Fort McHenry, January 2010
| Robert made the mistake of wearing his red coat on our visit to Fort McHenry and so was mercilessly tickled. | |||||||
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Then he was thrown in jail. Actually... we took advantage of the break in the cold weather to head up to Fort McHenry because Robert had checked out a book on the Star Spangled Banner from the school library recently. I don't remember going before, and Sarah said she hadn't been there before, so off we went. Robert, was most fascinated by the cannons. I did not realize that the British mortars and rockets had a substantial range advantage on the fort's cannon. Nor did I realize how little damage the bombardment actually did -- only 4 defenders killed and 24 wounded. |
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| The sign above says "no climbing on the cannons." It says nothing about the cannon balls. And for the military historians in the audience -- these cannons were installed for the civil war; the war of 1812 cannons were much smaller. | |||||||
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In addition to cannons, cannons and more cannons, there were several very interesting displays, including a light-up map of the happenings of September 13 - 14, 1814. The weather was great, we had a lot of fun and learned a few things. I expect we'll return -- maybe next time on a weekend in summer when they fire one of the 1812 cannons... |
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