The next one selected was Norfolk, Va. But the approach to the town was commanded by a battery on Craney Island, and this battery was promptly manned by a hundred American sailors, under command of Lieutenant Neale, of the navy, and fifty marines under Lieutenant Breckenridge. It was dawn of day on the 22d of June when four thousand British sailors and marines, in barges, came in sight of the island; and when they were fairly under the guns of the battery, it blazed out. The pieces were served rapidly and with such precision that many of the barges were cut clear in two, and their occupants would have been drowned had they not been promptly rescued by the others. The Admiral was in a boat fifty feet long, called the _Centipede_, and this was so riddled with shot that he and his crew had barely time to get out of it when it sank. Before this merciless and unremitting fire the squadron of barges at length retreated {173}to the ships. At the same time, a body of eight hundred soldiers had been put ashore, to attack the town by land. But for them a force of Virginia volunteers, under Colonel Beatty, were waiting, with a well-placed battery of six guns. The enemy had not all landed when the battery opened upon them, with such effect that they retreated at once. A part of them took refuge in a house, from which they fired rockets at the battery-men; but an American gun-boat came up and sent a few twenty-four-pound balls crashing through the house, when the last of the enemy fled, making their way back to the fleet as speedily as possible. Smarting under this defeat, the British commanders immediately planned the destruction of Hampton, eighteen miles from Norfolk, which they supposed would cut off communication between the latter place and the upper part of Virginia. At daylight on the 25th, two thousand five hundred soldiers, commanded by Sir Sydney Beckwith, were landed several miles below Hampton, and marched on the town. At the same time, a squadron of boats, commanded by Admiral Cockburn and protected by the sloop-of-war _Mohawk_, drew up before the place and fired in rockets, shells, and solid shot. The entire garrison of the place consisted of six hundred and thirty-six men, com{174}manded by Major Crutchfield, who had seven pieces of artillery. As Cockburn's barges approached the town, fire was opened upon them with two twelve-pounders, which did so much execution that the Admiral found it discreet to draw off and take position behind a point of land where the American gunners could not see him. From this shelter he fired rockets and shells for an hour, but so wildly that not the slightest damage was effected by them.