BONUS: Is the Star-Spangled Banner Actually British?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:16

d episode, what is the War of: 1812

I'm joined now by the guest from that episode, Professor Andrew Lambert from King's College London, to discuss this a little bit more. Andrew, thank you for hanging on.

Andrew Lambert: 00:00:38

Thank you. Pleasure.

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:40

y great to discuss the war of: 1812

was created during the War of: 1812

Andrew Lambert: 00:01:06

Thank you for that. That's a great question. Like most of the war, it has a degree of mythology about it, so it didn't become the national anthem until much, much later.

But it was written in: 1814

Francis Scott Key, who wrote it, was a lawyer who had gone aboard a British warship to see if he could secure the release of an American civilian who the British had arrested during their capture of Washington D.C. because they believed that he had been acting illegally as a civilian in a combatant role.

And he went on board to make the case that this upstanding gentleman wouldn't have done such a thing. It's pretty clear he had, but that's not particularly important.

At the time, the British fleet and the small British army, about bit under 4,000 troops, had begun a major operation to capture the American city of Baltimore. Baltimore is very important. It's the main source for the privateer raiders that the Americans are using to attack British merchant shipping.

So that's where all the ships are being built. It's a defended port, it has major fort guarding the entrance and it has a population 40, 50,000 people.

Unlike Washington, which is full of people who work for the government, Baltimore is full of people who have their own property. So the people of Baltimore turn out to defend the city in ways that the people of Washington didn't.

The army lands and they're moving to get round the back of Baltimore. And the general who's won the battle at Gotham, Washington, Robert Ross, is killed in a skirmish and the impetus of the campaign begins to slow.

The navy then bombards the fort at the entrance to Baltimore Harbor, Fort McHenry. And for several days the British are firing rockets, war rockets with exploding warheads and mortar bombs.

So the lines, the bombs in the air, the rockets, red glare. These are real weapons being fired by the Royal Navy at this American fort. The fort is still there in the morning and the flag is still flying.

And this is something that Key can observe from the deck of a British warship, which is just out of range of all of the fighting, which in those days is about two miles. So he can see very clearly what's going on. He can see this huge ensign which has been flying, flying to say, no, it's still in American hands.

What he doesn't know is, is that during the night, the British staged a mock attack on the fortress to try and distract the American army from an attempt to attack the back of Baltimore. But this was eventually abandoned. So the rockets were signal rockets and the guns that were firing were actually firing blanks.

They were just making a show to try and draw the American attention into that area. Many years after the event, the flag survived and the flag became an object of veneration.

s fort, and eventually by the: 1920

The tune is actually an 18th century English drinking song called An Akreon in Heaven. You know, it's rousing and uplifting, but you're meant to be uplifting tankards of beer rather than national spirit.

So it's a great story because these things should not have pompous beginnings. This is a very humble piece of poetry written by a clever man watching events about something which is going on in front of him.

So, yes, the rockets and bombs in the American national anthem are British. They are being fired at Fort McHenry, which is a major national monument.

If you go to Baltimore, go to Fort McHenry and talk to the guides there, they absolutely believe that the fort saved, well, Baltimore and probably all of America. The British gave, gave up and went somewhere else because just too many armed people in Baltimore, they couldn't get in dangerous city. So, yes, it's.

It's a story in which the British have a major role in writing a piece of poetry which becomes an American national anthem and lent the Americans a tune to set it to. And we now hear that that tune quite often. It has quite, quite original and interesting origins.

Liam Heffernan: 00:05:24

Yeah, I love that.

eople for a population in the: 1810

Andrew Lambert: 00:05:42

Baltimore is a big city. It's much bigger than Washington. Washington's about 10,000. Just a little admin center. It's only just started being built.

The British burned down all the public buildings, most of which haven't been finished, and they set fire to the presidential mansion, which then had to be whitewashed, hence White House. So. Oh, and they ate the President's dinner as well. He expected to win the battle, and he got a dinner laid on. So they went and did that.

Baltimore is a big import export center. It's one of the key grain exporting towns. It's also a big shipbuilding and trading center, and it's heavily connected with the Atlantic slave trade.

sh were trying to stop in the: 1820

ed have a replica of a War of: 1812

Baltimore is aggressively anti British, and that's one of the reasons why the British decided to attack it. You know, these were friendly people. The Marylanders were people that the British didn't like.

They spent most of: 1814

Liam Heffernan: 00:07:12

Right.

Andrew Lambert: 00:07:12

Wasn't from the north, wasn't really from the deep South. It's from those center belt still, still in the area of plantation economies.

People who looked at the British, who abolished the slave trade as their ideological enemies. And you can see the beginning of the Civil War.

Because in the Civil War, the state of Maryland was an occupied state by the Union because its sentiments were entirely on the southern side. And Baltimore had a huge garrison which spent the war stopping Baltimore joining the South. So you can see where Maryland fits in this.

