The Star-Spangled Banner | Page 6

boasting met
with an incredulous denial, which soon led to their summary arrest as
chicken-stealers and public enemies. Confined in the insecure
Marlborough jail, one of them speedily escaped, and reached a
scouting-party of British cavalry, which, by order of Cockburn,
returned to Upper Marlborough, roused Dr. Beanes out of his bed at
midnight, and conveyed him to the British ships at Benedict's.
As soon as Key heard of the arrest of Dr. Beanes, one of his most
intimate friends, he hurried, under the protection of a flag of truce, to
the British fleet at the mouth of the Patuxent to arrange for his release.
John S. Skinner of Baltimore, then commissioner for exchange of
prisoners, accompanied him with his cartel ship.
When Key and Skinner reached the British fleet it was already on its
way up the Chesapeake Bay to the attack on Baltimore. Its destination
was too evident for Cockburn to allow Key to depart and give the alarm.

He was informed in the admiral's grimmest manner, that while he
would not hang Dr. Beanes at the yard-arm, as he had threatened, yet
he would have to keep every man on board a close prisoner until certain
circumstances occurred which would render their release advisable.
When the ships arrived at their destination he assured them that it
would be only a matter of a few hours before they would be free.
From the admiral's flag-ship the Surprise, upon which he was then
detained, Key saw some of the finest soldiers of the British army, under
General Ross, disembarked at North Point, to the southeast of the city
of Baltimore. Then on Tuesday morning, September 13, 1814, the fleet
moved across the broad Patapsco, and ranged themselves in a
semicircle two and a half miles from the small brick and earth fort
which lay low down on a jutting projection of land guarding the water
approaches to Baltimore on that side.
Cockburn's boast to Key that the reduction of the city would be "a
matter of a few hours" did not look improbable. It was garrisoned by a
small force of regulars under General Armistead, assisted by some
volunteer artillerists under Judge Nicholson. It was armed with
forty-two pounders, and some cannon of smaller caliber, but all totally
ineffective to reach the British ships in their chosen position. In
addition, a small earth battery at the Lazaretto--which, it will be seen,
did good service--guarded the important approach to the city by the
north branch of the Patapsco; while Fort Coventry protected the south
branch. These batteries were armed only with eighteen and twenty-four
pounders.
From seven on the morning of Tuesday until after midnight of
Wednesday the fleet bombarded Fort McHenry at long range;
occasionally the gunners in the fort fired a useless shot at the ships. But
at midnight word was brought to Cockburn that the land attack on the
North Point road to the east of the city had failed. Therefore, unless the
fleet could take Fort McHenry on the west, retreat was inevitable.
Taking advantage of the darkness, a little after midnight sixteen British
frigates, with bomb-ketches and barges, moved up within close range.
At one o'clock they suddenly opened a tremendous and destructive fire
upon the fort. Five hundred bombs fell within the ramparts; many more
burst over them.
The crisis of the fight came when, in the darkness, a rocket ship and

five barges attempted to pass up the north channel to the city. They
were not perceived until the British, thinking themselves safe and the
ruse successful, gave a derisive cheer at the fort under whose guns they
had passed. In avoiding Fort McHenry, however, they had fallen under
the guns of the fort at the Lazaretto, on the opposite side of the channel.
This fort, opening fire, so crippled the daring vessels that some of them
had to be towed out in their hasty retreat.
From midnight till morning Key could know nothing of the fortunes of
the fight. At such close quarters a dense smoke enveloped both the
ships and the fort, and added to the blackness of the night.
After the failure to ascend the north branch of the Patapsco, the firing
slackened. Now and then a sullen and spiteful gun shot its flame from
the side of a British vessel. Key, pacing the deck of the cartel ship, to
which he had been transferred, could not guess the cause of this. The
slackened fire might mean the success of the land attack, in which case
it would not have been necessary to waste any more powder on the fort.
Again, it might be that the infernal rain of shells had dismantled the
little fort itself, and the enemy was only keeping up a precautionary fire
until daylight enabled him to take