Discovery! New Research Changes Francis Scott Key's Location when inspired to write Star Spangled Banner

Francis Scott Key wrote the words to the National Anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner" while being held prisoner aboard a British Ship off the coast of Baltimore's Fort McHenry as the British were firing upon it in 1814. When the bombardment stopped and the fort raised the American Flag, Key wrote the words to what would become the Star Spangled Banner. But the location from which he watched that on the British ship has always been in question, until now. Thanks Scott Sheads, a reporter for the South Baltimore Peninsula Post newspaper, created by my friend Steve C. (I'm so proud of him for bringing news to South Baltimore that had been lacking for years, but that's another story. Here's the story about Francis Scott Key's location that inspired the National Anthem!!

(Photo: The Francis Scott Key Buoy (above) was placed in the Patapsco River near FSK Bridge where it was once thought Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry that inspired his "Star-Spangled Banner." But recent historical research has found that Key actually watched the “rockets’ red glare” on September 13-14, 1814, onboard a ship that was much closer to Fort McHenry than previously thought. Photo: Steve Cole   (This article originally appeared in the August 2025 issue of the South Baltimore Peninsula Post.))

New Research Changes Francis Scott Key's Location

By Scott S. Sheads, SOBO Peninsula Post, Aug 25, 2025

On June 18, the U.S. Coast Guard once again returned the red-white-and-blue Francis Scott Key Buoy to its position in the Patapsco River near the Francis Scott Key Bridge, an annual ritual started in 1914 during the National Star-Spangled Banner Centennial. Removed each winter for maintenance and repair, the buoy marks the location in the river where it was once thought that Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry in September 1814, inspiring him to write the poem that would become our National Anthem.

Recent historical research, however, has found that Key actually watched the “rockets’ red glare” from a location much closer to the Fort.

When the buoy’s location four miles from Fort McHenry was selected in 1914, there was scant evidence available documenting the name of the American flag-of-truce vessel on which Key stood, much less where the ship was located on the river. (The location was the suggestion of Dr. Arthur B. Bibbins, chairman of the board of directors for the 1914 celebration.) When it was discovered in the 1950s that the leading candidate for the British vessel that Key stood on (the 74-gun HMS Minden) was serving in Southeast Asia at the time, a renewed search began to find the flag-of-truce vessel’s actual name and location during the bombardment of Fort McHenry.

It was a daunting task, as Fort McHenry superintendent George Mackenzie pointed out in 1956: “The problem of determining the location of the cartelsloop from which Francis Scott Key saw our flag on the morning of September 14, 1814, is a perplexing one.”

Since then, the improved availability of documents from archives in the United States and the United Kingdom as well as regional newspaper accounts of ship movements in the Chesapeake Bay during the battle have shed new light on this important American story. Recent research by local historians revealed that Key’s vantage point was much closer to Fort McHenry – just two miles away – near the mouth of Colgate (formerly Colegate) Creek at a spot that now lies beneath the Seagirt Marine Terminal.

An initial clue as to what ship Key was on came from knowing who he was traveling with. Key was on the Patapsco River in September 1814 as part of a diplomatic mission with Colonel John S. Skinner, the U.S. State Department commissary for Prisoners of War, that successfully negotiated the release of a prominent American prisoner. Their vessel was detained by the British so that the Americans onboard would not reveal details of the British naval forces preparing to attack Baltimore.

In a series of articles published in 1956 in Baltimore Magazine, Port of Baltimore historian Ralph J. Robinson determined that Skinner “used a single vessel for diplomatic missions throughout 1814.” Subsequent research by Lou Giles, president of the Society of the War of 1812, and this author, a retired National Park Service ranger at Fort McHenry, determined that the truce ship was probably the Stephen Decatur.

The Stephen Decatur was one of several packet boats owned by brothers John and Benjamin Ferguson operating out of Fells Point to carry passengers and mail between Baltimore and Norfolk, Virginia. In 1811, Benjamin Ferguson advertised that he “has added to his line of Norfolk Packets two copper vessels.” These vessels were the sloop Stephen Decatur and an unnamed schooner which was sold in 1812. The Decatur’s master was Captain John Ferguson, who utilized the sloop in May and June of 1814 on two missions on the bay.

A timeline of the Decatur’s location before and after the Fort McHenry bombardment can be reconstructed from U.S. and British reports and entries in the captain’s logbook of the HMS frigate Surprise, flagship of British Vice Admiral Cochrane during the Baltimore campaign, to which the Decatur was tethered.

On Sunday, September 11, 1814, the Surprise and Decatur were off North Point (8 miles from Fort McHenry) after the landing of British troops there, sailing upriver to keep in communication with the troops as they moved toward Baltimore.

On Monday, September 12, the two ships were about 4 miles from the Fort, off Bear Creek. (This is approximately where the Key Buoy is currently located.)

On Tuesday, September 13, the ships were off Colgate Creek, about 2 miles from the Fort, as the bombardment began. Early in the morning of Wednesday, September 14, the last cannons and bombs were fired, and shortly after the garrison flag was raised over the Fort’s ramparts, inspiring a nation’s anthem. The British bombardment squadron then sailed down the river with the Decatur in tow.

On September 16, after the British withdrawal, the Decatur and Francis Scott Key returned to Fells Point. Within a few days, Key’s poem was printed in a Baltimore newspaper and the “Star-Spangled Banner” was born.