For a few minutes the skirmish was hot. The British fought doggedly, as many believed what Dunmore had told them, that if captured the Virginians would scalp them. Rodney received a light flesh wound, but most of the Americans escaped uninjured, while several of the enemy were killed.
All this seems very tame in the telling, but to those who took part in the engagement it was most exciting and the Americans were jubilant, for they had met the British troops and driven them!
For several days reinforcements poured in from the different parts of Virginia, and five days later Colonel Woodford marched his men to Norfolk.
Lord Dunmore decided he could not oppose him, so withdrew aboard his ships.
“Here are the pistols,” said Lawrence the next day, presenting Rodney with a handsome pair with silver mounted handles.
“Thank you; they are beauties. I hope you bought a brace of them for yourself as well. You are likely to need them.”
The following day both left for their homes, parting the best of friends and planning to meet again.
As for Dunmore, his career in America was drawing to a close, though he was able to do more mischief.
Provisions getting scarce, and the riflemen in the city annoying the British, he sent word that unless 192 this firing was stopped and provisions furnished he would burn the town. His threat was defied and, on another ship joining Dunmore, he sent a force ashore to start a conflagration. In this way much of the thriving town of nearly six thousand inhabitants was burned; what buildings escaped were burned later by the Americans to prevent their occupation by the British.
Later, Dunmore left and established barracks on Gwyn’s Island in Chesapeake Bay, whence he was driven the following July by that grim old fighter, General Andrew Lewis, who had wanted to fight him out on the Pickaway Plains, during the Indian war.