Yesterday we all went to Fort McHenry with our American friends to find out a bit about the battle that took place there in 1814.

When we got there we went into a room to watch a short clip about how the battle unravelled;  we were all surprised because we don’t usually hear the British as the enemies, but it was good to see it from a different perspective.  After that we went outside to see exactly where the men had been fighting. We walked around for about 45 minutes looking in the building and finding out facts about the battle. One of the things I found out was that the British fired a cannon into the place where they kept all the gunpowder and if it had exploded the whole place would have been destroyed and Britain would have won.

Towards the end of the visit we found out that this was the birth place of the American flag. It was made with 13 stripes which represent the 13 British colonies that declared independence and 50 stars that represent the 50 states in America. It was also the place where Francis Scott Key created the star-spangled banner; he started by writing a poem about the end of the battle and then someone made it into a song which became the national anthem.

The bit that I was most surprised about was the living quarters of the army and the commanders. In the army’s quarters they had 12 people in a room and 2 in each bed without a mattress. In the commanders quarters they had their own room and each commander had their own waiter.

Fin