[(Larger)]

MAP
OF THE
BATTLE
OF
CRANEY ISLAND
FROM MAPS IN
OFFICE CHIEF OF ENGINEERS

At daylight on the morning of June 22 Beckwith, with about eight hundred men, landed on the main shore outside of Craney Island, and pushed forward to take the island in the rear. Soon afterward Captain Pechell, with about seven hundred men in fifteen boats, approached the island from the northwest along the shore, far out of the reach of the gunboats. Toward eleven o’clock the British boats came within range of the American battery on the island. Contrary to the opinions of several officers, Captain Pechell insisted on making the attack independently of Beckwith’s approach, and pushed on. Two or three hundred yards from land the leading boats grounded in shoal water. Apparently the men might have waded ashore; but “one of the seamen, having plunged his boat-hook over the side, found three or four feet of slimy mud at the bottom;”[393] the leading officer’s boat being aground was soon struck by a six-pound shot, the boat sunk, and himself and his crew, with those of two other launches, were left in the water. The other boats took a part of them in, and then quickly retired.

The affair was not improved by the fortunes of Sir Sydney Beckwith, who advanced to the rear of Craney Island, where he was stopped by creeks which he reported too deep to ford, and accordingly re-embarked his troops without further effort; but the true causes of the failure seemed not to be understood. Napier thought it due to the division of command between three heads, Warren, Cockburn, and Beckwith;[394] but incompetence was as obvious as the division of command. Admiral Warren’s official report seemed to admit that he was also overmatched:[395]—

“Upon approaching the island, from the extreme shoalness of the water on the seaside and the difficulty of getting across from the land, as well as the island itself being fortified with a number of guns and men from the frigate [‘Constellation’] and the militia, and flanked by fifteen gunboats, I considered, in consequence of the representation of the officer commanding the troops of the difficulty of their passing over from the land, that the persevering in the attempt would cost more men than the number with us would permit, as the other forts must have been stormed before the frigate and dock-yard could be destroyed. I therefore directed the troops to be re-embarked.”

On neither side were the losses serious. The American battery inflicted less injury than was to be expected. Fifteen British boats containing at least eight hundred men, all told, remained some two hours under the fire of two twenty-four-pound and four six-pound guns, at a range differently estimated from one hundred to three hundred yards, but certainly beyond musketry fire, for the American troops had to wade out before firing. Three boats were sunk; three men were killed, and sixteen were wounded.[396] Sixty-two men were reported missing, twenty-two of whom came ashore from the boats, while forty deserted from Beckwith’s land force.[397] The Americans suffered no loss.

To compensate his men for their check at Craney Island, Admiral Warren immediately afterward devised another movement, which proved, what the Craney Island affair suggested, that the large British force in the Chesapeake was either ill constructed or ill led. Opposite Craney Island, ten miles away on the north shore of James River, stood the village of Hampton, a place of no importance either military or commercial. Four or five hundred Virginia militia were camped there, covering a heavy battery on the water’s edge. The battery and its defenders invited attack, but Admiral Warren could have no military object to gain by attacking them. His official report[398] said “that the enemy having a post at Hampton defended by a considerable corps commanding the communication between the upper part of the country and Norfolk, I considered it advisable, and with a view to cut off their resources, to direct it to be attacked.” Hampton could not fairly be said to “command” communication with Norfolk, a place which lay beyond ten miles of water wholly commanded by the British fleet; but Warren was not obliged to excuse himself for attacking wherever he pleased, and Hampton served his object best.

At dawn of June 25, Beckwith’s troops were set ashore about two miles above the village, and moved forward to the road, taking Hampton in the rear, while Cockburn’s launches made a feint from the front. The militia, after resistance costing Beckwith a total loss of nearly fifty men, escaped, and the British troops entered the town, where they were allowed to do what they pleased with property and persons. Lieutenant-Colonel Napier of the One Hundred-and-second regiment, who commanded Beckwith’s advance, wrote in his diary that Sir Sydney Beckwith “ought to have hanged several villains at Little Hampton; had he so done, the Americans would not have complained; but every horror was perpetrated with impunity,—rape, murder, pillage,—and not a man was punished.” The British officers in general shared Napier’s disgust, but alleged that the English troops took no part in the outrages, which were wholly the work of the French chasseurs.

Warren made no attempt to hold the town; the troops returned two days afterward to their ships, and the Virginia militia resumed their station; but when the details of the Hampton affair became known, the story roused natural exasperation throughout the country, and gave in its turn incitement to more violence in Canada. Admiral Warren and Sir Sydney Beckwith did not deny the wrong; they dismissed their Frenchmen from the service, and the United States had no further reason to complain of that corps; but the double mortification seemed to lower the British officers even in their own eyes to the level of marauders.

After the failure to destroy the “Constellation,” Admiral Warren could still indulge a hope of destroying the twenty-eight-gun frigate “Adams,” and the navy-yard at Washington; for the defence of the Potomac had been totally neglected, and only one indifferent fort, about twelve miles below the Federal city, needed to be captured. July 1 the British squadron entered the Potomac; but beyond rousing a panic at Washington it accomplished nothing, except to gain some knowledge of the shoals and windings that impeded the ascent of the river. Leaving the Potomac, Warren turned up Chesapeake Bay toward Annapolis and Baltimore, but made no attempt on either place. During the rest of the year he cruised about the bay, meeting little resistance, and keeping the States of Virginia and Maryland in constant alarm.