At St. Leonard Creek during the War of 1812, Commodore Joshua Barney recounted that on June 6, 1814, a British rocket struck an American barge, passed through one of the men, set the barge on fire, ignited a barrel of powder and another of musket cartridges, blew several men into the water, and severely burned another. With both magazines on fire, the boat’s commander, officers, and crew abandoned her, believing she would inevitably explode, but Major William Barney, the commodore’s son and commander of the cutter Scorpion, asked permission to take charge of the burning boat and succeeded in putting out the fire and saving it by bailing water into her and rocking her from side to side. Barney also wrote that on June 25, 1814, at four in the morning, the artillery, marine corps, and flotilla made a combined attack on the enemy’s two frigates at the mouth of the creek, and after a two-hour engagement the frigates got under way and made sail down river while he moved up the Patuxent with his flotilla, having lost Acting Midshipman Asquith killed and ten others killed and wounded.