Through the Perilous Fight

Before it was a national anthem, it was a question:

Was the flag still there?

In September 1814, Francis Scott Key watched from the waters outside Baltimore as British warships bombarded Fort McHenry through the night. Rockets streaked across the darkness. Bombs burst over the fort. And somewhere beyond the smoke flew an enormous American flag.

When morning finally came, Key looked toward the fort.

The flag was still there.

In this episode of The Common Room, we begin with the vintage old-time radio program Story Behind the Song: The Star-Spangled Banner and use that broadcast as our doorway into the remarkable history behind one of the most familiar songs in the world.

We travel back to the War of 1812 and the defense of Baltimore; discover why Francis Scott Key found himself aboard a ship near the British fleet; meet Mary Pickersgill and the people who created the enormous flag over Fort McHenry; and follow Key’s poem, originally titled Defence of Fort M’Henry, as it spread across the young United States.

Then there is the music.

Where did that famously difficult melody come from? Was it really just an old British drinking song? Why did Key’s words fit it so well? And how did a song written in 1814 wait more than a century before officially becoming the national anthem in 1931?

Along the way, we compare the history with the way Story Behind the Song presented it to an earlier generation of radio listeners—and rediscover something wonderful about the way old radio could turn history into story.

And finally we return to Baltimore Harbor, after a terrible night of bombardment, and to the simple question that begins the song:

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light…

Pull up a chair.

The Common Room is open at the Little Station on Commercial Street.

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