Star-Spangled Banner Born: Baltimore Holds the Fort

Francis Scott Key peered through the dawn haze from the deck of a British truce ship in Baltimore Harbor on the morning of September 14, 1814, desperate to know whether Fort McHenry still stood. Through the clearing smoke, he saw the garrison’s oversized American flag, fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, still flying above the ramparts. The poem he scribbled on the back of a letter during the next few hours became "The Star-Spangled Banner," and the battle that inspired it marked the moment the British campaign to crush the Chesapeake Bay region collapsed. The bombardment had begun the previous morning, September 13, when a Royal Navy squadron of nineteen vessels opened fire on Fort McHenry from roughly two miles out. The British had expected the fort to crumble quickly, clearing the way for warships to sail into the harbor and support the land assault on Baltimore from the east. Major George Armistead’s garrison of roughly a thousand soldiers and sailors hunkered behind the star-shaped earthworks while Congreve rockets and mortar shells rained down. The bombardment lasted twenty-five hours. British bomb ships lobbed between 1,500 and 1,800 shells at the fort, but the range was too great for accuracy, and most exploded harmlessly in the air or fell into the surrounding water. When smaller vessels attempted to close the distance under cover of darkness, American gun crews drove them back with concentrated fire. By dawn on September 14, the fleet had exhausted its ammunition and achieved nothing. Key, a Georgetown lawyer, had boarded the British flagship days earlier to negotiate the release of a civilian prisoner. He was detained aboard for the duration of the battle to prevent him from revealing British positions. His four-stanza poem, set to the melody of a popular English drinking song, was printed as a broadside within days and spread across the country. Congress did not officially designate it the national anthem until 1931, but the song had functioned as one in the public imagination for over a century by then.