transportation. The political authority of Virginia was centered on Chesapeake Bay. Most of the other rivers used for travel in Virginia at the time emptied into the bay, which helped Virginia's government control the colony's affairs. The settlers using the Blackwater River, however, were drawn away from Chesapeake Bay to the relatively lawless settlements of Albemarle Bay. This played a role in the emerging "southside" society, as the region "south of the James River" became known. As early as 1713 a place called South Quay six and a half miles downriver from Franklin was becoming an important trade port. By 1777 South Quay was known as the leading interior port to the Tidewater area. Large warehouses were storing tobacco, pork and other goods for export and import. The South Quay venture eventually also became a shipyard and built two ships, the Caswell and the Washington, that helped defend the coast from the British fleet in 1777/78. On July 16, 1781, English Lieutenant Colonel Dundas was dispatched by Cornwallis to destroy South Quay, ending the commercial activity of what today is called Old South Quay. During the American Civil War, the Blackwater River was for a time the dividing line between Union-occupied territory and Confederate Virginia. The boundary was not well defended, allowing thousands of "contrabands" (as the slaves were called during the war) the chance to flee east out of Southampton County, across the Blackwater River and into freedom. Flooding Because the Blackwater River drains a large area of southern Virginia east of the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line, when heavy rainfall occurs throughout the area, severe flooding occasionally occurs at several points as the large volume of water flows downstream. Critical points of such flooding have been near Zuni along U.S. Route 460, and in the independent city of Franklin, which borders Southampton County and Isle of Wight County. Unlike the marshy areas upstream, at these points the river's channel is limited, and flood stages can be reached very quickly. This occurred during Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and again in October 2006, after an unnamed Nor'-Easter storm dumped 10 inches (25 cm) of rain on the region. See also List of rivers of Virginia References Kennedy, Philip Pendleton."The Blackwater Chronicle: a narrative of an expedition into the land of Canaan in Randolph County, Virginia" Morgantown : West Virginia University Press, 2002. Web. External links https://web.archive.org/web/20060718182754/http://www.nature.org/pressroom/ip/about/virginia.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060806164111/http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/virginia/preserves/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060810172405/http://www.dcr.state.va.us/dnh/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060716050052/http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/dnh/dendron.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20110720010249/http://www.cecer.army.mil/techreports/Tra_peat.wpd/Tra_peat-04.htm#P199_14402 http://sciway3.net/clark/gill/vaheadright.html