As soon as the British forces had landed, fire was set to the houses not already destroyed by shells, while the sailors and marines went through them, smashing furniture, cutting open beds to feed the flames, insulting women, and spreading terror. One house only, filled with women, was spared after a special appeal to the Admiral. A church just outside of the town was gutted, farm-houses on the road to Baltimore were plundered, travellers were robbed, and bridges, furnaces, and mills were destroyed.
The little villages of Georgetown and Fredericktown, Maryland, were the next spoil of the Admiral, who led the ravaging party in person. But he did not succeed in landing till his men in the boats had suffered severely from the fire of a battery manned by thirty-five militiamen, which was kept up steadily for half an hour. Not a house was left standing in either of the villages, and the enemy enriched themselves with all the plunder they could carry away.
About this time Admiral Warren, who had issued from Bermuda a proclamation declaring New York, Charleston, Port Royal, Savannah, and the whole of the Mississippi River under blockade—a paper blockade, at which both Americans and neutrals laughed—joined Admiral Cockburn, in the Chesapeake, and they determined to extend as far as possible the pillaging and burning of towns on the coast.
The next one selected was Norfolk, Va. But the approach to the town was commanded by a battery on Craney Island, and this battery was promptly manned by a hundred American sailors, under command of Lieutenant Neale, of the navy, and fifty marines under Lieutenant Breckenridge. It was dawn of day on the 22d of June when four thousand British sailors and marines, in barges, came in sight of the island; and when they were fairly under the guns of the battery, it blazed out. The pieces were served rapidly and with such precision that many of the barges were cut clear in two, and their occupants would have been drowned had they not been promptly rescued by the others. The Admiral was in a boat fifty feet long, called the Centipede, and this was so riddled with shot that he and his crew had barely time to get out of it when it sank. Before this merciless and unremitting fire the squadron of barges at length retreated to the ships. At the same time, a body of eight hundred soldiers had been put ashore, to attack the town by land. But for them a force of Virginia volunteers, under Colonel Beatty, were waiting, with a well-placed battery of six guns. The enemy had not all landed when the battery opened upon them, with such effect that they retreated at once. A part of them took refuge in a house, from which they fired rockets at the battery-men; but an American gun-boat came up and sent a few twenty-four-pound balls crashing through the house, when the last of the enemy fled, making their way back to the fleet as speedily as possible.
Smarting under this defeat, the British commanders immediately planned the destruction of Hampton, eighteen miles from Norfolk, which they supposed would cut off communication between the latter place and the upper part of Virginia.
At daylight on the 25th, two thousand five hundred soldiers, commanded by Sir Sydney Beckwith, were landed several miles below Hampton, and marched on the town. At the same time, a squadron of boats, commanded by Admiral Cockburn and protected by the sloop-of-war Mohawk, drew up before the place and fired in rockets, shells, and solid shot. The entire garrison of the place consisted of six hundred and thirty-six men, commanded by Major Crutchfield, who had seven pieces of artillery.
As Cockburn's barges approached the town, fire was opened upon them with two twelve-pounders, which did so much execution that the Admiral found it discreet to draw off and take position behind a point of land where the American gunners could not see him. From this shelter he fired rockets and shells for an hour, but so wildly that not the slightest damage was effected by them.
Crutchfield sent a company of riflemen, under Captain Servant, with orders to conceal themselves in the woods near the road where Beckwith's column would pass in approaching the town, to annoy and delay it as much as possible. This was done so skilfully as to inflict considerable loss upon the enemy; and when Crutchfield saw that the barges would not approach the town again till it was in the possession of Beckwith, he marched with the greater part of his force to the assistance of the riflemen, leaving Captain Pryor with a few men to manage the battery and keep off the barges.
Crutchfield's column was fired upon just as the British column had been, by riflemen concealed in a wood; and as he wheeled to charge upon the hidden foe, he was greeted by a sudden fire from two six-pounders and a discharge of rockets. The enemy's artillery was so well handled that Crutchfield's column was broken up, and a portion of it driven from the field. The remainder made its way through a defile, all the while under fire, to a junction with Servant's riflemen. At the same time Captain Cooper, with what few cavalrymen the Americans had, was annoying the enemy's left flank.
Crutchfield kept up the fighting with spirit as long as possible, but of course was obliged to give way at last. Captain Pryor and his men held their ground at the battery, preventing any landing from the barges, till the enemy's land force came up in the rear and was within sixty yards of the guns. He then ordered the artillerists to spike the pieces, and break through the corps of British marines approaching in the rear; which order was at once obeyed, to the astonishment of the marines, who failed to hurt or capture a single man. With Captain Pryor still at their head, the little band plunged into a creek and swam across, those who had car-fines or side-arms taking them with them, and escaped beyond pursuit. Crutchfield in his retreat was followed for two miles by a strong force, which failed to overtake him, while he frequently halted his men behind fences and walls, to deliver a volley at the approaching enemy and then continue the retreat. In this fight the British had ninety men killed, and a hundred and twenty wounded. The American loss was seven killed, twelve wounded, and twelve missing.