Havre de Grace

On May 3, 1813, British naval forces launched an assault from the sea against Havre de Grace, Maryland, an episode within the larger War of 1812. Rear Admiral George Cockburn led a Royal Navy squadron in the attack on this town situated where the Susquehanna River meets the bay. The defenders were driven back by Cockburn's men, who then plundered and set fire to numerous structures before pulling out of the area.

Background

Setting off from waters near Baltimore, Cockburn made his way to the upper Chesapeake Bay and took Spesutie Island on 23 April 1813. His forces struck Frenchtown on the Elk River on 29 April with success, and he pushed to move his ships farther upstream before troops stationed at Fort Defiance blocked his advance.

Cockburn had sworn that any American settlement offering violent resistance would face destruction at his hands. Havre de Grace had not figured into his original plans for assault, but the sight of an American flag waving over the town, combined with gunfire from a local battery aimed at his men, changed his mind and prompted the attack.

Attack

Anchored off Turkey Point, Cockburn's warships could not reach Havre de Grace directly, since a stretch of shallow water lay between them and the town, too shoal for vessels of size. To get around this obstacle, Cockburn dispatched Commander John Lawrence to lead a flotilla, numbering somewhere between sixteen and nineteen boats, rowing across the shallows starting at midnight on the third of May.

Word of a coming assault had circulated beforehand, yet whether because of this warning or in spite of it, the bulk of the militia stationed at Havre de Grace had already left by the time the raiders arrived. Barely forty men remained to defend the Concord Point battery when dawn brought the flotilla within striking range. This small garrison exchanged fire for a short while, but once Congreve rockets rained down on the settlement, killing one townsperson, Lieutenant George Augustus Westphal led a charge that overran and seized the position.

At a separate emplacement nicknamed the "Potato Battery," Second Lieutenant John O'Neill worked the gun alone until the recoil from his own cannon knocked him down. He fell back and kept firing his musket at the approaching British while trying, without success, to summon the militia back to the fight.

As the British pressed forward, both the inhabitants and what militia remained fled deeper inland, away from the town center. Westphal's men pushed into Havre de Grace itself and set fire to forty of its sixty structures, though the Episcopal church escaped burning, even as they defaced it.

Six cannons were hauled away from the town on Cockburn's orders, and O'Neill along with two other captured Americans were brought aboard his flagship, the Maidstone. Local magistrates later pleaded for O'Neill's freedom, and Cockburn agreed to let him go. According to Cockburn's own account, the only casualty on the British side was Westphal, wounded in the hand by gunfire.

Following the strike on Havre de Grace, Cockburn ordered troops further along, up the Susquehanna River, where they destroyed a supply depot along with several vessels. British forces also made their way to the nearby Principio Furnace, a substantial ironworks that doubled as a cannon foundry, leveling its buildings and equipment as well.