Chesapeake Legends and Lore from the War of 1812. This item is unavailable.Chesapeake Legends and Lore from the War of 1812

In the two hundred years following the War of 1812, the Chesapeake Campaign became romanticized in tall tales and local legends. St. Michael's on the Eastern Shore of Maryland was famously cast as the town that fooled the British, and in Baltimore, the defenders of Fort McHenry were reputably rallied by a remarkably patriotic pet rooster. In Virginia, the only casualty in a raid on Cape Henry was reportedly the lighthouse keeper's smokehouse larder, while Admiral Cockburn was said to have supped by the light of the burning Federal buildings in Washington, D.C. Newspaper stories, ordinary citizens and even military personnel embellished events, and two hundred years later, those embellishments have become regional lore. Join historians Ralph E. Eshelman and Scott S. Sheads as they search for the history behind the legends of the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake.

Ralph Eshelman was co-director of the Patuxent River Cultural Resource Survey which discovered and partially excavated a vessel from the U.S. Chesapeake Flotilla. Eshelman conducted an inventory of War of 1812 sites in Maryland for the National Park Service's National Battlefield Protection Program. He has published four books on the War of 1812. Scott S. Sheads has served as a ranger-historian and Historic Weapons Officer at Fort McHenry in Baltimore since 1979. Scott served as a co-historian for the Smithsonian Institution's Saving the Star-Spangled Banner Project" and for the National Park Service's "The Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail" study. He has published several books."