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Francis Scott Key and his wife Mary (Polly) would eventually have eleven children. Key rarely took accolades for the inspiring lyrics he wrote to fit the social-club song “To Anacreon in Heaven.” He instead gave credit to the people who fought at Fort McHenry and those who fortified Baltimore and turned back the British land assault. He insisted that he, the lyricist, should not be lauded, but that those who inspired him to write those words deserved the appreciation of all Americans.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted by Congressional resolution as the United States’ National Anthem on March 3, 1931.
Major George Armistead’s giant banner, made by Mary Pickersgill and recognized as the original Star-Spangled Banner, is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The term “Star-Spangled Banner” refers specifically to the United States’ flag of 1814, with fifteen stars and fifteen stripes.
The myth that Francis Scott Key saw the big flag flying all night has been generally dismissed by historians and experts at Fort McHenry. During a thunderstorm, the big flag would have been impractical to fly. Key saw the smaller storm flag flying at night during the storm. When the storm ended, almost simultaneously to the time the British gave up the siege of Fort McHenry and the land assaults, the exultant soldiers at the fort fired a gun and raised the giant flag in the morning light, which Key and the British saw. At thirty feet on the hoist, the flag was one-third the height of the pole installed to fly it. That flag is the Star-Spangled Banner.
In 2013, the 200th anniversary of the making of the flag, the Maryland Historical Society sponsored the making of a replica of Armistead’s banner, made of the same type of materials, sewn by expert quilters using Mary Pickersgill’s methods, and in the same number of weeks (6) in which Mary made her flag. The replica flag was hoisted over Fort McHenry on Defenders’ Day, September 14, 2013, two hundred years after Mary Pickersgill crafted it.
George Armistead lived only four years after the Battle of Baltimore, succumbing to a heart condition. Fort McHenry is now an evocative national monument, well worth visits and appreciation.
Captain Tom Boyle is one of America’s great unsung heroes. According to those who knew him and even those who fought him, such as Lieutenant Gordon, he was an affable, quick-minded, devoted friend, an entrepreneur of the first order, a superior captain who was both strong and flexible, a sailor of superior skills, a true community leader and neighbor, and a devoted family man. Everyone who knew him seems to have sincerely liked him, and he had the courtesy to like them back.
The names of Boyle’s crew are for the most part taken from the real crew aboard Comet and Chasseur.
The battle between Chasseur and St. Lawrence did happen, but not until 1815, and is recognized as “one of the greatest battles ever fought by a privateer.” (Tom Boyle, Master Privateer, Fred W. Hopkins, Jr., Tidewater Publishers, 1976)
As a merchant ship, Chasseur went on under a different captain to set a speed record of ninety-five days from Canton, China to the Virginia Capes, a record that stood for sixteen years.
After the war, Tom Boyle returned to merchant commerce. He died at sea in 1825 aboard a ship he had commissioned in Baltimore, with a copper bottom and a shallow draft for the coastal trade, which he named Chasseur. Upon notice of his passing, Boyle was lauded in the United States Gazette of Philadelphia as “the favourite of all who knew him.”
Lieutenant James E. Gordon is a fictional construct, but is inspired by the real captain of the Schooner St. Lawrence (formerly the Atlas), which did surprise Tom Boyle and force him into a battle with a regular Royal Navy crew. Lt. Gordon as characterized in this book represents the attitude and fears of Britain during the first Napoleonic conquests. Gordon did indeed write the letter in advocacy of Captain Boyle’s praiseworthy conduct during and after their broadsides battle at sea.
Mary Young Pickersgill was a vivacious and socially active lady who believed that women should learn skills and be able to support themselves. Earlier, in 1802, she established a retirement home, the Impartial Female Humane Society, and engaged in many community good works. The retirement home is still extant, now the Pickersgill Retirement Community in Towson, Maryland.
Her home on Pratt Street (formerly Albemarle St.) in Baltimore is now an inspiring museum called the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House, and should be visited by all Americans and citizens of the world, as a monument to free enterprise and individual human industry.
Caroline Pickersgill Purdy married and was widowed, and ended up living out her elderly years in the home for aged widows which had been founded by her mother.
Joseph Nicholson and Richard West were married to sisters of Mary (Polly) Key, Francis Scott Key’s wife. He was very close to them, and to his sister Anne’s husband, Roger Brooke Taney, who would later become the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court. After Judge Nicholson passed away and his wife remarried, her family kept the original handwritten manuscript of “The Defence of Fort McHenry” for ninety-three years. Eventually the manuscript found its way to the Maryland Historical Society, where it resides today.
The French Jew is a dramatic construct whose role is to represent the attitudes of France, once again placed in the position of whether or not to involve itself in the American question. In this case he is a supporter of Napoleon, but also he is “above” national politics in his bigger motivations, which involve the furthering of power for the already powerful Rothschild Banking conglomerate, and its attempts to alter events to their advantage, which are also fictional speculation.
Fell’s Point is still a gathering point for ships, mariners, and visitors, a lively place which I call “my second home,” particularly the dock at the foot of Broadway, where I’ve spent many days and nights as a member of the crews of the Schooners Alexandria and Lettie G. Howard, and the Barkentine Gazela of Philadelphia. Of course, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor is the home port of the Baltimore Clipper Schooner Pride of Baltimore II, a ship I’m privileged to have crewed many times as a deckhand, docent, and cook under four captains.