In 1781, Gloucester Point and Yorktown across the river became the scene of major military operations when General Charles Lord Cornwallis brought an 8,300 man British army to the Virginia coast to establish a naval base. After the September 5th Battle of the Capes, in which a French fleet allied with the Americans heavily damaged British ships and prevented British control of the Chesapeake Bay, Cornwallis’s army was all but trapped at Yorktown. Later that month, General George Washington arrived at Yorktown with a 17,600 man American and French army. Gloucester Point then became the besieged British army’s only communication with the country, serving as a base for foraging local supplies and as a possible escape route from Yorktown. To protect that link, British forces built a strong defensive line across the point with four redoubts, earthen forts reinforced with artillery, joined by a stockade stretching from shore to shore, and about 900 soldiers guarded these isolated defenses.
