Markers of History

A word of expla­na­tion about the blog over the next cou­ple of days.

This post will be the only one today, and it will be fol­lowed tomor­row with a spe­cial history-related (but not historical-marker-related) post. On Thursday, I’ll resume look­ing at mark­ers I found on a recent trip to Portsmouth, VA in a mega-post about Fort Nelson Park, which con­tains roughly a dozen mark­ers from Portsmouth’s Path of History, which I’ll com­bine in one post so we don’t have an entire week or two on the his­tory of the Portsmouth Naval Hospital.

Now on to the marker about Collier’s Raid:

State Historical Marker
Virginia Q-8-G
Collier’s Raid

Location: Crawford Pkwy & Washington St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:55pm

Transcription of marker: A British fleet under Commodore Sir George Collier sailed up the Elizabeth River and shelled Fort Nelson in May 1779, dur­ing the Revolutionary War. A land­ing force of 1,800 infantry­men led by Brig. Gen. Edward Mathew cap­tured the fort on 10 May after a brief resis­tance. The British occu­pied Portsmouth, Gosport, and Norfolk, and burned Suffolk and the Gosport ship­yard. Collier also cap­tured or burned 137 ves­sels in Hampton Roads and dis­man­tled Fort Nelson. The British force then embarked and sailed to New York.

Department of Historic Resources, 1998

My impres­sions: As some­body from out­side the US, from a coun­try that peace­fully moved from colony to coun­try, it takes me aback to think that this was hap­pen­ing in 1779, three years after that “magic” date of 1776. Reading the marker it seems almost ran­dom: the British forces did a lot in this area and then the one cryp­tic sen­tence: The British force then embarked and sailed to New York.

It almost sounds like “Nothing left to destroy here, we might as well move along…want to catch a Broadway show?” This is actu­ally a tan­ta­liz­ing taste to me. That one sen­tence on its own seems so incon­gru­ous that it leaves me want­ing to research what actu­ally hap­pened. WHY did they leave here and sail to New York?

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.