With Lord Dunmore on Tucker's Point - A Runaway Slave's Perspective.

Tucker's Point was a few miles west of Portsmouth. In addition to his five other warships Dunmore now belatedly had the help of HMS Roebuck, 74 guns, captained by Andrew Snape Hamond. Hamond brought with him five hundred seamen and marines, ready to repel a rumoured attack by the nascent American Navy. By the time John Moseley arrived at Tucker's Point in mid-March, two weeks after the brief sojourn of General Henry Clinton's Mercury with two transports, on his way to Cape Fear, the four acre site was protected by an eight foot deep entrenchment which ran the quarter-mile between the coves on each side of the point. Along with its windmills it now had several wells and two bake-ovens. Barracks were under construction. They were intended for the isolation of sailors suffering from an epidemic of ' Ague and fever [i.e. typhus] on board the Otter'. In the cramped, fetid, lice-ridden conditions of Dunmore's little fleet the disease quickly spread to the Ethiopian Regiment. One hundred and fifty blacks were supposedly 'tumbled into the deep to regale the sharks which … swam thereabouts', language designed to terrify prospective runaway slaves out of joining the British. Moseley avoided the typhus, perhaps because he was a new recruit in clean-clothes, and land-based, working as one of 400 laborers at Tucker's Point, protected by the Liverpool and Otter in Hampton Roads. Alongside his comrades under Major Thomas Byrd, he underwent military training at least every evening. News of their presence evoked both ridicule and fear in the rebel press where they were described as 'runaway and stolen Negroes' marching to the martial air of 'Hungry Niger, parch'd Corn!'¹

In Williamsburg the Edward Hack Moseleys were finally discharged from their parole but because of their closeness to Lord Dunmore the Committee of Safety insisted they move at least thirty miles inland. Their slaves were to be taken by the militia. Fearful of being sent to the West Indies or to the Fincastle lead-mines the Ralleston Hall blacks bolted. Among them were John Moseley's mother and his eleven-year-old relative, Patty. All of them sought refuge at Tucker's Point, hopeful of shelter in 'pretty good barracks', news of which had spread to the plantations by word-of-mouth. Food supply was now improved, as Hamond's men-of-war in raiding activities around Chesapeake Bay had brought in 'Six small Vessels, laden with Flour, Indian Corn, Tobacco and Groceries.' Young Patty, if she had reached Tucker's Point by 21 March, watched wide-eyed from the shore as one of the naval tenders pursued, fired on and set fire to a rebel sloop near Hampton Harbor.²

One early April afternoon the blacks labouring under cloudy skies at Tucker's Point ran to man the entrenchment against a rebel attack. Marines and seamen stationed on the point looked to 'the great quantity of cannon', but it was a false alarm. John Moseley remained unblooded. The only action was naval action offshore. A French sloop was apprehended, its crew put in irons. In mid April the rebels set part of Portsmouth on fire but were chased away by cannon from the Otter. Not until the end of the month did the rebel general sent south by George Washington, Charles Lee, force the small town's evacuation over five days. Dunmore did nothing, despite apparently having surplus ammunition. Every day six to eight more runaway slaves had come to join him, but most were untrained and a fair proportion were aged, or women and children. One of them had smallpox and the disease began to hit the blacks disproportionately. ³

Racked by fear of infection, with little hope of avoiding or surviving the epidemic, Moseley must have viewed his future with an unrelieved bleakness. Not entirely unexpected events though, would provide unlooked-for hope. Alerted through his spies of a rebel plan to storm the fleet with fireships and 'desperadoes' 'with the greatest Secrecy at the Dead of Night', Dunmore sent a desperate plea for help to Captain Andrew Snape Hamond, off the Virginia Capes, who was preparing to join Henry Clinton's expedition to the Carolinas. Hamond came, and aghast at the spread of smallpox among the black troops, recommended an immediate evacuation of Tucker's Point. A quick count at daybreak before embarkation revealed that Dunmore, out of all his ex-slaves, had only '150 Negro men' left in his Ethiopian Regiment, among them Moseley. Three hundred graves, victims of typhus and smallpox, were testimony to the Governor's continued defiance. His refugee fleet was now ninety strong, but even with help from the Royal Navy ships, lacked hands to sail it. Hamond made an immediate decision to leave behind and burn up to six sloops and schooners to the waterline lest they fall into enemy hands. With un-infected ex-slaves presumably isolated on the one vessel, the naval surgeons began inoculations immediately. Each one inoculated was incapable of hard work for several weeks. Probably about this time Moseley was first inoculated. Certainly he was immune to the disease when he landed in New South Wales in 1788. Passengers relocated on other vessels watched the raging flames and thick smoke do their work. Forty-five thousand bushels of salt, an essential preservative for meat and fish, especially in the Virginian summer, were apparently dumped into the Elizabeth River, lest it should fall into rebel hands. Like many others John Moseley no doubt pondered what such desperate acts might augur for the future.⁴

