Soon after the capture of Hatteras Inlet, Union Colonel Rush C. Hawkins expected an assault to drive his troops from their new foothold on Hatteras Island and sent 600 soldiers of the 20th Indiana Regiment from Fort Hatteras to Camp Live Oak, two miles south of here. On October 1, 1861, Captain William A. Lynch of the Confederate Navy, commanding the Mosquito Fleet, captured the USS Fanny in Pamlico Sound. Three days later, the fleet returned to this vicinity with Colonel Augustus R. Wright's 3rd Georgia Infantry and quickly forced the Federal troops to retreat. The soldiers hastily abandoned their equipment and provisions and followed the fleeing residents of Chicamacomico south toward the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, more than twenty miles away, reaching it at midnight. The next morning, reinforced Union troops pushed the Georgians back over the same ground under heavy shelling from the USS Monticello. As the Confederates and the Mosquito Fleet disembarked, they exchanged cannon fire with the Monticello across this narrow stretch of beach. Chicamacomico was then abandoned by both sides, each believing it had turned back a major enemy attack. Residents of Chicamacomico, many of whom had earlier taken the Oath of Allegiance and reaffirmed their loyalty to the United States, feared reprisals if they stayed. After being driven from their homes by Confederate troops, they fled south ahead of the 20th Indiana Regiment toward Fort Hatteras, while their empty houses were pillaged and some were burned by marauding soldiers of the 3rd Georgia Infantry from nearby Roanoke Island.