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ISBN 0-9747685-2-9

Cover Photo by:
Jerome Bird,
Pride of Baltimore, Inc.

1812: REDISCOVERING CHESAPEAKE BAY'S FORGOTTEN WAR
Author: David Healey
Original Title from Bella Rosa Books

Chapter 7

The Burning of Havre de Grace
How a lone Irishman took on the Royal Navy

On a sunny May afternoon nearly 189 years to the day since it was sacked and burned by the British, the town of Havre de Grace was captured again.
   "Die you English dogs!" shouted a soldier in an elegant blue uniform. His flintlock musket fired and white smoke rolled across the battlefield.
   From the Susquehanna River, a motley crew of attackers swarmed toward town. Some wore red coats, others the blue of British sailors. They snapped off a few shots at the American force taking refuge in a "fort" made of stockade fencing that looked suspiciously as if it might have come from Home Depot. However, the sharpened sticks or abatis jutting from the ground at an angle and ending about throat-height appeared very realistic and nasty. Not something you would want to impale yourself on at a dead run, even at a re-enactment.
   "Boo to the British!" yelled one of the spectators sitting on a straw bale and watching from behind a streamer of yellow caution tape that ringed the battlefield.
   The Americans fired a ragged volley from their makeshift fort and two of the fattest attackers flopped down to play dead, then lay wheezing as the attack pressed on. "They just didn't want to run all that way," one woman in the crowd wisecracked, and laughter rippled through the spectators.
   As re-enactments go, it was not terribly realistic, but with a little imagination it was possible to envision what the attack early on the morning of May 4, 1813, was like as the British landed to ransack and burn the town. In recent years Havre de Grace has been holding an annual re-enactment on the anniversary of the town's destruction at British hands.
   It became clear from watching the British recapture Havre de Grace that the difference between War of 1812 re-enacting and Civil War re-enacting is like the contrast between golf and rugby. Civil War re-enactors tend to be an intense bunch when it comes to their mock battles, while the older War of 1812 crowd takes a more casual approach. They stroll toward the enemy where Civil War soldiers would be charging ahead and screaming a rebel yell. This difference continued over into the general appearance of the 1812 troops. The sixty or so re-enactors at Havre de Grace were mostly duffers in their fifties or beyond. Some of the more fit and trim men looked sharp in their tailored uniforms, while others were so well-fed that in a real battle they would have made invitingly large targets. They were all good sports to be on the battlefield in their scratchy wool uniforms for the benefit of the crowd that had come to watch and learn about the War of 1812.
   Most of the town's defenders in 1813 actually were older men. Back in the early 1800s all males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were required to have a firearm and be familiar with its use. All the younger men from Havre de Grace were off defending Baltimore, so this left the over-the-hill crowd back home to stand against crack troops as best they could.
   The town was put to the torch in 1813 with a substantial property loss. The attack was surprisingly bloodless, probably because most of the fifty or sixty American militia soldiers ran after a few shots were exchanged. According to Vincent Vaise, a national park ranger from Fort McHenry who narrated the re-enactment, the British lost three killed and two wounded. One American was killed when he was beheaded by a Congreve rocket.
   "You can imagine how demoralizing that must have been to his comrades," Vaise said. "We couldn't recreate those rockets here today, but they were truly the terror weapons of their day."
   Vaise made more than one reference to terrorism, making the connection between September 11, 2001, and Admiral Cockburn's attacks on the Chesapeake Bay. "The attack on Havre de Grace may seem like a long time ago but after September 11 the idea of an invasion by an enemy seems far more current," Vaise told the crowd. "The emotions felt by the people here were very much like the ones we felt upon hearing of the attack on our nation."

