolutionary War, when the American rebels had no warships in the Bay, the British were able to raid up the Elizabeth, Nansemond, Appomattox, James, and Potomac rivers with ease.

In May, 1779, Sir George Collier led 28 ships with 1,800 men under General Edward Mathew and surprised the Virginians in Hampton Roads. Fort Nelson, guarding the Gosport shipyard in Portsmouth, was quickly captured because only 100 men were stationed there. The fort was very well constructed, and with the British attacking by land there was no problem with the range of the Virginia weapons. However, the British forces outnumbered the Virginians 20-1, and the Virginia commander wisely retreated.

The Collier-Mathew raid made Virginia's legislators realize that the Revolutionary War would be fought in their state, as well as in the north between Philadelphia and Boston. The raid destroyed extensive supplies in Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk, as well as warships under construction, Merchant ships loaded with tobacco for France ended up as prize ships, and the profits went to British officers rather than helping the American side. Including the ships seized in the upper Chesapeake Bay, 137 vessels were captured by the British at the cost of just two men being wounded. By the time the Virginia militia had been assembled, the British had left... though British warships continued to patrol the Chesapeake Bay in 1779, with no resistance by the Americans.¹

Another British invasion in 1780 showed Virginia was better prepared to defend itself. General Alexander Leslie brought only a half-dozen or so ships - but 2,200 men - when he landed at Portsmouth on October 21 and Newport News/Hampton on October 23, 1780. The intent was to intercept Virginia supplies and divert American troops away from the British campaign under Lord Cornwallis, as they marched north from recently-captured Charleston, SC.

However, the Virginians mobilized while minimizing the impact on their support for the Southern armies. Most of the Virginia Line had been captured in the disastrous defeat at Charleston, but the rebellious Americans were still resisting Conwallis' northern advance. Virginia sent its reinforcements and supplies south, rather than to George Washington's army keeping the British trapped in New York City.

The British forces captured the battlefield at Camden, Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and Guilford Courthouse, but those Pyrrhic skirmishes were costing the British irreplaceable soldiers. Remember, the British were already hiring mercenaries, Hessian soldiers from Germany. Recruiting and shipping replacement troops across the Atlantic was as challenging as getting American soldiers to Vietnam 35 years ago.

General Leslie was deterred from sailing up the James by reports of large groups of Virginia militia and strong fortifications on the riverbanks. The Virginians freed up the guards responsible for 2,800 British prisoners in Charlottesville, shipping them further inland to Maryland. The Barracks Road Shopping Center just north of the University of Virginia basketball stadium was named after the quarters built by those prisoners, who had been captured at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 and marched to Virginia for safekeeping.²

However, the arrival of General Benedict Arnold with nearly 1,500 troops and over 20 ships on December 30 showed Virginia's military defenses were inadequate. Arnold reached Jamestown before Thomas Jefferson called out the militia. The British marched quickly from William Byrd's plantation wharf at Westover to Richmond, where they destroyed the Westham foundry that produced cannon for the Americans. (It was about 1 mile downstream from the current Huguenot Bridge in West End Richmond, on the north bank.) The Virginians did manage to move most supplies to the south side of the James River, and the militia blocked the British from capturing Petersburg.

Arnold retreated to Portsmouth, but after being reinforced with 2,000 more troops in March the British (now under General William Phillips) could raid throughout Tidewater with impunity. On one raid, they sailed past Mount Vernon before seizing merchant ships and tobacco from Alexandria. The caretaker (Lund Washington, cousin of George Washington) provided them supplies in exchange for protecting the mansion - to George Washington's great embarrassment.

General Phillips captured Petersburg in April, 1781. Colonial Heights gets its name from the artillery fired from that location by General Lafayette. He could harass the British, but the Continental Army keeping the British trapped in New York City could not spare enough troops to interfere with Arnold's plans.

By the time General Cornwallis reached the Dan River at the Virginia-North Carolina border, Virginia was clearly unable to protect itself. The state knew it needed assistance from the other colonies. To encourage the Congress to contribute more troops to protect Virginia, the state decided to cede its claims to western lands north of the Ohio and grant whast became the "Northwest Territory" to the national government.

Virginia also resolved an old boundary dispute with Pennsylvania. The General Assembly abandoned Virginia's claims to the Forks of the Ohio (Pittsburg) area, which had triggered George Washington's 1753 trip and ultimately the French and Indian War. Both states agreed to extend the Mason-Dixon line to five degrees west of the Delaware River, then draw a line due north to define Pennsylvania's western boundary. Virginia was unwilling to extend the western boundary directly to the Ohio River, however. Pennsylvania ended up with some straight boundaries while Virginia (now West Virginia) created a "panhandle" between Pennsylvania's western border and the Ohio River.

