This star-shaped fort at the harbor's mouth saved Baltimore in 1814 and gave America its national anthem. Fort McHenry was completed in 1803 on a peninsula where the Patapsco River meets the harbor, designed in the classic star shape to allow defenders to fire in every direction without creating blind spots. On September 13 and 14, 1814, a British fleet of nineteen ships bombarded this fort for twenty-five hours with rockets and mortar shells — over 1,800 rounds in all — in an attempt to silence the American guns and open the harbor for a land assault on Baltimore.
The fort held. Watching from a British truce ship eight miles away, a Washington lawyer named Francis Scott Key was so moved by the sight of the American flag still flying at dawn that he began writing a poem on the back of a letter. That poem, set to a popular British drinking tune, became The Star-Spangled Banner.
The flag that flew that night — a 30 by 42 foot garrison flag sewn by Mary Pickersgill — is now at the Smithsonian in Washington. The smaller storm flag that actually survived the bombardment flew through the rain and smoke of that September night. Walk the ramparts toward the harbor approach, where American artillerymen once watched those rockets' red glare streak overhead.