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 36°43′11″N 76°14′19″W / 36.71972°N 76.23861°W / 36.71972; -76.23861 Result Patriot victory
Belligerents
Virginia Committee of Safety Patriot militia	Province of Virginia British army Loyalist militia Ethiopian Regiment
Commanders and leaders
William Woodford	Samuel Leslie Charles Fordyce †
Strength
861 infantry and militia[1]	409 infantry, militia, sailors, and grenadiers with 2 artillery pieces[1]
Casualties and losses
1 wounded[2]	62 to 102 British regulars killed or wounded, militia casualties apparently unknown.[3]
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 No.	73002205[4]
VLR No.	131-0023
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	March 28, 1973
Designated VLR	January 5, 1971[5]

The Battle of Great Bridge was fought December 9, 1775, in the area of Great Bridge, Virginia, early in the American Revolutionary War. The refusal 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".^[2]

Shortly thereafter, Norfolk, at the time a Loyalist 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.