Raid on Alexandria (Virginia)

When British forces struck Alexandria during the War of 1812, they came away with a decisive win and a rich haul of plunder, gained at minimal expense to themselves. Yet this success carried a hidden cost: the time spent on the operation may have held back the main British army, contributing to their eventual defeat at Baltimore.

Background

During the summer of 1814, as British forces pressed their campaign into the Chesapeake, Commodore James Alexander Gordon received orders to lead a naval squadron up the Potomac toward Fort Washington. This move was meant as a diversion, drawing American attention away from General Robert Ross's advance on Washington itself rather than serving as the main thrust of the operation.

Situated on the Maryland side of the river some eight miles south of the capital, Fort Washington stood as the sole defensive work along that stretch of the Potomac. Its armament, twelve or fifteen guns at the time (with more added afterward), gave it command of the waterway beneath the fort's position. Still, Brigadier General William H. Winder, who oversaw the military district encompassing Washington, worried that a determined enemy fleet might force its way past the guns regardless, leaving the capital exposed. An inspection conducted the year before had already flagged a serious weakness: the fort's blockhouse could only withstand small arms fire, and even a twelve-pounder cannon would suffice to bring it down. Defending the position were 49 men under Captain Samuel T. Dyson of the Corps of Artillery, joined by detachments from the 9th and 12th Infantry Regiments.

Gordon commanded a formidable collection of vessels: the frigates Seahorse, carrying 38 guns, and Euryalus, with 36; three bomb ships, Devastation, Aetna, and Meteor, each fitted with a pair of heavy mortars alongside eight or ten lighter guns and carronades; and the rocket-armed Erebus.

The squadron's advance up the Potomac began on August 20 and proved slow going, as the ships repeatedly ran afoul of the Kettle Bottom Shoals; Gordon would later claim every vessel under his command had grounded some twenty times during the passage. By August 27, the bomb vessels were finally in position and opened fire on the fort. Dyson had received instructions from Winder that the fort should only be destroyed if British troops managed to flank the position and attack from behind in significant numbers. Winder had further reinforced the defense with roughly 500 militia troops. Yet once Gordon's ships had kept up their bombardment for two hours, Dyson chose to spike his own artillery, set off the fort's magazine, which held 3000 pounds of powder, and pulled his men out. This decision cost him his command; he was arrested and confined to quarters, and a subsequent court martial convicted him of abandoning his post and destroying government property, resulting in his dismissal from the army.

In his own account of the engagement, Gordon described the scene this way: shortly before sundown the squadron dropped anchor just beyond the reach of the fort's guns, with the bomb vessels moving into position to shield the frigates for an assault planned at first light. They began lobbing shells and kept up the barrage until around seven in the evening. Then, to the surprise of the attacking force, the garrison abandoned the fort entirely, and not long afterward Fort Washington erupted in an explosion that leveled it.

Occupation

Once Fort Washington had collapsed, nothing remained to block the British warships from pressing upriver toward the thriving port of Alexandria, situated only a short distance away. Earlier, the town's Common Council had dispatched representatives to offer surrender of the city to Rear Admiral George Cockburn, then occupying Washington. Charles Simms, serving as Alexandria's Mayor, was rowed downriver on the morning of 28 August under a flag of truce to negotiate terms with Gordon. Since it fell on a Sunday, Gordon instructed Simms to head back and wait, promising his squadron would arrive the following Monday.

A subsequent Congressional Investigative Committee, examining both the capital's burning and Alexandria's surrender, received testimony from the town clerk, Israel Thompson, who described events this way:

The next morning, the 29th of August, the squadron positioned itself along the waterfront, covering the town from end to end. This force included two frigates, the Seahorse carrying thirty-eight guns and the Euryalus with thirty-six, alongside two rocket ships mounting eighteen guns apiece, two bomb-ships with eight guns each, and a two-gun schooner. These vessels sat merely a few hundred yards from the wharves, close enough that the houses could have been reduced to ashes within minutes.

Seeking to spare the town from ruin, the Council consented to surrender every merchant vessel, including those deliberately sunk to keep them from capture, along with all goods. Through this arrangement the British gained twenty-two merchant ships and enormous stores of plunder, among them flour, cotton, tobacco, wine, and cigars.

Shallow waters along the Potomac had slowed Gordon's progress so severely that his squadron did not reach Fort Washington until nearly a week after Ross and his troops had already come and gone from Washington. Once Fort Washington's guns had been silenced, his main goal fulfilled, Gordon learned that the Capitol and the Washington Navy Yard had already burned a week prior. He chose not to push further and dismissed any notion of sailing his squadron farther upriver to torch the Georgetown docks. Even so, his mere presence at Alexandria nearly froze the American government's efforts to regroup and resume operations in Washington.

Three days into the occupation of Alexandria, the Cruizer-class brig-sloop Fairy arrived bearing orders for Gordon to rejoin Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane's main fleet in the Chesapeake.

Gordon organized his withdrawal in phases. On September 1 he sent the bomb-ketch Meteor and the sloop Fairy ahead as scouts. The rest of his ships left Alexandria on 2 September, only to run into American militia batteries positioned on shore at White House Point. Commodore John Rodgers, commanding crews from two unfinished frigates, the Guerriere and Java, launched fireships against Gordon's vessels on two separate occasions, but British sailors manning the squadron's launches and cutters thwarted both attempts.

On August 31, Secretary of State James Monroe, acting in his role as Secretary of War, ordered the rapid construction of an American field artillery battery on the Virginia shore, atop the heights now known as Fort Belvoir. In doing so, he overruled Colonel Decius Wadsworth, who had originally assembled the guns before departing the scene. Contrary winds kept the British ships from clearing the battery until conditions shifted on 5 September. To improve their firing angle, Gordon ordered his crews to redistribute ballast within the ships, tilting them to starboard so the port guns could aim higher. After delivering what was called a "fulsome fire," the squadron managed to pass the battery in roughly an hour.

Aftermath

On September 9, Gordon's ships returned to link up with Cochrane's fleet. The financial haul from the expedition had been considerable, yet the sluggish progress through the Potomac's tricky waters meant Gordon could not lend assistance during the assault on Washington. There was another complication as well: Cochrane found himself waiting on Gordon for a number of days, partly out of concern that a rescue might become necessary, and partly because most of the bomb-ketches and rocket vessels in the entire fleet were traveling with Gordon's flotilla. As a result of this holdup, Baltimore's defenders gained precious time to strengthen their fortifications, time that ultimately allowed them to turn back the British assault on the city.