Battle of St. Michaels

On August 10, 1813, amid the broader conflict of the War of 1812, British troops clashed with Maryland militia in the town of St. Michaels, a settlement on Maryland's Eastern Shore with direct access to the Chesapeake Bay. In that era, the town sat along a vital shipping corridor connecting to major destinations like Baltimore and the nation's capital.

While St. Michaels itself carried far less strategic weight than Washington or Baltimore, the British nonetheless set their sights on it, drawn by its shipbuilding activity and its proximity to Easton, then the largest settlement in Maryland's Eastern Shore area. The town lies along the waterway once called the St. Michaels River (later renamed the Miles River), a passage navigable by smaller vessels to within three miles, or 4.8 kilometers, of Easton.

The assault came in the predawn darkness, with British forces landing on the shoreline just outside town. They swiftly neutralized one artillery position before withdrawing to their boats. As the British flotilla pressed nearer to the settlement, militia manning two additional gun batteries began firing on them. A boom stretched across the harbor entrance blocked the enemy's further advance. Despite exchanging fire, the British ultimately withdrew to their staging point on Kent Island. Not a single defender was killed or wounded, whereas the British sustained casualties along with damage to at least one of their barges. Local tradition holds that St. Michaels residents strung lanterns high in the trees to mislead British gunners, tricking them into firing over most of the town's structures.

Background

On June 17, 1812, senators in Washington ratified a measure already passed by the House calling for armed conflict with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. A day later, on June 18, President James Madison put his signature to the document, making it law. The nation itself remained divided over how to regard the British. Bankers and businessmen who made up much of the Federalist party largely opposed entering the conflict, while their political rivals in the Democratic-Republican Party, who outnumbered them, saw the fight as necessary and justified.

Once war had been declared, Britain responded by placing American ports under blockade. This effort tightened considerably in 1813, as vessels were dispatched to seal off New York harbor along with other harbors further down the coast, including those situated on the Chesapeake Bay. In the opening days of February that year, a British naval force led by Rear Admiral George Cockburn seized control of Hampton Roads at the bay's entrance, cutting off all movement into and out of the Chesapeake. Norfolk in Virginia and Baltimore's port in Maryland, both significant shipping centers, found themselves effectively shut down as a result.

Once spring arrived, Cockburn turned to raiding communities scattered along the Chesapeake shoreline, seizing or destroying property such as harvested crops and farm animals along the way. Havre de Grace, Maryland, suffered heavy destruction by fire on May 3, and within days, on May 6, the towns of Georgetown and Fredericktown along the Maryland coast met a similar fate. Dolley Madison, serving as First Lady, described these attacks as "savage," prompting Cockburn to threaten that he would seize her and march her through the streets of London. Cockburn also adopted a rule of sparing any town that had no weapons or militia present.

Above Cockburn in the chain of command stood Vice Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, who directed operations from his headquarters in Bermuda. Warren felt his fleet lacked sufficient numbers to properly blockade the American coastline, a shortage that eased somewhat in May when two battalions of marines and further ships arrived under his command. On May 26 he issued a proclamation declaring New York and the Mississippi River officially under blockade, and the same order extended this status to the South Carolina harbors of Charleston, Port Royal, and Savannah. Given its wealth of naval stores, vessels, dockyards, and foundries, the Chesapeake Bay became a destination for Royal Marines, with Norfolk, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. numbering among the first targets planned.

Prelude

In the first days of August 1813, British forces seized Kent Island in Maryland, a stretch of land sitting north of St. Michaels and directly across the bay from Annapolis, the state capital. Roughly 3,000 troops came ashore there, meeting no opposition at all since word of the coming invasion had already sent most residents fleeing. With its supply of food and fresh water, the island offered the British a convenient staging ground for future operations aimed at the Eastern Shore, Annapolis, Baltimore, and Washington.

Around this same period, British vessels positioned themselves in Eastern Bay, occupying the waters separating Kent Island from St. Michaels, and their presence stirred unease across Talbot County. St. Michaels drew British attention largely because of its shipbuilding industry, with no fewer than six vessels under construction there at the time. The town also functioned as a port serving Easton, the largest settlement on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Easton held the region's only armory, along with a bank and considerable stores of goods that would have made tempting spoils for the enemy. Small craft navigating the St. Michaels River could approach within three miles, roughly 4.8 kilometers, of Easton, while a second waterway, Tredhaven Creek, offered another possible route inland, though it remained guarded by a battery of six guns known as Fort Stokes.

Companies of militia converged on St. Michaels from across Talbot County to reinforce the town's own infantry unit, the Saint Michaels Patriotic Blues, under Captain Joseph Kemp, while Lieutenant William Dodson took charge of the artillerymen. Kemp's men, along with at least three companies from Easton, appeared in uniform. Altogether the assembled militia numbered around 500, under the command of Brigadier General Benson, Colonel Auld, and Colonel Thomas Jones, and they took shelter in the town's pair of churches.

