Part Three of
Caroline Patriot Lies in Unmarked Grave
By Ed Simmons, Jr.
cpreporter@lcs.net
The spear tip of Lord Dunmore's 500-man army, British grenadiers led by Captain Fordyce made a dash at dawn December 9, 1775 across the half-mile-long wooden Great Bridge over the Dismal Swamp at Norfolk. With fixed bayonets, their mission was to seize the entrenchment at the bridge's end held by the 2nd Virginia Regiment. Caroline men made up the 4th Company of the 2nd, with William Taliaferro their captain. He would perish at Valley Forge three years later in 1778. Onward towards the Virginian's earthworks came the grenadiers.
"None marched up but his Majesty's soldiers who behaved like Englishmen," wrote Colonel William Woodford, commander of the 2nd in his report afterwards to Edmund Pendleton, president of the Virginia Convention. Close friends, they both hailed from Caroline County. But the British bravery Woodford saluted in his report would not win the day. The Virginians, waiting until Captain Fordyce's men were a bare 50 yards off, unleashed a punishing rifle fire that wrecked the British ranks. Somehow Captain Fordyce managed to advance within a few feet of the Virginians' breastworks, hat in hand, cheering his men on, when he was felled by 14 bullets.
By the time it was all over, the British would fall back to their fort, which they abandoned that night, leaving a route into Norfolk for the Patriots. One hundred and two British soldiers fell killed or wounded, with just one Virginian wounded slightly in the hand. An unsung hero of the Battle of Great Bridge was a slave boy from North Carolina, his master named Captain Thompkins. The day before the battle he went over to the British lines pretending to be a deserter. He told the British commander Lord Dunmore the Virginians numbered only 300 "Shirt-Tails," a name used by the British in mockery of the Virginia troops who at that time did not have uniforms, but wore hunting shirts instead. In actuality, there were over 1,000 "Shirt-Tails."
Furthermore, the slave boy told the Britishers that the Patriots were out of gunpowder. In fact they had plenty. Lord Dunmore couldn't resist but to attack, resulting in the first British disaster in Virginia of the Revolutionary War that would ultimately see Lord Cornwallis surrender his army at Yorktown six long years later. History does not remember the name of the brave slave boy whose nerve won the battle. It is known however that after the battle Lord Dunmore threatened to hang him. It is not known whether or not the cruel threat was carried out.
Next week: Part Four – Woodford buries the British dead.