British warships open a 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry
Three weeks after burning Washington, British forces turned on Baltimore, a port they blamed for harboring privateers that had raided their shipping. At 6 a.m. on September 13, 1814, Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane's warships opened fire on Fort McHenry, commanded by Major George Armistead. A chain of 22 sunken ships kept the fleet from closing the distance, so British guns and rockets fired at their maximum, inaccurate range through the night. By morning the Americans had lost four dead and 24 wounded. The fort still stood.
Francis Scott Key watched the bombardment from a truce ship and turned the flag he saw at dawn into "Defence of Fort M'Henry," the poem that became the national anthem. A moment of harbor defense against a specific tactical threat became the country's most repeated piece of civic memory, sung before nearly every American sporting event since.
QHow much did Mary Pickersgill charge to sew the flag that became the Star-Spangled Banner?
Major Armistead paid Mary Pickersgill 405 dollars and 90 cents to sew an oversized garrison flag measuring 30 by 42 feet, commissioned specifically in anticipation of the coming British attack. A smaller 17-by-25-foot storm flag flew during the actual bombardment, with the larger garrison flag raised only afterward. Pickersgill's garrison flag only went up at dawn on September 14, once the shelling stopped, which is the flag Francis Scott Key actually saw and wrote about. That commission produced the flag Key actually saw at dawn.
QWhy couldn't the British fleet just sail closer and finish the fort off?
Baltimore's defenders had sunk a chain of 22 ships across the harbor entrance, physically blocking Cochrane's fleet from closing the distance to Fort McHenry. That barrier forced British gunners to fire from the outer edge of their weapons' range, two miles for ship's guns and 1.75 miles for rockets, ranges at which neither weapon could be aimed with any precision. The result was 25 hours of bombardment that struck almost nothing of value. A line of deliberately scuttled vessels did more to blunt the attack than any cannon inside the fort.
QHow badly did the two sides' gunnery actually compare that night?
Fort McHenry's return fire managed only one confirmed hit on the entire British fleet, wounding a single sailor aboard one of Cochrane's bomb vessels. One wounded Briton against four dead and 24 wounded Americans shows how one-sided the range advantage was. The British could reach the fort; the fort's own guns could not reach the British ships. It was a bombardment survived through walls and distance, not won through gunnery on either side.
