By Kermit Hobbs Jr.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Kermit Hobbs continues his occasional look at the history of Suffolk today with the first in a three-part series about Suffolk at the time of the Revolutionary War. Look for Part Two next Sunday.

Suffolk and its surrounding country have been the setting for many important events that our history books often miss. Another such story involves events in Suffolk and Nansemond County in the Revolutionary War.

Tensions between the colonies and England over “taxation without representation” had built up for more than a decade before the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired in Lexington, Mass., in the early morning hours of April 19, 1775.

A British force had marched from Boston to Lexington on its way to Concord, to seize a cache of arms and ammunition the rebels had reportedly stored there. That force was met by a force of Patriot militia, and the war was on.

After fighting at Lexington and Concord, the Patriots drove the British back to their defenses in Boston.

For the first three years of the war, the British focused their military efforts on the northern colonies as they sought to put down the American rebellion. During that time, they found the Americans to be surprisingly resilient in that theater of war, and they decided it was time to try their luck in the southern colonies.

There, they hoped to find more of the population to be loyal to the king and, perhaps, even willing to take up arms against the Patriots.

On May 5, 1779, British Gen. Edward Matthew and 2,000 “chosen” men boarded a fleet of ships in New York harbor and struck out for Hampton Roads. Their orders were to pillage and destroy any materiel, buildings and resources that would be useful to the rebels’ cause.

The fleet, commanded by Adm. Sir George Collier, consisted of the Raisonable (64 guns), the Rainbow, the Otter, the Diligent, the Haarlem Sloop, Cornwallis’s galley and other private vessels, besides the troop transports.

The ships arrived in Hampton Roads on May 9, and the troops were set ashore to begin their grisly work. The next day, they captured Fort Nelson, which overlooked the Elizabeth River at the site of the present Old Town Portsmouth. From there they split up into smaller parties that spread into Norfolk, Gosport, Kemp’s Landing and, of course, Suffolk.

By this stage of the war, Suffolk had become particularly important to Virginia. Because of the presence of the British ships around the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, it had become difficult for foreign goods to be brought in through that corridor.

The importation of supplies from the outside world was necessary to the well being of the colonies and, of course, to the war effort.

There was one other route that foreign trade could be carried on, however. Ships could come in through Ocracoke Inlet, across the Albemarle Sound and up the Chowan and Blackwater rivers to South Quay. From there, goods could be transported overland to Suffolk for storage, or to the Nansemond River for distribution to other parts of the state.

Suffolk had become a kind of state warehouse, where the produce of industry could be deposited.

Kermit Hobbs Jr. is an accomplished Suffolk historian and businessman. Email him at khobbs5@aol.com.