The initial British raid on Norfolk’s waterfront on New Year’s Day burned nineteen buildings, worth three thousand pounds (added to the thirty-two houses, worth two thousand pounds, Lord Dunmore razed while fortifying the town when the British were still in control of it).
Howe & Woodford’s official communications will simply omit that it is Virginia & North Carolina troops who are responsible for destroying the eighth-largest town in the Thirteen Colonies, nor will they correct anyone who speaks or writes to them of British forces’ “horrid work.”
The Virginia Convention’s initial investigation will be headed by Howe himself, and it will conclude, unsurprisingly, that it is the British who destroyed the town—a conclusion that Americans will simply accept.
In 1777, after petitions from townsfolk, a further investigation will unearth the truth of matters, at which time the state legislature will compensate those victims who are not Loyalists. But the new investigation’s report will be kept secret.
Not until the 1830s will the Virginia government make the report public, and even then it will be buried in a legislative journal. It will be the twentieth century before historians discover the truth of the burning of Norfolk.