During the War of 1812, Nottingham served as the home port for the Chesapeake Flotilla, a force of 17 gunboats under Joshua Barney. In the summer of 1814, a British fleet landed at Benedict in Charles County and camped in Nottingham on August 21, finding the town abandoned as its residents fled in haste. As the British approached, Barney took his flotilla upriver to Pig Point and set fire to the entire fleet to keep the boats out of British hands. The British then marched from Nottingham to Marlborough, where soldiers could hear the explosions from the burning flotilla, and with American forces defeated and retreating, they continued to Bladensburg and eventually Washington, D.C., where they sacked and burned significant parts of the city, including the Capitol and the White House.