Qualla: Battle of Great Bridge https://qualla.com/battle-of-great-bridge en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/9/b/battle-of-great-bridge-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of Great Bridge https://qualla.com/battle-of-great-bridge Battle of Great Bridge: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-great-bridge/ Photo credit Tere Rottink, CC BY-SA 3.0. The only rebel casualty was a man with a slight wound to the thumb. On December 9, 1775, British grenadiers charged across a narrow causeway spanning the southern branch of the Elizabeth River at Great Bridge, Virginia, bayonets fixed, advancing into a wall of musket fire from colonial militia entrenched behind earthworks. The assault collapsed within minutes. Captain Charles Fordyce fell dead just steps from the rebel breastworks, and roughly half his men went down with him. Colonel William Woodford, commanding the Virginia militia, called it "a second Bunker's Hill affair, in miniature; with this difference, that we kept our post, and had only one man wounded in the hand." Within weeks, Royal Governor Lord Dunmore and every vestige of British power in the Colony of Virginia were gone.

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Image: Tere Rottink | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/9/b/battle-of-great-bridge-wp/dq9b-battle-of-great-bridge-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Great Bridge: A Governor at Sea https://qualla.com/battle-of-great-bridge/ Photo credit Humberto Moreno, CC BY 2.0. The trouble had been building all year. Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, fled Williamsburg in June 1775, fearing for his safety as political tensions exploded into open defiance. He put his family aboard a Royal Navy vessel and began assembling a small British fleet ...

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]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/9/b/battle-of-great-bridge-wp/dq9b-battle-of-great-bridge-a-governor-at-sea.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Great Bridge: Dunmore's Desperate Gamble https://qualla.com/battle-of-great-bridge/ Photo credit Joshua Reynolds, Public domain. The proclamation alarmed slaveholders on both sides. But Dunmore recruited enough formerly enslaved men to form the Ethiopian Regiment, alongside a Loyalist company he called the Queen's Own Loyal Virginia Regiment. These local forces, plus two companies of the 14th Foot and the ...

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]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/9/b/battle-of-great-bridge-wp/dq9b-battle-of-great-bridge-dunmores-desperate-gamble.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Great Bridge: Sixty Muskets Behind the Earthworks https://qualla.com/battle-of-great-bridge/ Photo credit Peter F. Rothermel (1812–1895), Public domain. Dunmore learned the militia had acquired cannons, though he did not know they were inoperable. Believing the rebel position would only strengthen with time, he ordered an attack for the morning of December 9. The plan called for a diversionary assault downriver by the Ethiopian c...

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Image: Peter F. Rothermel (1812–1895) | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/9/b/battle-of-great-bridge-wp/dq9b-battle-of-great-bridge-sixty-muskets-behind-the-earthworks.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Great Bridge: Full Honors for the Enemy Dead https://qualla.com/battle-of-great-bridge/ Photo credit Tere Rottink, CC BY-SA 3.0. After a truce allowed the British to collect their dead and wounded, the surviving Tory forces slipped away in the night back to Norfolk. Casualty estimates ranged from Dunmore's official count of 62 killed or wounded to a patriot report of 102 British losses. The rebels buried C...

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]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/9/b/battle-of-great-bridge-wp/dq9b-battle-of-great-bridge-full-honors-for-the-enemy-dead.mp3 0:06 5 full Battle of Great Bridge: The Governor Who Never Came Back https://qualla.com/battle-of-great-bridge/ Photo credit Tere Rottink, CC BY-SA 3.0. Dunmore occupied Portsmouth briefly in February 1776 and launched raiding operations along the Chesapeake until General Charles Lee forced him back to his fleet in late March. By August 1776, Dunmore and the British fleet sailed for New York City. He never returned to Virginia. T...

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]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/9/b/battle-of-great-bridge-wp/dq9b-battle-of-great-bridge-the-governor-who-never-came-back.mp3 0:06 6 full