The Shore
Trilogy

This is the song the islanders would have sung that night.

After the boats turned back and the smoke cleared, after the adrenaline wore off and someone opened a jug — this is what it would have sounded like in a room full of watermen who’d just told the Royal Governor of Virginia to leave.

The history is real. Lord Dunmore arrived at St. George Island in July 1776 with a fleet of seventy ships, riddled with smallpox, desperate for fresh water and timber. He’d already burned Norfolk, been chased from Gwynn’s Island, and spent months living on ships after fleeing Williamsburg. By the time he pointed at this island, he had lost his governorship, his city, and his reputation. He thought a small island at the mouth of the Potomac would be easy.

He was wrong.

“Wrong Shore” tells that story from the inside — not as history but as a tavern song, the way the people who lived it would have retold it over drinks. It’s cheeky, not violent. Resolute, not vengeful. These were families who knew every sand bar and creek bend, and they simply refused. The humor isn’t cruelty — it’s the laughter of people who know exactly where they stand.

The title is the second in a trilogy. “Same Shore” honors the ground. “Wrong Shore” defends it. And the third song tells you what happens to a man who has no shore left at all.

I didn’t expect to write this song. The first two came from the event — one born in real time at the dedication, the other from the defiant spirit of the islanders who fought here. But after the day was over, I kept thinking about the man on the ship.

John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, was a Scottish aristocrat who joined a failed rebellion at fifteen, married a woman who crossed a winter ocean to be with him, and lost her again eighteen months later when he fled to a warship. He was a man who kept reaching for things — power, land, loyalty — and watching them slip away. By the time he anchored off St. George Island, he had burned Norfolk, been chased from every shore in Virginia, and was governing nothing but a floating colony of smallpox and desperation.

“No Shore” lets him tell his own story. It is not sympathetic — but it is human. The central metaphor, “the land is a lover who turned her back,” isn’t just poetry. It’s characterization. Dunmore was a man who left his wife pregnant across an ocean, who was chased from every place he tried to govern, who reached for land and power the way some people reach for love — possessively, and with the same willingness to destroy what he couldn’t hold. The metaphor darkens across the song — a lover becomes a widow, a kingdom of waves becomes a kingdom of smoke — until the only thing left is the order to burn what he couldn’t hold.

The music mirrors the collapse. What begins as a Celtic lament — cello, dulcimer, a weary Scottish voice — builds into something aggressive and dissonant. The bridge is the turning point: the moment self-pity becomes destruction. And the final two words, “Let it burn,” are spoken, not sung — because by then, there’s nothing musical left in him.

Dunmore burned the houses, fields, and woods of St. George Island before he left. He split his fleet — half to Bermuda, half to New York — and never came back.

This song is the third in a trilogy. “Same Shore” plants a marker in the ground. “Wrong Shore” tells him to leave. “No Shore” is what it sounds like when a man has nowhere left to go — and decides to make sure no one else does either.

The Shore Trilogy tells one story from three positions — the shore, the bushes, and the water — but the lyrics don’t just share a setting. They pass words, images, and ideas back and forth like a conversation across centuries.

Water and timber. The most basic human needs drive all three songs. In “Same Shore,” they arrive as historical fact: “Looking for fresh water and timber from our trees.” In “Wrong Shore,” the islanders throw those same words back as a taunt: “You ain’t getting water and you ain’t getting trees.” In “No Shore,” Dunmore reaches for them and can’t grasp them: “The casks in the hold have run dry” and “The water is sweet just a mile away / But it might as well be the moon.” The same two resources move from narration to refusal to obsession.

The Potomac. All three songs name the river, but it flows in different directions. In “Same Shore,” the British come up it: “They came up the Potomac with broken masts, in need.” In “Wrong Shore,” the islanders watch the same arrival with mockery: “Well his Lordship sailed up the Potomac.” In “No Shore,” the river reverses — Dunmore is leaving: “I’m sailing away on a Potomac tide.” The river carries the story forward, then carries the man away.

Seventy ships. “Wrong Shore” sees them from the outside: “Seventy ships and half of ’em leaking / And the other half asleep.” “No Shore” sees them from the inside: “Seventy shadows of timber and rope.” The same fleet — one version is a punchline, the other is a ghost story.

Shore as identity. The word “shore” transforms across the trilogy. In “Same Shore,” it’s home: “We’re still standing on the same shore.” In “Wrong Shore,” it’s a boundary: “This island’s not for landing.” In “No Shore,” it becomes a wall: “The shore is a wall made of stone.” For the islanders, the shore is where they belong. For Dunmore, it’s what rejects him.

Home. The word appears once in “Same Shore” — “Standing between the ships and home” — as the thing worth protecting. It reappears in “Wrong Shore” as a command: “Just the kind that says go home.” In “No Shore,” the word is completely absent. Dunmore never says it because he no longer has one. He rules “a kingdom of waves,” then “a kingdom of smoke” — kingdoms made of things that can’t be held.

Ground. “Same Shore” returns to the ground again and again: “this ground was not for free,” “common ground,” “a stake in the ground,” “a marker in the ground.” The community is constantly planting, rooting, anchoring. In “No Shore,” there is no ground. Dunmore exists entirely on water. The contrast is the trilogy’s deepest argument — belonging means having ground beneath your feet.

Knowing the land. The islanders’ power comes from intimacy with the terrain. “Same Shore” introduces it: “the islanders knew every sand bar, bend and creek.” “Wrong Shore” repeats and deepens it: “We know every creek and sand bar” and “We know these creeks like the backs of our hands / We’ve fished ’em since we were boys.” In “No Shore,” this knowledge is completely absent — Dunmore doesn’t know the sand bars, the creeks, the tides. He reaches for “Saint George bonnie woods” and gets “lead from the sky.” The land is a stranger to him, and that is why it refuses him.

Fire. Fire is absent from “Same Shore” — that song is about light, not burning. It enters quietly in “Wrong Shore” through implication. Then “No Shore” becomes consumed by it: “fires of the isle’s rebel camps,” “burn like a brand in my brain,” “torches to the rail,” “red reflection fly,” “fire and the wind,” and finally “Let it burn.” The fire grows across the trilogy the way Dunmore’s desperation grows — from nothing to everything.

The spoken endings. Each song stops singing and starts speaking at the most important moment. “Same shore... same island” is a whisper — the kind of thing you say to yourself standing on familiar ground. “And he didn’t” is a voice across a tavern table, dry and satisfied. “Let it burn” is an order issued to no one, from a man who has lost the right to command anything. The three spoken moments move from intimacy to wit to isolation.

What the songs never share. “Same Shore” never mentions Dunmore by name. “Wrong Shore” names him in every chorus but never grants him dignity. “No Shore” never mentions the islanders by name — they are “they,” a faceless force that refused him. Each song withholds something from the other side, and that withholding is its own kind of statement about whose story this is.