Battle of Great Bridge

Battle of Great Bridge
Part of the American Revolutionary War
Sketch by Lord Rawdon of the battlefield
Date December 9, 1775 Location Great Bridge, now Chesapeake, Virginia Coordinates: 36°43′11″N 76°14′19″W / 36.71972°N 76.23861°W / 36.71972; -76.23861 Result Colonial victory
Belligerents
Virginia North Carolina	Great Britain
Commanders and leaders
William Woodford	Samuel Leslie Charles Fordyce †
Strength
861 infantry and militia	409 infantry, militia, sailors, and grenadiers with 2 artillery pieces
Casualties and losses
1 wounded, slight injury to the thumb.	62 to 102 British regulars killed or wounded, militia casualties apparently unknown.
Great Bridge Battle Site
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Virginia Landmarks Register
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Location	Both sides of the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal between Oak Grove and Great Bridge, Chesapeake, Virginia
Area	130 acres (53 ha)
Built	1775 (1775)
NRHP Reference #	73002205
VLR #	131-0023
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	March 28, 1973
Designated VLR	January 5, 1971

62 to 102 British regulars killed or wounded, militia casualties apparently unknown.

The Battle of Great Bridge was fought December 9, 1775, in the area of Great Bridge, Virginia, early in the American Revolutionary War. The victory by colonial Virginia militia forces led to the departure of Royal Governor Lord Dunmore and any remaining vestiges of British power over the Colony of Virginia during the early days of the conflict.

Following increasing political and military tensions in early 1775, both Dunmore and colonial rebel leaders recruited troops and engaged in a struggle for available military supplies. The struggle eventually focused on Norfolk, where Dunmore had taken refuge aboard a Royal Navy vessel. Dunmore's forces had fortified one side of a critical river crossing south of Norfolk at Great Bridge, while rebel forces had occupied the other side. In an attempt to break up the rebel gathering, Dunmore ordered an attack across the bridge, which was decisively repulsed. Colonel William Woodford, the Virginia militia commander at the battle, described it as "a second Bunker's Hill affair".

Shortly thereafter, Norfolk, at the time a Tory center, was abandoned by Dunmore and the Tories, who fled to navy ships in the harbor. Rebel-occupied Norfolk was destroyed on January 1, 1776 in an action begun by Dunmore and completed by rebel forces.

Tensions in the British Colony of Virginia were raised in April 1775 at roughly the same time that the hostilities of the American Revolutionary War broke out in the Province of Massachusetts Bay with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, had dismissed the colonial legislative assembly, the House of Burgesses, who then established a provisional assembly in Virginia Conventions. The Burgesses authorized existing and newly raised militia troops to arm themselves, leading to a struggle for control of the colony's military supplies. Under orders from Lord Dunmore, British forces removed gunpowder from the colonial storehouse in the capital of Williamsburg, causing a confrontation between royal and militia forces. Although the incident was resolved without violence, Dunmore, fearing for his personal safety, left Williamsburg in June 1775 and placed his family on board a Royal Navy ship. A small British fleet then took shape at Norfolk, a port town whose merchants had significant Loyalist (Tory) tendencies. The threat posed by the British fleet may also have played a role in minimizing Whig activity in the town.