Lt. Col. John Baxter (Upper Craven County Regiment) and his men, assigned to patrol Britton's Neck (between the Great Pee Dee River and the Little Pee Dee River in what is now Marion County), learned that some Loyalists had seized a boatload of rice near the mouth of Black Lake.

When the Patriots arrived on the scene, the Loyalists fled, but afterwards they fired on Lt. Col. Baxter's troops as the latter were proceeding up the lake in canoes to recover the boatload of rice. Robert James, a personal friend of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion, was wounded in this encounter.