The two Americans had been sent on a special mission by President James Madison himself, to negotiate the freedom of a captured American. Skinner had sailed out from Baltimore aboard a truce vessel in early September to find the British fleet. Agent for Prisoner Exchange Colonel John S. The situation in which the lawyer came to write the famous song are fairly well known: Key and U.S. (Key’s song remained one of a number of popular patriotic songs for the remainder of the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th until signed into law as this nation’s official anthem by President Herbert Hoover in March 1931.) He was also the man who inadvertently set into motion the train of events that would lead to Key writing the lyrics to the future U.S.

Ross was the British commander who had burned the White House. The British commander who superintended the re-embarkation of the troops was Colonel Arthur Brooke, who had taken over from fellow Irishman Major General Robert Ross, who was mortally wounded in a skirmish preceding the Battle of North Point of the afternoon of September 12.

The city was saved! On the morning of September 15, the British fleet of up to 70 vessels upped anchor, after re-embarking their Redcoats, and began down the Chesapeake Bay, never to threaten the city again. Thankfully, Frank Key’s ardent hopes that Baltimore would be spared a mauling by the British as had happened with the enemy’s burning of the public buildings of Washington, D.C., only three weeks earlier, were fully realized. Moreover, the religious, gentlemanly Key, a songwriter who truth to say is somewhat of a “one-hit wonder,” said very little about writing the song and whether he really did see the American garrison flag through the two stormy days of smoke and rain during which the British onslaught took place. Right?Īs usual, like much in history, the full reality about the circumstances of how Key’s composition came about is not quite as straightforward as it appears. Because the lyrics say that, it must be the truth. On the surface, the lyrics of our National Anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” seem very clear -that Georgetown lawyer and part-time poet and songwriter Francis Scott Key saw the American flag flying over Fort McHenry at the entrance to Baltimore harbor during the British Royal Navy’s bombardment of September 13–14, 1814.

Lyrics of the star spangled banner song