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Cape Henry National Memorial :-
After four and a half months crossing storm swept seas 144 weary
Englishmen made land-fall in April 1607. They anchored their ships in the
protected waters of the bay and landed a small party upon the shore. They
built a wooden cross and planted it in the sand naming the place Cape Henry.
This is the first landing site of those adventurous Englishmen who, some
three weeks later, established the first permanent English Colony in North
America at Jamestown. From this same site some 174 years
later, citizens of a soon to be free and independant United States of America
watched as a British fleet commanded by Admiral Graves engaged the Frech
fleet of Admiral Comte de Grasse in a sea battle know as the Battle of the
Capes. This French naval victory sealed the fate of General Cornwallis at
Yorktown leading to his surrender with one third of the British contingent
in America and the eventural end of the American Revolutionary War.
History & Culture :-
It began at Jamestown in 1607. It ended at Yorktown in 1781. One hundred
and seventy-four years of hope, adventure, discovery, settlement, struggle,
suffering, war, frustration, growth, development, that saw the country expand
from a lonely settlement of 105 people in the small wilderness area on the
banks of the James River into 13 colonies and 3 million people, of many
races and beliefs, along the Atlantic seaboard, all governed and controlled
by the mother country, England. It was an exciting chapter in British history,
in American history, in world history, that closed in the little port town
on the banks of the York River where it flows into Chesapeake Bay on its
way to the ocean."
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