Description
<p>Thomas Jefferson drew this sketch of Gwynn’s Island around the time of the July 9, 1776, attack which forced John Murray, Fourth Earl of Dunmore and the British to break up their camp on the island and depart with their fleet. Dunmore and his flotilla of troops had been stationed at Gwynn’s Island since late May, attempting to outlast a deadly smallpox epidemic. Jefferson’s friend John Page, in a letter from July 15, described the attack as “a most compleat Drubbing” for the British, and argued that “if I could have been listened to, I would have agreed to be hanged if I would not have saved Norfolk and destroyed the Fleet before it.”</p>
