Battle of Craney Island

Severely beaten by volunteer forces at Craney, the would-be British invaders retreated to their ships and brooded. At the same time that hundreds of their comrades had been killed or wounded, they had barely gotten off a shot. It was humiliating. It was galling.

Expecting an easy romp, expecting to plunder and pillage in the towns of Norfolk and Portsmouth, they turned their attention across Hampton Roads to an easier target, the less heavily fortified town of Hampton, with bile in their throats.

There was no Elizabeth River gauntlet this time, with forts and a fortified island for the British to run – just a force of 450 militia assembled at “Little England,” a neighborhood overlooking Hampton Creek near the present-day Hampton Yacht Club.

Before dawn on June 25, while a fleet of warships appeared near Blackbeard’s Point – drawing the fire of American guns – a force of about 2,000 infantrymen, marines and French chasseurs landed some two miles west of town and began marching toward the rear flanks of the defenders.

At first, the Americans, under the command of Maj. Stephen Crutchfield, put up a stiff defense. He had correctly judged the warships’ appearance as a feint, and wheeled his forces toward the powerful British attackers. As one observer described the scene, the woods near the landing were glowing with the scarlet of British troops and the nearby grain field was verdant with the green jackets of the French.

But Crutchfield was able to inflict heavy damage on the invaders before their superior forces began to overwhelm him and force him to pull back. A number of militia swam across the western branch of Hampton Creek and escaped without the loss of a man or musket.

At a halfway house between Hampton and Yorktown, he wrote to Gen. Robert B. Taylor, of Norfolk, commander of the Hampton Roads forces “I must perform the painful duty of apprising you of my retreat with the garrison under my command at Hampton to this place.”

With the defenders gone, the British marched quickly into Hampton. Most of the citizens had fled, but some, including those too weak to leave, stayed behind.

What followed has gone down in history as one of the most atrocious acts of war on a civilian population. Some of the writers practically blushed to describe it. So you might wish to avert your gaze here, and ask the children to leave the room.

According to witnesses and later investigators, the invaders either looted or destroyed just about everything but the houses. The soldiers, particularly the French, “pillaged and encouraged every act of rapine and murder, killing a poor man by the name, Kirby, who had been lying on his bed at the point of death . . . shooting his wife in the hip and killing his faithful dog lying under his feet,” one account said.

Capt. John B. Cooper reported, “My blood ran cold at what I saw and heard.” The worst accusation was that a number of women were raped. This was quickly denied by the British, and evidently the American press greatly exaggerated what the scoundrels did. But even a British officer who played a major role in the attack, concluded, “Every horror was perpetrated with impunity – rape, murder, pillage – and not a man was punished.”

The infamous – at least in American eyes – Gen. Thomas Beckwith, who commanded the invading troops, claimed the misconduct was due to the anger his troops felt over what they believed was the indiscriminate killing of their comrades after their boats sank during the botched invasion of Craney Island.

This charge was proved to be false. But even so, general, you don’t take revenge on civilians. Do you? Well, you’re gone, sir, and so are a couple of centuries, but at least on this side of the pond, your name still lives in infamy.

Well, at last, goodbye to Craney and all that.