On this day 250 years ago the HMS Roebuck, Dunmore, William, Anna, three transports and seven other small vessels sailed from Lynnhaven Bay (in today’s City of Virginia Beach) and out of the Chesapeake Bay heading to New York. These14 vessels were the final remnant of the fleet of over 100 British and Loyalist vessels that Lord Dunmore, the last Royal Governor of Virginia, had commanded in raids up and down the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac and James Rivers and fruitless attempts to reestablish a British foothold Virginia or Maryland for over a year. About 50 ships of Dunmore’s fleet had departed earlier in the week for Bermuda and St. Augustine, Florida. Only one British ship — the HMS Pembroke — was left to patrol the mouth of the Chesapeake to try and capture ships bringing supplies to the Americans.
Dunmore would never return to Virginia.
In addition to Lord Dunmore himself, his 14-ship fleet carried British soldiers, marines, sailors, Loyalist civilians, and about 150 soldiers of his “Ethiopian Regiment” of Blacks who had escaped slavery for the promise of freedom in Dunmore’s fleet, in order to reinforce the British armada in New York Harbor and army on Staten Island. Including the wives and children of the Ethiopian Regiment soldiers, only about 300 of the 2000 or so Blacks who fled slavery to join Dunmore would make it to New York. The rest of the escaped slaves were left dead or dying from smallpox or other diseases on the shores of Virginia and Maryland.
In addition to the 300 ex-slaves who made it to New York, other Blacks sailed from Virginia in ships from Dunmore’s fleet to New York, Bermuda, the Bahamas and Florida. They were not free Blacks but slaves forced by Loyalist masters to leave Virginia to other slave-holding colonies still controlled by the British. Lord Dunmore is mistakenly celebrated by many today for freeing the slaves of Virginia but he was no abolitionist. Although he honored his promise to the slaves who fled Patriot owners to volunteer for the Ethiopian Regiment, he did nothing to free other slaves. In fact, after the Revolution when Dunmore was Governor of the Bahamas, slaveholding increased, and the tribunal he set up to adjudicate claims of Blacks who asserted they fought for the British would free only one person from slavery.
Sources: Wrike at 100-01; https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/dunmores-proclamation-and-black-loyalists; https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/lord-dunmores-ethiopian-regiment; https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/dunmores-proclamation-and-black-loyalists
On This Day In The Revolution 