Meanwhile, peace talks, originally started that August, continued at Ghent (modern-day Belgium). resistance, British warships began withdrawing from the Chesapeake Bay on the following day. On 13 September 1814, British warships began a 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry. Navy squadron soundly defeated a British flotilla on Lake Champlain during the 6–10 September Battle of Plattsburgh, New York, America’s fortunes remained uncertain as the British set their sights on the vital seaport of Baltimore, Maryland-the third-largest American city at the time.

Commodore Thomas Tingey, commandant of the Washington Navy Yard, saw smoke rising from the Capitol and ordered the strategically valuable yard burned to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.Īlthough, a U.S. There, they set multiple government buildings, include the Capitol and the White House, on fire.

On 24 August 1814, after defeating American forces at the Battle of Bladensburg, British troops marched into Washington, DC. However, when French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies were defeated in April 1814, Britain turned its full attention on the United States. land forces, the American Navy secured notable victories in the Atlantic and on the Great Lakes, while Britain was forced to concentrate its efforts on the ongoing war with France. In the first several years of the war, in contrast to the setbacks experienced by U.S. Lawrence, and Lake Champlain-Richelieu, along coastal Maine, in the Chesapeake Bay, on the Gulf Coast, and on the high seas. During the War of 1812, fighting on land and at sea took place in several theaters of operations to include the Old Northwest (Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Upper Canada), along the river corridors of the Niagara, St. On 18 June 1812, the United States formally declared war on Great Britain due to that nation’s continued attempts to restrict trade on the high seas, the Royal Navy’s impressment of American seamen, and the United States’ desire to expand territory.

American navy uniform war of 1812