Blown to Atoms

On August 22, 1814, a series of explosions rocked the Patuxent after Commodore Joshua Barney’s armed barges, long able to elude the British, were trapped in the river’s shallows. Under orders to keep the flotilla from enemy hands, Barney and 400 of his men headed overland toward Washington while about a hundred remained near Pig Point. At the first sight of British vessels, the Americans scuttled their own fleet and rigged trains of gunpowder to ignite the abandoned barges, producing deafening explosions. Seeing the blasts, the British turned back and landed at nearby Mount Calvert, then hurried to join more than 4,000 troops marching from Benedict. The two branches of the British invaders merged at Upper Marlboro just hours after Barney’s men had passed through the town. British Vice Admiral Cochrane reported that seventeen vessels made up the flotilla, sixteen were quickly blown to atoms, and the seventeenth was captured.

Croom, Maryland · United States