“To Render Ourselves Impregnable”: The Defenses of Annapolis during the American Revolution

The city of Annapolis has never been attacked in its long history, but it has nonetheless played an important role in American conflicts, with the American Revolution being no exception. While the British never attempted to capture the city, extensive fortifications were built around Annapolis to hold off a possible British attack. What were the quality of these fortifications, and would they have held off the British?

Annapolis residents had good reasons to fear their city becoming a British target during the Revolutionary War. Not only was the port on the Severn River a superbly located supply point for the Continental Army, but it also housed several shipyards for building and repairing warships.[1] Annapolis was also an important cultural and commercial hub. While the city would be eclipsed in importance by Baltimore later in the century, the time period between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution has been called the golden age of Annapolis. Wealthy gentlemen such as William Paca (a later signer of the Declaration of Independence), settled in the city, constructing imposing Georgian homes. The money from this building boom benefited the craftsmen, suppliers, and laborers who were involved, who in turn spent their wages in taverns and shops. This thriving economy allowed for a vibrant cultural and social scene, and a visitor to Annapolis would have had access to a plethora of amusements such as theatergoing, horseracing, or dancing. An Anglican clergyman described Annapolis as “the genteelist town in North America.”[2]

After the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia and the subsequent signing of the “Declaration of the Delegates of Maryland” in July in 1776, Annapolitans began preparing for war. Maryland’s Eighth Convention appropriated 10,000 pounds for defense, with brick and stone for a new church being dedicated to the war effort instead. The majority of the work erecting fortifications went to the local company of artillery men and their major, John Fulford, who had commanded the city’s garrison since the early months of 1776. Fortifications were constructed on Horn Point, Fort Severn, and across the Severn River at Beaman’s Point in order to enable a crossfire that the townsfolk hoped would counter a British assault.^[3] The defenses were built in the French tradition under the guidance of a French military engineer who was paid by the city.^[4] Fulford described the exhausting labor required for the construction of Annapolis’s defenses as the “most fatiguing in life, and much more so than any company has gone through hitherto; namely, in building or assisting to build fortifications.”^[5]

Annapolis was heavily fortified by the summer of 1777, with cannons (mostly eighteen pounders) lining the city’s shoreline. Horn Point received the most extensive fortifications with a traditional French fortification standing thirty feet above the water at the easternmost point of the peninsula, consisting of a ditch studded with pointed logs, a parapet, firing platforms and parade. Trenches reached back into the peninsula’s interior in order to maintain supplies and communication across Spa Creek. ^[6] The loyalist William Eddis listed some of the other forts guarding the city during the summer of 1777: “They have another Fortification on Hill’s Point, & a Third on Mr. Ker’s Land, on the North Side of Severn, on a high Cliff called Beaumont’s Point.”^[7] But while these forts were numerous, not all of them were equal. Fort Severn (located at the present sight of the United States Naval Academy) was minuscule compared to the imposing fort at Horn Point, consisting of a few breastworks and not much else.^[8] Despite the mixed quality of Annapolis’s forts, the soldiers manning them seemed eager to prove their valor. Eddis recounted that “they talk confidently of making a vigorous Resistance in Case of an Attack.”^[9]

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An attack seemed imminent by August of 1777, when British troops sailed through the Chesapeake Bay in a fleet of over 260 vessels.^[10] Panic gripped the city, and many civilians, not as confident in facing the British as the city’s garrison, began to flee. The civilians had concluded that Annapolis’s fortifications would not save them from the wrath of the British Empire. Maryland’s governor at the time, Thomas Johnson, made this civilian retreat official when he ordered everyone who could not bear arms out of the capitol on August 20. The next day, Annapolitan fears reached a boiling point when the British fleet sailed past the mouth of the Severn River. The governor and council removed themselves to Baltimore,^[11] unanimously concluding that “Annapolis cannot be defended by any force which may probably be collected against the force the Enemy may at any Time bring against it and that therefore the Town and Forts ought to be evacuated and the Guns and Stores removed and Secured.”^[12] Fulford followed suit: “Major Fulford was consulted on this Question whilst the same was under Consideration and was of the same opinion as the Governor and Council.”^[13] Despite their efforts constructing and maintaining the city’s fortifications over the past year, both statesmen and soldiers agreed that the city’s defenses could not save them.

The British attack Annapoltians had so feared never arrived. The British fleet disembarked the troops at the Elk River, the most northeastern extension of the Chesapeake Bay. The British forces then crossed into Pennsylvania and went on to rout the American army at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, capturing Philadelphia a few days later. But while the Union Jack flew over Philadelphia, the British threat in the Chesapeake evaporated, and Annapolis relaxed its defenses. Most of the city’s forts fell into disuse, apart from Fort Horn, which was used as an area to test gunpowder, likely under the supervision of state armorer John Shaw. With Annapolis’s defenses underused, many of the city’s former defenders sought work elsewhere with the majority of the artillery’s matrosses being transferred to other units, and Captain Fulford resigning his commission. Nonetheless, the war was not yet over for Annapolis. The city served as a military supply depot, with important commodities such as food, medicine and ammunition all flowing through Annapolis to the Continental Army. Furthermore, British warships would soon threaten the town again.^[14]

