All through the night of the attack, Francis stood aboard a ship, watching the attack on the fort.The British agreed, but kept Francis and the doctor under guard so they couldn’t warn the Americans of the impending attack. A few days before the attack, a young American lawyer, Francis Scott Key, boarded a British ship to negotiate the release of an elderly doctor.Mary used 300 yards of English wool bunting cloth to make the flag. Each stripe was two feet wide and the stars measured two feet from point to point. The flag measured 42 feet long by 30 feet high – the size of a very, very large room. With the help of several family members, she completed the flag in six weeks. Mary Young Pickersgill, a widowed flagmaker, was hired to sew the flag.He wanted the flag to be huge – big enough for the British to see from miles away.
He requested a flag be made to fly over the fort.
It seemed likely that the British would be victorious. On September 13, 1814, the fort was attacked by sixteen British ships. The only thing that stood in their way was Fort McHenry, which lay on an island in the Chesapeake Bay. Only a few weeks after the British burned Washington D.C., destroying the Capitol, the President’s House, and the Treasury, they headed toward Baltimore. The War of 1812 between the Americans and British lasted for three years.
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