By Victor Greto
For two days in April 1813, Lewes and Delaware became the center of a 3-year war against the British, as the sleepy town stoically took a 22-hour-long cannon and rocket bombardment from British naval forces blockading access to the Delaware River.
Lewes took it nobly on the chin, said Mike DiPaolo, executive director of the Lewes Historical Society, because it was “the first spot you get to when you sail in from the ocean into the Delaware River. The defenses were here and meant to protect Lewes and the resources in New Castle, Wilmington and Philadelphia.”
Part of the not-so-famous War of 1812 between an adolescent United States of America and a resurgent British Empire in the middle of defeating Napoleonic France, the battle lived on in the memories of Lewes residents until well after the Civil War.
“The one lasting effect of the war was noted by everyone who visited during the next 50 or more years,” DiPaolo said. “That’s all everyone talked about was how Lewes beat back the British.”
One can imagine crusty old-timers rocking and reminiscing on their porches as the 19th century waned – but, despite Delawareans holding their own, the British remained blocking access to the river for the next year and a half.
A microcosm of the war as a whole, the battle for Lewes and access to the Delaware River and the economic riches of Philadelphia limped to its climax just as the war did, toward the end of 1814, with no clear winner and only one clear loser – the American Indians who tried to help the British retain their western forts near the Great Lakes.
But there is no doubt about the importance of the Delaware River and the First State’s role in America’s first-ever declared war since its Constitution took effect in 1789.
“Naval campaigns on the Atlantic were an object of focus because of the Delaware Valley’s importance to the American economy,” said Charles Fithian, curator of archaeology at the state’s division of historical and cultural affairs.
And many features of Delaware life and its people were affected.
“You’ve got men in Delaware who are involved in all aspects of the conflict, local, diplomatic service, army, navy, and they play significant roles,” Fithian said. “On the home front you have a blockade imposed at the beginning of 1813, which begins economic disruption, probably also social disruptions as men are pulled from their trades. There are fortifications, skirmishes along the coast. The state is in a constant state of alarm, and this goes on for 2-1/2 years.”
During the bombardment, Fithian said, homes and businesses were damaged, including the now-famous “Cannonball House,” a colonial-era home so-called because an iron cannonball lodged itself in the structure’s foundation.
Its owners, Gilbert McCracken and his son Henry, were river pilots who served in Delaware militia companies. Across the street from the home, now The War of 1812 Park, was the site of one of two forts that stood up to the bombardment.
Delaware also witnessed new military technology, Fithian said. These included the British-made “Congreve rocket, a missile that could be launched from a ship and carried an explosive or incendiary warhead.”
Residents of Lewes responded in part with at least two Fulton torpedoes, invented by celebrated steamboat entrepreneur Robert Fulton. These were “containers of gunpowder with timing system that would be rowed out near British ships,” Fithian said.
Lewes wasn’t the only area in Delaware on edge for nearly three years.
Only a month after the failed bombardment, the British were sighted south of New Castle while they conducted raids and destroyed about 20 American ships, crippling the economy.
The Brandywine Valley and the relatively new DuPont gunpowder works near Wilmington also worked to defend themselves, said Lucas Clawson, archivist at the Hagley Museum and Library.
“People around here were afraid that the British would invade because of the growing industry in Wilmington and transportation to Philadelphia,” he said.
Perhaps those old codgers rocking on their porches and embellishing tales of fending off the British had a point.
“Delaware was an important defense for the Delaware Valley,” Fithian said. “They knew they were the front door, and if we failed, the valley could have been seriously disrupted.”
THE DUPONT GUNPOWDER WORKS DURING THE WAR OF 1812
Like all wars, the War of 1812 proved to be a boon for military manufacturers.
In Delaware, the small DuPont gunpowder works grew nearly six times its pre-war capacity. The powder yards that make up part of the Hagley Museum were built in 1813 to supply the federal government’s increasing demand.
“DuPont was one of the main suppliers during that period,” said Lucas Clawson, archivist at the Hagley Museum and Library. “Some were around Baltimore, but because of the British invasions of Maryland, duPont became the main supplier of gunpowder.”
The duPonts already were connected to the federal government via former President Thomas Jefferson because gunpowder works owner Eleuehere duPont’s father, Pierre Samuel duPont, knew Jefferson when Jefferson was an ambassador to France during the 1780s, Clawson said. “It’s definitely a who-you-know situation.”
The DuPont plant refined saltpeter, or potassium nitrate, the main ingredient for gunpowder (the other two are charcoal and sulfur), and had contracts to supply the government with the black powder since 1802, when Jefferson was president.
