The Hampton River is a 3.2-mile-long (5.1 km) tidal estuary which empties into Hampton Roads near its mouth. Hampton Roads in turn empties into the southern end of Chesapeake Bay in southeast Virginia in the United States. The Hampton River is located entirely in the city of Hampton.
Much like several other minor rivers of the area, the Hampton River has also been referred to as Hampton Creek.
The Hampton River was named for Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, an important leader of the Virginia Company of London, for whom the town and later city of Hampton, Virginia, Hampton Roads, Southampton County and Northampton County were also named.
During the late 1600s and early 1700s the Hampton River was well traveled by sloops bringing goods to and from the colony of Virginia. In 1719 a victorious Lt. Robert Maynard of the British Navy returned to Hampton with the head of the pirate Blackbeard hanging from his ship. Having killed Blackbeard in battle in November of 1718, he brought back the head as proof. The head was then placed at the mouth of the river, also known as Teach's Point, on a stake as a warning to other pirates.
Famous quotes containing the words hampton and/or river:
“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.”
—Christopher Hampton (b. 1946)
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)