   Today, Havre de Grace is a pleasant waterfront town at the point where the mighty Susquehanna River empties into the Chesapeake Bay. The river begins its 444-mile journey at Cooperstown, New York, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
   Havre de Grace was given its French name by the Marquis de Lafayette, who declared that the town should be called "beautiful harbor." After the Revolutionary War, the streets were renamed for heroes and battlefields: Washington, Revolution, Concord, and so on. A bustling downtown with shops and restaurants is surrounded by several stately homes. All in all, the town recovered from British devastation quite nicely, while other places along the bay never seemed to regain momentum after being put to the torch.
   Havre de Grace's main attraction is the waterfront. There are marinas and a boardwalk that provides a nice place to stroll while taking in the scenic vistas. One end of this popular boardwalk is anchored by an old lighthouse known as Concord Point Light.
   Don't expect a lighthouse as tall and windswept as those guarding the rocky coasts of Maine or the shoals of Cape Hatteras. This one was scaled to the Chesapeake Bay rather than the sea. Built in 1827, Concord Point Light is thirty-six feet tall, with whitewashed walls nearly four feet thick at the base. The structure is built of granite from the nearby town of Port Deposit just upriver on the Susquehanna.
   Standing at the water's edge, it is worth taking a moment to get one's bearings. Just visible in the haze to the southeast are the cliffs of Turkey Point at Elk Neck State Park. Admiral Cockburn's fleet would have been anchored off Turkey Point and was probably just discernable from town if the weather was clear.
   A monument at the base of the lighthouse features a badly weathered cannon set into a chunk of Port Deposit granite. A bronze plaque honors John O'Neill for his defense of the city. It adds that his daughter, Matilda, obtained her father's release from Cockburn's ship after he was captured. Cockburn supposedly gave her a gold snuffbox. The plaque also mentions that the citizens of Philadelphia later presented O'Neill with a sword for his heroism. Another historical marker at the water's edge notes that O'Neill manned a gun battery on high ground nearby.
   O'Neill's stubborn defense of Havre de Grace is one of the town's great legends. With the British prowling on the bay, there had been a general alarm on May 2 and the local militia turned out, but the citizens' martial fervor quickly waned when the British did not appear.
   The attack early on May 3 caught the townspeople by surprise. According to an account published in the Baltimore Sun in 1959 and written by Catherine O'Neill Gunther, great-granddaughter of the man who became the hero of the battle, the British launched their attack with a fifteen-minute bombardment by nineteen barges. Rockets exploded and shells burst overhead. That terrifying show of firepower was enough to discourage any serious resistance from the local militia.
   O'Neill, however, was not scared off so easily. He was a nailmaker in town and a militia lieutenant. O'Neill, born in Ireland in 1769, most likely had a genetic hatred of the British.
   After the other defenders ran away, O'Neill single-handedly manned the artillery battery near where the lighthouse now stands. According to his great-granddaughter, it was called the "Potato Battery" because of the size of the iron shot fired by the two six-pound and one nine-pound guns.
   As rockets burst around him and grapeshot clawed the air, O'Neill kept on firing at the British until he was injured when his cannon recoiled before he could get out of the way. Undaunted, O'Neill limped back to town and tried to rally a few of the militia. He used his musket as a crutch, stopping now and then to take a shot at the British.
   O'Neill gave the following account in a letter,

I retreated down to town, and joined Mr. Barnes, of the nail manufactory, with a musket, and fired on the barges while we had ammunition, and then retreated to the common, where I kept waving my hat to the militia who had run away, to come to our assistance, but they proved cowardly and would not come back.

   His somewhat madcap defense may have saved him from being killed outright by a British bayonet. The Redcoats took him prisoner and carried him back to Admiral Cockburn's flagship, HMS Maidstone.
   The British looted the town and set houses on fire. About forty of the town's sixty houses burned to the ground. American accounts describe a nightmarish scene in which the British smash everything in sight. The invaders shot pigs and other animals, leaving them dead or maimed in the streets. The British "outraged and insulted" women and children. Stagecoaches were destroyed, their horses cruelly crippled. The British even shattered the windows of the town's Episcopal church, stopping short of setting it ablaze. The Redcoats spared the home of Commodore John Rodgers, who was busy fighting the Royal Navy for control of the Great Lakes. His home was left standing as a matter of professional courtesy and serves today as a barbershop.
   Spoils of war were seized. Sailors and marines dismantled several fine stages and loaded them on barges. British troops robbed travelers on the road between Baltimore and Philadelphia.
   The Niles Weekly Register newspaper railed against Admiral Cockburn's actions, trumpeting,