With the war came exponential growth.
“A lot of the building and the sites are still around Hagley from that period,” Clawson said. “You can see what’s left of the powder works. Some three or four of the buildings are still here.
The powder works made a wide variety of products, Clawson said, and several different types of gunpowder for firearms and explosives. “Blasting powder became one of their biggest markets after the war. It was used in building roads and canals.
Aside from the growth of their gunpowder works, at least two duPont family members formed a militia – twice.
“The called themselves the Brandywine Rangers,” Clawson said. “Mr. Eleuehere duPont and his older brother Victor, along with people who worked for the powder yards and who lived in the area, trained themselves. They were the equivalent of what you’d call the national guard. They patrolled the area but never went into combat.”
For several politically arcane reasons, the Rangers were disbanded. But after the war took a turn for the worse during the middle of 1814, the duPonts reorganized, Clawson said.
A major British offensive during the summer of 1814, which included the capture and burning of Washington in late August, put everyone in Delaware on edge. At about the same time as the federal government relocated, the duPonts got the OK from President James Madison to reorganize the Brandywine Rangers.
Camp DuPont was built in Montchanin near the powder yards to protect the yards and local businesses from the British.
The British never attacked, but DuPont grew, and, until 1921, the heart of the company lay in its gunpowder factories.
“But the market was going to high explosives, not black powder,” Clawson said, so DuPont got into the chemical business.
The increase in the manufacture of gunpowder at the DuPont gunpowder works
1810: 40,200 lbs.
1811: 12,200 lbs.
1812: 91,700 lbs.
1813: 157,350 lbs.
1814: 234,050 lbs.
1815: 94,575 lbs.
1816: 96,875 lbs.
The Star Spangles Banner – the National Anthem of the United States – was written by lawyer Francis Scott Key soon after watching British ships bombarding Fort McHenry from the Chesapeake Bay in Baltimore Harbor during the night of Sept. 13, 1814, only three weeks after the burning of Washington D.C.
Key, 35, watched aboard one of more than a dozen British ships attacking from the bay. He was negotiating some American hostages’ release, while rockets and cannonballs clubbed the fort throughout the night.
Not knowing whether the fort and its flag had held until the next morning, Key made the morning sight the climax of the song’s first verse. The huge flag, with 15 stripes and 15 stars, was raised after the battle ended – the other, smaller “storm flag” actually survived the bombardment – but the bigger flag became known as the Star Spangled Banner flag and can be seen at the Smithsonian American History Museum.
Originally called “Defence of Fort McHenry,” Key wrote four stanzas, of which only the first is sung, blurted or screeched by sports fans before major league games. Key set the poem to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” an obscure London gentleman’s club theme song, which, because its range is an octave and a half, is not only tough to sing, but tough to listen to.
Although the song did not become the National Anthem until 1931, one of the first times it was sung at an event was during the 7th-inning stretch of one of the 1918 World Series games between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs, inaugurating its use at sporting events, a hoary American tradition that has given scads of self-indulgent mediocre singers access to audiences of millions of people before bloated, over-hyped games, including the Super Bowl. The song also evidently jinxed both the Cubs and Red Sox, condemning the latter to a World Series drought until 2004, 84 years later, while consigning the Cubs to the nether regions of Hades.
Although Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture has often been played during Fourth of July fireworks displays, it has nothing to do with the British-American War of 1812. Commissioned by Tsar Alexander I, it celebrates Russia’s defense of Moscow against Napoleon’s army at the Battle of Borodino in 1812. The composition, called The Year 1812, Festival Overture in E flat major, Op. 49, was written in 1880 and first performed in Moscow in 1882.
The Battle of New Orleans was fought Jan. 8, 1815, two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent was signed Christmas Eve 1814, ending the War of 1812. News of the war’s end did not reach New Orleans and the South until February.
Although the victorious battle that made Major General Andrew Jackson a hero proved unnecessary, it eventually propelled Jackson into the White House. The battle was fought to prevent the British from occupying New Orleans and giving them easy access to the vast territory of the Louisiana Purchase, which the U.S. had bought from France a dozen years before.
Although the British had gotten only nine miles south of New Orleans on Dec. 23, they camped for reinforcements, giving the Americans and Gen. Jackson enough time to defend the city. Jackson and his troops – which included city militiamen, former Haitian slaves, frontiersmen and pirates under the leadership of Jean Lafitte – fended off a two-column assault, after a morning fog had lifted and exposed British troops to constant artillery fire. Another assault proved unsuccessful when reinforcements failed to arrive.