Benson arranged three artillery positions to guard the approaches to St. Michaels. To the east, Dodson oversaw thirty men manning four guns behind a modest earthwork at Parrott's Point, sometimes called Parrott Point, situated where the harbor met the water on its southern edge. A boom stretched across the harbor's entrance to keep enemy ships from slipping in. Inside the town itself, at Dawson's wharf near the foot of Mulberry Street, John Graham directed a mobile two-gun battery, with John Thompson and Wrightson Jones handling the 6-pounders. A further pair of guns waited beyond the town's edge in case British troops chose to land behind it and advance from that direction; this position fell under Lieutenant Clement Vickers, staffed by Easton men belonging to the Talbot Volunteer Artillerists.

Scouts kept watch from several posts overlooking the British at Kent Island, sending word back to Colonel Auld at St. Michaels or Brigadier General Benson at Easton. One sighting placed a British brig probing the waters north of town near Deep Water Point along the St. Michaels River. Around this time, a deserter made his way across Eastern Bay and came ashore at Bayside, warning that the British intended to strike St. Michaels within days, though their plans were tempered by fear of what they believed to be a battery of ten guns.

Battle

Under cover of predawn fog on August 10, three hundred British soldiers and marines packed into a fleet of nine to eighteen barges and pushed their way up the St. Michaels River. The waterway stretched more than a mile across, and the invaders hugged the shoreline opposite the town, cloaked by darkness and mist. American lookouts stationed on the St. Michaels side failed to spot the flotilla as it slipped past the harbor entirely unnoticed. Around four in the morning, having crossed the water, the British reached the vicinity of Parrott's Point still shrouded in fog. They waded ashore close to the flank of Dodson's guns and defensive works, only to be spotted by an African American man named John Stevens.

Panic swept through Dodson's ranks at this surprise appearance. Most of the militiamen threw down their arms and bolted across a cornfield toward the safety of town. British muskets sent a volley after them, but the shots found nothing but stalks of corn. Only Dodson himself, Stevens, and one other man held their ground at the battery. Working together, this trio managed to swing one cannon into position, charging it with ball and canister so it could bear on the advancing enemy. The British, having watched the militia scatter, anticipated an unopposed capture of the battery, but instead found themselves on the receiving end of a nine-pounder's blast. Casualties notwithstanding, they pressed forward to seize the position while Dodson and his companions withdrew. The guns fell into British hands and were rendered useless.

With this portion of their objective achieved, the British carried their dead and wounded back to the waiting barges. These vessels advanced to within half a mile of the town itself, but a boom stretched across the water blocked any further approach. Two guns opened fire on St. Michaels from this position, after which the barges withdrew to a more distant spot in the river and kept up their bombardment with considerable intensity. According to local legend, townspeople had strung lanterns in trees at a distance from the actual buildings, tricking the British gunners into overshooting their targets. Graham's battery, positioned at Dawson's wharf, answered the British fire and eventually loosed ten rounds in total. The sound of the cannons reached the Easton artillery unit, prompting them to relocate their guns from Bayside road to Mill Point within the town; they fired five shots as the British began pulling back.

The artillery exchange had run its course by nine that morning, and the British force withdrew to its base. Meanwhile Benson stood ready at the town square with his infantry and cavalry, a force large enough to outnumber the attackers, though no engagement proved necessary. St. Michaels had held firm against the assault, escaping the destruction that had befallen Havre de Grace.

Aftermath

On August 26 the British made a second attempt on St. Michaels, this time committing 2,100 troops carried in 60 barges. They put ashore roughly six miles north of the town, and of that force 1,800 came up against 500 Talbot County militiamen drawn from infantry, cavalry, and artillery units. What turned out to be the largest engagement fought on Maryland's Eastern Shore during the war ended after only a handful of volleys, since the British chose to pull back.

Warren later noted trouble within his own ranks, citing desertion among the army troops and slack discipline among the marines. By August 22 his men were already getting ready to leave Kent Island, having concluded that Annapolis and Baltimore were no longer promising targets now that both cities had been heavily reinforced. He also wanted to reach Halifax before hurricane season set in. Come September, Warren had sailed for Halifax while Cockburn had gone on to Bermuda, leaving only a thin "skeleton force" behind at the Virginia Capes to maintain the blockade.

Lieutenant Polkinghorne of the Royal Navy stated that he considered the purpose of the mission accomplished. Though no vessels were spotted, he claimed credit for seizing a battery, breaking apart its carriages, and destroying the ammunition stores, one goal of the raid having been to wreck ships under construction at St. Michaels. A deserter, however, offered a very different account, calling the operation a failure and explaining that its commander had expected to face weak militia but instead found his force too small against regular troops. Fire from the British six-pounders tended to fly high, striking rooftops and upper gables rather than lower stories. Notably, when Warren wrote to First Secretary of the Admiralty John W. Croker on August 23, he described the strike on Queenstown but said nothing of St. Michaels.

Accounts suggest that American gunners outperformed their British counterparts that day. Blood was found near where the barges had landed, and a newspaper claimed three of them took hits from the town's artillery fire. Benson's account described the militia as having "generally behaved well," making no mention of any who fled without firing. Long after the fighting ended, two companies from Easton kept up a rivalry over which had performed better in the battle.

Local legend holds that during the August 10 fighting, townspeople hung lanterns high in the trees to trick the British into overshooting the settlement, with some claiming only the home of shipbuilder William Merchant took a hit. Yet Benson's account merely stated that "some of the houses were perforated," with no hint of any deception. Doubt about the story grows further since daylight had likely already broken by the time the British opened fire on the town.