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O'er the Ramparts of Fort McHenry The first Star Spangled Banner, the Anthem, and Baltimore's best known historic site. By Bruce Heydt
In 1814, the British navy had good cause to shoot at Baltimore's defenses. Two years earlier, the United States declared war on Britain over its policy of impressing American sailors into the Royal Navy and sent out privateers from Baltimore to prey on enemy merchant ships. Before long, the British decided Baltimore must be neutralized.
But in that war year of 1814, McHenry was a prime target. Few spots in the 15 United States held more strategic importance for the British. They were sick of their ships' being preyed on by the "nest of pirates" from Baltimore Harbor, and they were prepared to take on the Americans at the fort. The enormous muzzle-loading cannon thrusting over the fort's walls today are from the 1860s. When General Samuel Smith took over Baltimore's defenses at the height of the War of 1812, these behemoths weren't there. Instead, Smith had a series of now-vanished shore batteries and fortifications, many built at his own request to keep the Royal Navy out of the Northwest Branch. You can still see the dry moat around the fort from Smith's day, though it's shallower now. The garrison's infantry fought from this earthen ditch, supported by 20 artillery pieces in the bastions of the fort itself, four in each of its five corners. As the British closed in on Baltimore, the situation must have seemed eerily familiar. Nearly 37 years earlier, during the American Revolution, Smith commanded the small garrison of Fort Mifflin on the Delaware River downstream from Philadelphia during a six-day bombardment by British warships. Eventually, the garrison abandoned the fort, leaving its flag flying overhead, signifying "no surrender." The next morning the British hauled it down and ran up the Union Jack. By 1814 Smith was major general of the Maryland militia. From American lines on Hampstead Hill, east of Baltimore, he could see the U.S. flag flying over McHenry—and maybe he thought about revenge for his old Revolutionary War defeat. McHenry's custom-made flag was not an easy one to capture. Major George Armistead, the fort's commander, wanted a flag the British would have no trouble seeing from a distance, and seamstress Mary Pickersgill responded with the mother of all banners, a giant, 30- by 42-foot cotton behemoth destined to become one of the most famous flags in the world. Today it takes from three to five men to raise and lower the fort's full-sized replica, and though park literature says the flag flies daily, it includes the disclaimer, "weather permitting"—the huge flag is so heavy it hangs limp in any breeze less than five miles per hour while a wind more than 15 miles per hour tugs at the flag with enough force to snap its pole. It rained heavily on the night of the British bombardment, and Armistead flew a smaller flag. But as the attack petered out and the weather cleared at dawn, he ran up the "Star-Spangled Banner." The sight moved Francis Scott Key, still watching from the river, to write the poem. He later set it to a stock tune often used for patriotic verses. Today, you could search high and low for someone who had ever heard of most of these songs, but "The Star Spangled Banner" endured to become America's national anthem in 1931. Key, a lawyer, had a front-row seat for the bombardment because he'd been bargaining with the British for the release of an American prisoner, Dr. William Beanes. He succeeded, but the British felt he'd overheard too much about the upcoming attack and made him remain on board an American truce ship until morning, when he saw the flag "by the dawn's early light."
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Copyright © 2001: Primedia Enthusiast Publications, Inc. and Away.com. All Rights Reserved Image: Photo: Courtesy National Park Service | |
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