During the Battles of St. Leonard Creek, the United States Chesapeake Flotilla consisted of the sloop Scorpion armed with four cannon, 13 barges with two cannon each, the one-gun row galley Vigilant, and a lookout boat and two gunboats, each armed with a single cannon. The American guns ranged in size from 12-pounders to 41-pounders, with 18- and 24-pounders the most numerous. Barney faced a British fleet that outgunned him by more than four to one, even without including the 74-gun ship of the line patrolling at the mouth of the Patuxent River. The British ships stationed off the mouth of St. Leonard Creek were the 38-gun frigate HMS Loire, the 18-gun frigate HMS St. Lawrence, and the 18-gun sloop HMS Jaseur. Because these vessels were too large to sail very far into the creek, the British relied there on 21 barges and two small schooners, each carrying a single cannon, along with a small boat armed with the new Congreve rocket. After the First Battle of St. Leonard Creek, the British were reinforced by the 32-gun frigate HMS Narcissus and several smaller boats. Despite the overwhelming strength aligned against him, Commodore Joshua Barney, with the help of hastily erected shore batteries, escaped up the Patuxent in late June 1814. Developed by William Congreve in 1804, Congreve rockets were self-propelled projectiles carrying an incendiary or explosive charge for distances up to two miles. A sheet iron tube containing the propellant charge was attached to a long wooden shaft that stabilized the rocket in flight. The “rockets red glare” in “The Star-Spangled Banner” refers to these rockets, which were used at both the Battle of Baltimore and the Battles of St. Leonard Creek. Their flight was unpredictable, and although they terrorized both military personnel and civilians, they did relatively little damage to their intended targets.