An Historic Interlude

Saturday morning, the 24^th of October, we made an early morning departure from Deltaville, VA and sailed the 44 nautical miles down the bay to Hampton, VA.  With light winds, and a following tide, we were able to motor sail down in relative comfort and in good speed.  Temperatures on the water were in the high 50s, and we stayed bundled up in the cockpit, moving around as best we could to snuggle into the sun light. 

We pulled into Hampton Roads at about 3:30, and by 4:00 were tied up at the docks of the Downtown Hampton Public Piers.  We are using this location as a base to tour the region which is deep in American colonial, revolutionary and civil war history.  Keeping with the good fortune we’ve had to date on the cruise, we found that Hampton was using the weekend to re-enact the Revolutionary Battle of Hampton. This historic conflict was fought Oct 26–27, 1775. The Battle marked the beginning of revolutionary warfare outside of Massachusetts. Six months had passed since the battles of Lexington and Concord, but blood was not shed elsewhere until fighting started between Virginia patriots and forces aligned with Britain.  The British withdrew from the Hampton channel after stiff resistance from local militia, minutemen, and patriots on shore.  The loss of life in the battle was minimal, but the symbolism of the battle to Virginia was very significant, and helped solidify the resolve of Virginians for independence from England.

 

 

The re-enactment was performed by volunteer re-enactors that set up a camp in The Mill Point Park, two blocks from our slip.  We spent Sunday following the re-enactment and watching demonstrations of daily revolution camp life. We also caught up with a historic tour of Hampton that was conducted by historian, Michael Cobb, who is on staff with the Hampton History Museum.  We ended the day with a much greater understanding of Hampton’s rich history, and its place in American History.

 

In keeping with our Colonial History theme, on Monday we rented a car and set off for Jamestown and Williamsburg.  Our luck held again, when we arrived in Jamestown just in time to join an archeology tour that walked the current archeological digs and reviewed some of the research’s findings.  An onsite archeologist gave the tour, and it was very interesting.  We found that much of the history that we learned 50 years ago in grade school, is proving wrong.  The research is providing a much better understanding of early Jamestown life, and rewriting the history of early settlement in the Americas. 

                            This is the foundation of the church were Pocahontas married John Rolfe as excavated by the archeological dig.  The house is an example of what an original Jamestown structure would be within the fort, outlined by what looks like a pretty flimsy stick wall.  But I guess the settlers had guns and the natives did not!

We followed up the Jamestown tour with an afternoon in Williamsburg.  A long walk down Duke of Gloucester Street, past the Governor’s House, Courthouse, Capital, and Market Square occupied our afternoon.  The historic area is an interpretation of a colonial American city, with exhibits of dozens of restored or re-created buildings related to its colonial and tangential American Revolutionary War history.  In many ways we recognized the reconstruction was an idealized version of what the town once was.  But the fantasy world of colonial life was fun to immerse ourselves in, and the performance of the parks re-enactors was fun to watch. 

The colonial governors mansion.

 

The Capitol building.