Column: A great calamity for Norfolk, and Virginia, 250 years on

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Some 250 years ago on Dec. 9, a column of troops in red coats marched across the Great Bridge in Chesapeake, the bayonets on their muskets gleaming in the dawn light. They expected the untested Americans entrenched on the opposite shore to flee in terror. Instead, the patriots mowed down the British soldiers, killing and wounding more than 70 and forcing their hasty retreat.

The 10-minute bloody clash, known as the “Bunker Hill of the South,” marked a key victory for American patriots. The defeat of forces under Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, proved a welcome boost for patriot morale. What is usually left out of the textbooks — and was absent from Ken Burns’ recent series “The American Revolution” — is the disaster that followed.

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