But by dawn, the storm had passed and blue skies blanketed the refreshing, smoke-free air. It had rained through the night, and the fort was flying its smaller, lighter storm flag. It was directed toward his fellow Marylanders who watched in suspense along with him. What did this mean? Had the British taken the fort? Key penned the first stanza of his poem, ending with the famous line: O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? It was a real question, not a rhetorical one. What would be the fate of their city?, they wondered.Īt seven o’clock the following morning, the first light of dawn broke and the shelling stopped. Capitol, the White House, and most government buildings to the ground. The people of Baltimore gathered on rooftops, as they had two weeks earlier to watch the distant red glow to the south as the British burned the U.S. Key and his two companions on the boat that evening were not the only ones watching the battle rage through the night. One solider in the fort wrote that “we were like pigeons tied by their legs to be shot at,” yet they persevered. The British ships fired their ceaseless barrage from two miles, a half mile beyond the reach of Fort McHenry’s 24-pound cannons. From accounts left by those who fought, they did their job effectively. They were designed not to maim but to instill fear. The rockets’ red glare came from a new technology – rockets that screeched through the night sky, lighting it up. 13, 1814, British war ships launched 200-pound bombs a mile into the air, which fell toward the fort and burst in air ten feet over the defender’s heads. Key watched the 25-hour bombardment, part of the War of 1812, from a truce ship anchored about four miles from the fort. We huddled in the chilly morning air in the dawn’s early light to remember the moment 200 years earlier when Francis Scott Key penned the first words of the poem that was to become our national anthem. 14, I joined several hundred fellow citizens, along with guests from Canada and the United Kingdom, inside Fort McHenry in Baltimore.
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