5. Commodore Joshua Barney and the Battle of Bladensburg
Joshua Barney was an American naval officer who served in the Continental Navy with distinction and later joined the United States Navy, eventually in 1814 commanding a gunboat flotilla in Chesapeake Bay. The gunboats were the result of President Jefferson shifting the focus of the navy to coastal defense, rather than the big frigates which had been the goal of the navy under John Adams. Barney used the gunboats to frustrate the British Navy in the Chesapeake, when their deeper draft ships couldn’t pursue him into shallow waters and the ship’s boats sent to pursue him were outgunned by the Americans. Tiring of trying to subdue the American Commodore, the British moved on to attack Washington. After landing in Maryland, the British marched on the nation’s capital. A ragtag American army moved to oppose them at Bladensburg, Maryland.
Barney took about 350 sailors and just over 100 US Marines to join them. When the American army was routed (the battle became known as the Bladensburg races for the speed with which the American army fled the field) Barney and his men stood fast. Repeated assaults by the cream of the British army, veterans of the Peninsula War in Spain, failed to dislodge the American seamen. Finally overcome by sheer weight of numbers, the Americans withdrew, leaving their badly wounded commander on the field, where he was saluted by the British for his bravery and leadership. Barney recovered somewhat from his wounds, though a bullet in his hip was lodged too deeply to be removed. He survived being captured by the British, though he died from complications of his wound in 1818. His heroism was in vain, as the British troops advanced to capture and burn Washington, and Barney passed mostly unremembered into history.