The Americans had raced ahead of Cornwallis from the defeat at Charleston until he reached the south bank near South Boston. They moved all the boats to the north bank to block him from crossing, and in some cases the Americans were just barely across the Dan River when the British scouts first arrived on the other shore.

In April, 1781, the British general chose to abandon the pursuit of the American forces and march to the sea, leaving Piedmont Virginia largely unscathed by the Revolutionary War. He moved first to Wilmington, NC, and then marched overland to Petersburg in May, 1781. Cornwallis crossed the James River to the wharf at Westover, then marched north to Hanover Court House and up to the Rapidan River. (Lafayette fled to the north bank, crossing at Ely's Ford.) There were no military resources or tobacco worth capturing or destroying at Fredericksburg, so that town was spared a visit by the British.

Charlottesville was not so lucky. The General Assembly had abandoned Richmond and fled inland, and the British considered the rebel leaders to be an attractive target. Col. Banastre Tarleton (the villain in the movie The Patriot) led a fast raid to Charlottesville. However, while Tarleton's Legion stopped briefly at a tavern in Louisa County, Jack Jouett started a dramatic nightime ride to warn the General Assembly. He had to avoid the main roads where the British were arresting everyone. Reportedly, Jouett's face was scarred for life from the branches that he hit in the dark, on the way to Charlottesville. He got there just in time. Governor Thomas Jefferson, at the end of his term in that office, fled across Carter's Mountain as the British reached Monticello. The General Assembly fled across the Blue Ridge to Staunton.

Colonel John Simcoe led a simultaneous British raid on the north bank of the James River to Point of Fork, at the mouth of the Rivanna River. There he captured a large number of Virginia supplies. General Baron von Steuben managed to escape with most of the Continental Army supplies to the south bank of the river, but the Virginia state officials were less sucessful. Steuben described his maneuvers as succcessful, since he had fulfilled his mission - but that obviously ignored the overall impact of the military losses due to the American inability to defend any fixed location against the British forces in 1781.

By 1781, six years after open warfare started at Lexington and Concord, the British forces had captured all of the large American cities, marched through the various state capitals with ease, and were now disrupting the ability of the Americans to maintain an army in the field by destroying the supply bases throughout Virginia. Eighty years later, Union generals would do the same to the Confederates... though the Civil War would conclude with a Confederate surrender at Appomattox, instead of a surprise defeat equivalent to Yorktown.

The amazinf defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown can be explained best by the amazing unwillingness of the British commanders to work as members of a team. The British army depended upon re-supply from the sea. The Americans had minimal naval assets, and the British had defeated the French several times in previous naval engagements.

The French were unwilling to gamble along with George Washington in an attack on New York, because the British fleet and soldiers on the ground were too powerful. They were willing to strip all of their ships from the West Indies and create an extraordinarily large fleet for a brief moment, however. The American and French troops stationed outside of New York marched south to the Chesapeake, where the French provided transportation to the Peninsula. The Americans marched their artillery by land to Conwallis's encampment at Yorktown, and between the two countries they outnumbered the British in troops and artillery.

What mattered, however, was the fact that the British fleet was defeated by French fleet on September 5, 1781. The French sailed out of Chesapeake Bay, surprising the British with the number of "ships of the line" assembled in one force. The Battle of the Capes was a draw, basically, with each navy punishing the other but not gaining domination over the other. The French retained control of the Chesapeake Bay and the British fleet returned to New York for repairs. As a result, for the first time since the Revolutionary War started, Cornwalis was trapped and unable to get new supplies or troops.

Cornwallis played it safe and waited for help, while Washington and the French allies gambled and won at Yorktown. Had Cornwallis showed more energy, he could have broken through the French or American lines before they established siege trenches and trapped him in Yorktown. In particular, he could have crossed the York River and marched north past Gloucester as the Americans/French were marching south from New York. However, he waited too long, assuming his commander in New York would deliver on his promises and prevent Cornwallis from being trapped. When Cornwallis finally tried a breakout, a storm prevented the British ships from evacuating Yorktown and on October 19, 1781, he surrendered.

NOTE: A year later, in the Battle of the Saintes, the French fleet was destroyed by the English.

Pirates in Virginia

References