With the Royal Navy's offensives in the Chesapeake Bay during the War of
1812 came devastating raids that wreaked havoc on the small villages
along its shores and the very economy of the region. American naval
forces were incapable of wresting control of the Tidewater from the
superior enemy forces. Then in 1814 Captain Joshua Barney, a rare
American hero during the struggle, intrepidly led his Chesapeake
Flotilla against the invaders, determined to contest their advance on
the nation's capital and drive them from the region.
Donald G. Shomette, director of the archaeological excavation of the
flotilla's flagship, substantially revises the first edition of this
captivating history with new information about Barney, his crew, and the
mosquito fleet of gunboats and war barges that so valiantly fought the
British. He sheds new light on the efforts of the U.S. Flotilla Service
to build a viable coastal defense force. Shomette details the
construction and manning of the famed Chesapeake Flotilla and recounts
the terrifying details of British attacks on the towns, plantations, and
farms throughout the bay region.
Doomed from its conception by sparse funds and the natural limitations
of the bay's coastline, the flotilla ultimately suffered defeat. Yet its
efforts were not completely in vain. Turning back wave after wave of
British attacks, the fleet earned an improbable victory at St. Leonard's
Creek and its men went on to make heroic stands at the battles of
Bladensburg and Fort McHenry in 1814.
The thoroughly updated and enlarged edition of Flotilla is the result
of impressive research on a forgotten chapter in the development of the
young nation's naval and maritime tradition.
