In the spring of 1775, Governor Dunmore of Virginia became fearful of the vulnerability of the powder stores in Williamsburg and, during the night of April 20-21, he had them moved secretly to the man-of-war, _Fowey_, anchored off Yorktown. This was the spark that set off the Revolution in Virginia. Then came Patrick Henry’s march on Williamsburg and more alarm. At this point Dunmore became greatly disturbed. He sent his family aboard the _Fowey_, still at Yorktown, and he himself set up headquarters on this warship in the harbor on June 6. The assembly refused to meet in Yorktown, as Dunmore suggested, and proceeded to do business without the governor. It was mid-July before Dunmore finally left Yorktown harbor, thus ending royal government in Virginia. The enlistment of troops soon got under way in York County. The first move was for two companies of minutemen. The one with Yorktown men was to be captained by William Goosley. The council ordered Yorktown to be garrisoned in June 1776, since the strategic location and value of the port were recognized from the very beginning. These troops were soon sent elsewhere, however, and the barracks at Yorktown were often woefully empty. The garrison apparently continued active until the British occupied the town in 1781. The battery built here and manned, first in 1776, to protect the town and “to command the River,” particularly the means of “trade and commerce,” suffered varying fortunes, but mostly, it seems, from “too little and too late.” In 1777, a troop hospital was set up in the town in time to render service in the smallpox epidemic of that year. From 1776 to mid-1781, Yorktown residents heard the drums roll, became familiar with the tread of marching columns, and witnessed periodic scares of attack and invasion. They contributed supplies, work, money, men, and life. They saw trade decline, “hard times” set in, property wantonly destroyed by thoughtless troops, and received the varying news of war with rejoicing, or with sorrow. In the winter of 1779-80, French war vessels used the York River and may have found some comfort in the guns of the Yorktown fort. In March 1781, Lafayette stepped ashore here, after his trip down the bay at the beginning of his operations in Virginia. The raid on Yorktown by Lieutenant Colonel Simcoe and his Queen’s Rangers in April of the same year was a foretaste of what was soon to come, as was Cornwallis’ preliminary inspection of the post on June 28. There was little active campaigning, however, and the full meaning of conquest and occupation by the enemy was not understood until the advance units of Cornwallis’ army entered the town in August 1781.