1Hast, Loyalism in Revolutionary Virginia, p. 60; Mapp, 'The “Pirate Peer” …' in Eller (ed.) Chesapeake Bay in the American Revolution, p. 90; Selby, Dunmore,p. 51; Journal of HMS Liverpool, Captain Henry Bellew, in Clark (ed.) NDAR,Vol. 3, p. 1293; Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman in Norfolk to his Friend in Glasgow, dated Schooner Bay, Norfolk Harbour, in Wheeler (ed.) Letters on the American Revolution, p. 261; Captain Andrew Snape Hamond to Vice-Admiral Molyneux Shuldham … 5^th March, 1776 in Clark (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 4, p. 182; Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the the American Revolution, Amherst, 1989, p. 77; not to be confused with the later far more devastating outbreak of smallpox among the Ethiopian Regiment, (though it frequently is); Syrett, The Royal Navy in American Waters, 1775-1783, p. 17; McDonnell, The Politics of War,p. 177; Captain Andrew Snape Hamond To Captain Henry Bellew RN, Roebuck, off Hampton Road in Virginia. 19^Th March, 1776, in Clark, (ed) NDAR, Vol. 4, p.414; Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black. Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812, Baltimore, 1969,p. 303; Tate, The Negro in Eighteenth Century Williamsburg,pp. 117-118.

2Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, p.13; The Book of Negroes, Book One, Pt. 2 http://www.blackloyalist.com/canadiandigitalcollections/documents/official/book_of_negroes.htm ; Cassandra Pybus, Black Founders. The unknown story of Australia's first black settlers, Sydney, 2006, p. 20; Journal of Captain Andrew Snape Hamond, 20^th March [1776], in Clark (ed) NDAR, Vol. 4, p. 427; Journal of HM Schooner Hinchinbrook,Lieut. Alexander Ellis, March 22, 1776 in ibid.,p. 458.

3Journal of HMS Liverpool, Captain Henry Bellew, [5.4.1776] in Clark (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 4, p. 691; Purdie's Virginia Gazette,Friday, April 12, 1776, in ibid.,p. 792;Dixon and Hunter's Virginia Gazette, Saturday, May 4, 1776 in ibid., p. 1410; Journal of H.M. Sloop Otter, Captain Matthew Squire, [19/22. 4. 1776] in ibid.,p. 1200 and 1209; Hast, Loyalism in Revolutionary Virginia, pp. 63-62; Purdie's Virginia Gazette Supplement, Friday, April 26, 1776 in Clark (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 4, p. 1273.

4'Information of another Spy 11^th May, 1776 in William James Morgan (ed.) NDAR,Vol 5, Washington, 1970, pp. 57-58; Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, p. 104; Narrative of Captain Andrew Snape Hamond, [16^th May, 1776], in Morgan (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 5, pp. 320-321; Kaplan and Kaplan, The Black Experience in the Era of the American Revolution, p. 77; Hast, Loyalism in Revolutionary Virginia, p. 65; Selby, Dunmore, pp. 56-57; Deposition of William Barry, [Newcastle], June 11, 1776 in Morgan, NDAR, Vol. 5, p. 683.Narrative of Captain Andrew Snape Hamond, [16^th May, 1776], in Morgan (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 5, pp. 320-321; Alan Frost, 'The Curse of Cain? The 1789 'smallpox' epidemic at Port Jackson' in Alan Frost, Botany Bay Mirages. Illusions of Australia's Convict Beginnings, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 194-197. Richard lee to Landon Carter, Wmsburgh May 24 1776 in ibid., p. 240.