It's very much on that southern plantation economy model.

Liam Heffernan: 00:07:58

Yeah.

Andrew Lambert: 00:07:59

It literally had to be occupied. So Fort McHenry turns around and its guns now point at the city, not at the harbor that the British were trying to come in.

Liam Heffernan: 00:08:08

Yeah.

Andrew Lambert: 00:08:08

mething very different in the: 1860

Liam Heffernan: 00:08:18

ch a big aspect of the War of: 1812

And nowadays you know, the Navy just doesn't seem to be regarded with as much importance as it, as it did back then, maybe for obvious reasons, because we now, you know, have air combat and everything. But do you think that the, the importance of the Navy has been diminished over the years? Yeah. No.

Andrew Lambert: 00:08:50

Thank you for that. That's a question I get asked quite often. The simple answer is the Navy is probably more important than it's ever been.

But at the moment there isn't a naval war. So everybody is rather that your Christmas stuff comes from China without any trouble and it doesn't get stopped.

But of course, at the moment, passing through the Red Sea, you're going to get fired at by the Houthis. Your ship might get sunk. There's a minor war against trade going on there.

The possibilities of a full on conflict between China and the United States would certainly re energize naval warfare at that level. But sanctions against Russia, that's naval. Ukrainians have sunk pretty much all of Russia's Black Sea fleet, which stops it being a serious threat.

So navies are just over the horizon. They're very important.

Our strategic deterrent is carried in submarines which are permanently on station, as are those of three or four other major powers. So navies are enormously important because the world runs on a global exchange of goods, most of which go on or under the sea.

So anybody listening to this in the United States is picking it up across a server on an undersea fiber optic cable. How do you protect those cables? Well, you put a ship over the top of where they are. So almost all of our communications now is under the sea.

And the only way to protect that is to be on the surface of the sea and stop people doing bad things underneath.

So we're acutely aware that hostile people can cut our communications, much as somebody blew up the Russian gas pipeline to Germany early in the Ukraine crisis. So just because navies are not fighting at close quarters against other navies doesn't mean they're unimportant.

Just means that we're in an age where most of the people who want to keep the world running are on the same side and are able to control that activity. But a major challenger coming out. Russia would be an obvious example. It has something of a navy. China has a very large navy.

If it decided to go to sea and attack global communications, it would take an awful lot to stop it. So we would know how bad it is when it started to impact our daily lives.

If you talk to anybody of the wartime generation about rationing you'll find out what it means not to have complete control of the sea. People find that their access to food and everything else was severely limited by the capacity of the shipping to get through.

, it's the same in the War of: 1812

That raises insurance rates, it raises costs, it reduces the flow of goods. And yes, there are no bananas. So In World War II, there are no bananas because banana boats are refrigerated.

And that's how you move highly volatile ammunition around the world in a refrigerated carrier. And only a banana boat has the equipment. So you can't move bananas, but you can move high explosive.

Liam Heffernan: 00:12:00

Yeah, well, who, who knew?

And I think, you know, there's, there's, it's really fascinating because of just how relevant that's becoming with, you know, increased tensions around the world. And, you know, as you sort of.

You touched on in, in the main episode about, you know, decisions around, you know, the funding of the, the army and the navy. And actually you have to fund it when people don't think it's as important, because when it suddenly is important, does deciding to then fund it is.

Is too late. Right.

Andrew Lambert: 00:12:30

Yep. You can create an army much faster than you can create a navy. Going to war on land involves a lot of things we do anyway, like walking, going to sea.

You need a whole, whole new skill set that landlubbers never look at.

Liam Heffernan: 00:12:46

Yeah.

Andrew Lambert: 00:12:46

And then on top of that, you need all of those military skills to fight at sea. And that's why the difference in quality between navies historically and, and in the contemporary age is usually quite glaring.

The real professionals are always so much better than the amateurs.

Liam Heffernan: 00:13:04

Yeah.

Andrew Lambert: 00:13:05

And The War of: 1812

They are by far the best unit for unit Navy that the British fight in the age of sailors. Yeah, they're good, but they're not good enough to win.

Liam Heffernan: 00:13:26

Which is the difference. Right. It's the crucial distinction, winning everything. Yeah, of course. Okay. Well, Andrew, that's been a.

It's been a fascinating conversation and I think just like everyone else over this Christmas period, my laptop is on the brink of giving up because I think I've overworked it. So let's wrap up this conversation for now.

Uh, thank you so much for joining me for this and also for the main episode, which we're going to link to in the Show Notes and do remind everyone listening where they can connect with you if they if they want to.

Andrew Lambert: 00:13:58

Yeah, I'm in the Department of War Studies, King's College, London, and you'll find me there.

Liam Heffernan: 00:14:03

Amazing. And thank you again for joining me for this. Really great to chat to you.

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