Military excitement returned to Annapolis in March 1781, when twelve hundred troops under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette landed in the city, on their way to Virginia to intercept British troops under the traitor Benedict Arnold and end the war.^[15] A large portion of this force was encamped on the banks of Spa Creek (modern day Eastport),^[16] while others utilized the fort at Horn Point.^[17] Before Lafayette could march his forces into the south, two British warships, the Hope and the Monk, each armed with eighteen guns, blockaded the Annapolis harbor, effectively trapping the French commander on shore.^[18] Lafayette wrote of his dilemma to Thomas Jefferson: “The detachement I Brought from West Point is still at Annapolis and Cannot Come unless a Superior Naval force is sent for its Protection.”^[19] The French commander eventually decided to take matters into his own hands, and collected a small fleet to repulse the British warships, consisting of a sloop with field weapons mounted on the bow, and boats containing infantrymen under his command. Lafayette’s gambit worked, with the British warships ending their blockade.^[20] While Annapolis had been successfully defended, the repulse of the British could be attributed to Lafayette’s makeshift fleet rather than the fortifications around the city, with only Horn Point’s fort being used by Lafayette’s forces during their time in Annapolis.

New fears of invasion returned in the autumn of 1781, as the war heated up in the lower Chesapeake Bay. The Maryland Gazette advised the townspeople to “exert every effort to render ourselves impregnable.”^[21] However, it seemed Annapolitans saw more use in training the city’s garrison in order to stave off a British attack, rather than maintaining the city’s dwindling fortifications, with the Maryland Gazette urging the militia to “become acquainted with their arms.”^[22] But just as in 1777, the feared attack never came. Following Admiral Comte de Grasse’s decisive victory at the Chesapeake capes in September, and the British surrender at Yorktown the following month, an air of relaxation dawned on Annapolis. While the war had not yet ended and the city continued its role as a military supply depot, prewar pleasures such as the selling of non-military goods and services and horseracing returned to the city. The city had emerged from the war unscathed, and following the proclamation of peace in the spring of 1783, Annapolis briefly served as America’s new capitol, hosting two events that helped conclude the American Revolution: the resignation of Gen. George Washington in December 1783 and the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in January 1784.^[23]

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Unlike many American cities during the Revolutionary War, Annapolis had been neither attacked nor captured by British forces. Nonetheless, because of the city’s strategic importance, extensive fortifications were built around the city in 1776 and 1777 to defend it from a possible British attack. Many of these fortifications were of a high quality, built under the guidance of a French engineer. However, when the city seemed on the verge of being attacked in August 1777 by a large British force, civil and military authorities mutually agreed that the fortifications would not be enough to save them and fled the city. After this point the majority of the city’s fortifications fell into disuse. When the British blockaded the city in 1781, Lafayette successfully drove them down the Chesapeake Bay with a combination of naval and infantry forces, with the city’s forts playing little to no role in this defense. Afterwards, Annapolitans seemed to put more weight on a well-trained garrison rather than the maintenance of forts. Thus, it can be concluded the extensive fortifications built around Annapolis’s harbor could not alone save the city from a British assault had one occurred.

[1] Rosemary Williams, Maritime Annapolis: A History of Watermen, Sails & Midshipmen (Charleston: The History Press, 2009), 87-88.

[2] Jane Wilson McWilliams, Annapolis, city on the severn: a history (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2011), 72-83.

^[3] Ibid., 93-95.

^[4] Jane McWilliams and Morris L Radoff, “Annapolis Meets the Crisis,” in Chesapeake Bay in the American Revolution, ed. Ernest McNeill Eller (Centreville, MD: Tidewater Publishers,1981), 416. This source gives the name of the engineer as “Monsieur Peticuson Dhuge,” apparently written phonetically in a period manuscript; the engineer’s actual name has not been determined.

^[5] John Fulford, “Petition of Captain Fulford’s Company of Maryland Artillery, for an increase of pay,” Annapolis, September 18, 1776, Northern Illinois University Digital Library, digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A79067.

^[6] McWilliams, Annapolis, city on the severn: a history, 98.

^[7] “Extract of a Letter from Mr. Eddis to Govr. Eden,” July 23, 1777, Maryland Historical Magazine V. 2 No. 2 (July 1907), 105-110.

^[8] Lossing, Benson J. Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812. (Harper, New York.1868) 181

^[9] “Extract of a Letter from Mr. Eddis to Govr. Eden.”

^[10] Woody Holton, Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021), 309.

^[11] McWilliams, Annapolis, city on the severn, 99.

^[12] Nathaniel Smith to Thomas Johnson, August 21, 1777, Maryland State Archives, msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000016/html/am16–340.html.

^[13] Ibid.

^[14] McWilliams, Annapolis, city on the severn, 99-100.

^[15] Ibid., 102.

^[16] Williams, Maritime Annapolis, 89.

^[17] “The Fort at Horn Point,” Historical Marker. Maritime Museum & Park, Annapolis, Maryland.

^[18] Williams, Maritime Annapolis, 89.

^[19] Marquis de Lafayette to Thomas Jefferson, March 16, 1781, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-05-02-0208.

^[20] Williams, Maritime Annapolis, 89.

^[21] Maryland Gazette, and Political Intelligencer, August 16,1781.

^[22] Ibid.

^[23] McWilliams, Maritime Annapolis, 102-108.