The Rockets Red Glare…
On the morning of 14 September 1814, it became obvious to Admiral of the Blue, Sir Alexander Inglis Cochrane, Commander-in-Chief, North American Station, that the failed 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry would force the British to abandon their assault on the port city of Baltimore.
A view of the bombardment of Fort McHenry, during the War of 1812, near Baltimore, by the British fleet, taken from the observatory under the command of Admirals Cochrane & Cockburn on the morning of the 13th of Sepr. 1814 which lasted 25 hours, & thrown from 1,500 to 1,800 shells in the night attempted to land by forcing a passage up the ferry branch but were repulsed with great loss. Engraving by John Bower. LOC print. LC-DIG-ppmsca-35544
That morning, aboard an American truce sloop near the 80-gun ship of the line HMS Tonnant was lawyer, author, and amateur poet Francis Scott Key, aged 35, whose subsequent poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry” was the next day penned at the Indian Queen Tavern in Baltimore.
In honor of those rockets and mortars launched from the fireships HMS Erebus and HMS Meteor, along with four other British bomb vessels, against McHenry, here is an October 1981 montage of seven views showing parts of the test launching of a Trident I C-4 missile from the submerged Benjamin Franklin-class Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine USS Francis Scott Key (SSBN-657) and the Trident’s inert re-entry bodies as they plunge into the earth’s atmosphere and then into the Atlantic Ocean.
Via the National Museum of the U.S. Navy, 330-CFD-DN-SC-82-00005
