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The Brash Lord Dunmore
By Dylan Rogers Second Place
Norfolk, Virginia
Maury High School
He pledged its citizens' loyalty, and, within months, he reduced the city to ashes. Lord Dunmore seemed to be an almost insane character in Norfolk's history. Lord Dunmore, or his more Scottish nomen, John Murray, was the last Royal Governor of the colony of Virginia before the American Revolution. In 1770, Dunmore and his family moved into the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg. After a series of debacles throughout the state, like the famed "Lord Dunmore's War," Dunmore and the affairs of Virginia started to settle down. However, the beginnings of the American Revolution took over his position. In April 1775, when the incidents of Lexington and Concord occurred, Dunmore panicked, so he closed the magazine full of the colonists' munitions. When the colonists heard word of this, they started a pseudo-revolution, and, in the end, Dunmore and his family had to flee Williamsburg to his fleet on the York River. After sailing down the York, Dunmore made his way to the Elizabeth River, and once he was here, Dunmore started to fortify the city of Norfolk.
By the 7th of November, Dunmore issued his Proclamation of Martial Law in which the basic rights of the citizens were taken away by military force. However, by late November, some three thousand men, including the mayor, pledged their allegiance to Dunmore and England. With loyalists on his side and control of the Chesapeake, Dunmore felt triumphant. After a series of engagements, between the Patriots and the British loyalists, in Norfolk, Dunmore realized that he could not hold onto Norfolk. Very soon after, on January 1, 1776, Dunmore was informed that the Patriots were parading around the streets of Norfolk with their hats on their bayonets. By 3:15 in the afternoon, Dunmore ordered a bombardment on the city. In the early evening, Dunmore sent troops to burn buildings in the city, including the warehouses and homes. After which, American troops started plundering homes and then burning them. Dunmore later sent more landing parties to burn the city, and throughout the night, the fires of the city raged on. Dunmore's cannons had destroyed over eight hundred buildings; however, in February, Norfolk's government ordered that more than four hundred more homes be destroyed. Dunmore then fled to Tucker's Point, then to Gwynn's Island, and, by August, he finally sailed for New York.
Dunmore's actions led to the total destruction of the city of Norfolk. These actions led to the title that Norfolk holds today as being the only city totally destroyed and rebuilt in a war. Dunmore's aggressions caused many of the inhabitants of the city to be put out onto the streets on the cold month of January. This leads one to question the actions of Dunmore. Though Dunmore wanted to wipe out the city due to the rising power of the Patriots, one would want to know Dunmore's true motivations. Why would Dunmore want to totally demolish a city in which so many of its inhabitants were so loyal to the crown? And even before Dunmore started thinking about bombarding the city, why did he have to control the city by ordering martial law? In this case, even though there might be a chance of insurrection among the patriots, martial law seems a little extreme in a country ruled by the crown. Along with martial law, did Dunmore think it was a good idea to force many of the inhabitants to allegiance? It seems that a forced allegiance does not seem to work properly since allegiances are consensual. Even though Dunmore destroyed a prospering city, its citizens will always remember him. With the destruction of Norfolk, a sense of rebirth seems to have come over the city. Over the next two centuries, the city of Norfolk pulled itself from the ashes to rise to a leading port city of the South and the Eastern Seaboard. Despite Dunmore's brash destruction of the city, he seems to be one of the most important figures in Norfolk's rich and varied history.
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