Wanton outrage!
Many fled from their burning houses almost in a state of nudity, carrying in their arms their children, clothes, &c.
   The ruins of Havre de Grace shall stand as a monument to British cruelty . . . The villain-deed has roused the honest indignation of every man-no one pretends to justify or excuse it. It has knit the people into a common bond for vengeance on the incendiaries.
   . . . If admiral Cockburn has his secret agents in Baltimore, we hope they may faithfully communicate to him the events of that day: and let him, glory, if he can, in the effect that his barbarous conduct to poor Havre de Grace has produced. The conflagration of that village purified party in Baltimore . . . For, or, against the English, is the only touchstone.

   The attack on Havre de Grace only served to further galvanize Maryland residents against the marauders. I even came across a bit of anonymous doggerel from the early 1800s that lambasted the British and Admiral Cockburn in particular.

That impious wretch with coward voice decreed,
Defenceless domes and hallow'd fanes to dust;
Beheld, with seeming smile, the wounded bleed,
And spurr'd his bands to rapine, blood, and lust.
Vain was the widow's, vain the orphan's cry,
To touch his feelings or to sooth his rage -
Vain the fair drop that roll'd from beauty's eye,
Vain the dumb grief of supplicating age.

   On board Admiral Cockburn's flagship, the future looked grim for Lieutenant O'Neill. Any subject or former subject of the crown who took up arms against the king was considered a traitor, subject to death. O'Neill's teen-age daughter intervened, rowing out to Cockburn's flagship to plead for her father's life. He gave the girl the snuffbox and at least one account has Cockburn and O'Neill then getting drunk together on Irish whiskey, but that seems highly unlikely. Cockburn might have been a sucker for a pretty face, but he was not known for his hospitality or for mixing with the lower classes of Americans and Irishmen.
   There might have been a less romantic, more practical reason why O'Neill was spared. The American government had promised to retaliate if any naturalized citizens were hanged. A letter Cockburn received from General Henry Miller, the American commander in Baltimore, warned that two British prisoners would be hanged if any harm came to O'Neill. Cockburn might not have been willing to see if the general would make good on his threat.
   O'Neill became the town's most celebrated citizen. When Concord Point Light was built, the local hero of the War of 1812 was made the lighthouse keeper for the rest of his life. The job also came with a comfortable stone house for the keeper. O'Neill died in 1837 and freed his three slaves in his will. The job of light keeper passed to his son, John Jr., who held the post until his own death in 1863. This sinecure then passed to John Jr.'s daughter, Esther, until 1878, and then to her brother, Henry O'Neill. When Henry died in 1919, the job fell to his son, Harry O'Neill. O'Neills might still be carrying up the whale oil and lighting the lamp if the federal government had not installed an automatic electric light in the late 1920s and eliminated the light keeper's post.

   The attack on Havre de Grace may have been provoked by the sight of a massive United States flag flying over the town. At the conclusion of the re-enactment, a replica of the Star-Spangled Banner that flew at Fort McHenry was unfurled. The spectators, so eager to touch a part of the flag, rushed forward to grab the flag's edge. Standing shoulder to shoulder they stretched the huge banner out to catch the May sunshine. Park Ranger Vaise had brought out the flag to make a point. "We still feel strongly about the flag today, and after the attack on September 11 the flag was a symbol that helped bring Americans together," he said.
   "Out on their ships, the British said, 'How dare they fly that flag and flaunt the symbol of their upstart nation!' It outraged and taunted the British and probably led to some of the excessive damage done during the attack here. They were truly chagrined to see that flag," Vaise said. The fate of the huge Havre de Grace flag is not known, although it is likely the British seized it as a war trophy.
   "More than a year later and fifty miles south of here, another huge flag would fly over the city of Baltimore," Vaise continued. "Only this time the British would not be successful in their attack. It would be an American victory and that flag would become a national symbol."

copyright © 2005 David Healey

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