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BRADDOCK ROAD[1]
By John Kennedy Lacock
On September 24, 1754, Major-General Edward Braddock was appointed bythe Duke of Cumberland, captain-general of the British army, to thecommand of the British troops to be sent to Virginia, with the rank ofgeneralissimo of all his Britannic Majesty’s forces on the Americancontinent. Before the expedition could start, however, many weeks had tobe spent in extensive preparations, a delay which became so irksome toBraddock that he determined to wait no longer on the tardy movement ofthe transports. Accordingly, on December 21, 1754, accompanied byCaptain Robert Orme, one of his aides, and William Shirley, his militarysecretary, he set sail for Virginia with Commodore Augustus Keppel, andon February 20, 1755, anchored in Hampton Roads. It was not till January14, 1755, that the rest of the ships were actually under sail, and nottill about March 15 that the entire fleet arrived at Alexandria,Virginia, where the troops were disembarked and temporarilyquartered.[2]
