Yorktown: The Town the Sea Decided

The short answer: Yorktown was a working tobacco port on the York River for ninety years before it became famous. And the moment it is remembered for was decided offshore, not onshore. In early September 1781, a French fleet took control of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and held it. Once the sea was closed, the outcome on land followed. Our Yorktown candle is built around that water: sea salt, jasmine, and lemon.

A port first

Yorktown was established in 1691 under Virginia's Act for Ports, one of a handful of official sites where tobacco could be inspected and loaded for shipment. That is the whole reason the town exists. The bluff above the York River gave it deep water close to shore, and deep water close to shore is what a tobacco port needs.

For most of the eighteenth century Yorktown was ordinary in the best sense. Hogsheads rolling to the waterfront. Ships riding at anchor. A customs house, a tavern, a church, merchants' homes on the bluff and warehouses below. Grace Church was built in 1697 and still stands. The Swan Tavern opened in 1722. People lived there, worked there, and thought about freight rates far more than they thought about history.

That is the Yorktown our candle is named for: a river town that smelled of salt air, wet rope, and whatever was blooming on the bluff. For more on how a Virginia port town smelled in that era, see What Did Colonial Alexandria Actually Smell Like?

The sea decided it

By the summer of 1781 the British southern campaign had brought Lord Cornwallis and his army to Yorktown, where they began fortifying the town. The position had one enormous assumption built into it: that the Royal Navy could reach him. Yorktown sits on a river that empties into the Chesapeake, and the Chesapeake empties into the Atlantic between two capes. Control those capes and you control everything upstream.

On September 5, 1781, a French fleet under the comte de Grasse, newly arrived from the Caribbean, met a British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves off the Virginia capes. The engagement itself was inconclusive in the way most naval actions of the period were. What mattered was what happened afterward. Graves withdrew to New York. De Grasse stayed.

That was the whole thing. Not a dramatic victory, just a fleet that refused to leave.

With the bay held, a second French squadron under the comte de Barras brought down the heavy siege guns from Newport. Cornwallis could not be resupplied. He could not be reinforced. He could not be evacuated. An army on a peninsula with the water closed behind it has run out of options, and everyone involved understood that immediately. The formal surrender came on October 19, 1781, and effectively ended major fighting in the Revolution.

Historians have made the point for two centuries and it is still the most interesting thing about Yorktown: the decisive action of the American Revolution was fought at sea, by the French navy, several miles from the town that got the credit.

The people at the edges of this story

The names on the monument are not the only ones worth knowing.

James Fayette was enslaved in New Kent County, Virginia, when he asked permission to serve under the Marquis de Lafayette. He moved between camps as a spy, and the intelligence he carried shaped what the Americans and French understood about British positions in Virginia that summer. He petitioned the Virginia legislature for his freedom after the war and was granted it in 1787. We named a candle for him, and wrote his story here.

The comte de Grasse and the comte de Rochambeau are the reason the French half of this story worked. One held the water, the other commanded the army that marched south to meet it. Neither is a household name in America, which says more about how we tell the story than about what happened.

The unnamed majority. Thousands of free and enslaved Black Americans were present at Yorktown, on both sides, as laborers, sailors, cooks, teamsters, and soldiers. Most of their names were never written down. Some of the ones that were are already part of what we make.

The scent

Yorktown is our water candle. Sea salt opens it, clean and mineral rather than sweet. Jasmine sits in the middle, soft and floral, the garden side of a river town. Lemon runs through the top and keeps the whole thing bright.

It is the least historical smelling of our scents on purpose. Standing on the bluff at Yorktown today, what you notice is not the past. It is the wind coming up off the river.

Best in: kitchens, bathrooms, entryways, and anywhere you want a room to feel like a window just opened.

Three ways to bring it home

• Yorktown Signature Candle, $24. Clear glass, the easiest introduction.
• Yorktown Heirloom Candle, $56. Poured into our blue and white bowl, designed to be kept and used long after the wax is gone.
• Yorktown Hearth Candle, $44. Three wicks in a wood dough bowl, for wide, even fragrance across a whole room.

Frequently asked questions

Was the Battle of Yorktown really decided by the navy? Historians generally treat the naval action off the Virginia capes on September 5, 1781 as the turning point. Once the French fleet held the mouth of the Chesapeake, the British force at Yorktown could not be supplied or withdrawn by sea.

How old is Yorktown, Virginia? It was established in 1691 as a tobacco inspection port under Virginia's Act for Ports, ninety years before the events it is best known for.

Who was the comte de Grasse? The French admiral whose fleet held the mouth of the Chesapeake in September 1781, cutting off the British position at Yorktown from resupply or evacuation by sea.

Can I visit? Yes. Yorktown's waterfront and historic Main Street are walkable, and Grace Church, built in 1697, is still in use.

What does the Yorktown candle smell like? Sea salt, jasmine, and lemon. Fresh and marine rather than warm or spiced.

Keep reading

If you liked this, try James Fayette, the Spy Both Sides Trusted, Candles of Old Town Alexandria, or The Blue and White Bowl.