On Alert

Port Deposit, then called Creswell’s Ferry, was on high alert on May 3, 1813, as smoke rising from towns across the river signaled that British raiders might strike there. The town was spared, perhaps because of its well-defended gun battery, or, as legend held, because enemy raiders heard that its defenders could “shoot an eye out of a crow upon the wing.” In 1813 Rear Admiral George Cockburn led a British squadron to the head of the Bay to harass coastal towns, destroy American supplies, and chart local waters for use when they returned the following year. Cockburn wrote that he had detached a small division of boats up the Susquehanna to take and destroy whatever they might meet there.

Port Deposit, Maryland · United States