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Joshua Barney

Maryland Historical Society

Commodore Joshua Barney (b. near Bear Creek, Baltimore County, July 6, 1759, d. Pittsburgh, Pa., 1818), naval commander and privateer captain, played an important role in the American Revolution, privateering, and the War of 1812.

Barney learned seamanship on merchant ships sailing between Baltimore and Europe. At the outbreak of the American Revolution, he volunteered for service in the Continental Navy. During a two-day battle in Delaware Bay in May 1776 on the schooner Wasp, Barney earned a lieutenant's epaulet, although not yet seventeen. He was captured by the British twice, and escaped once from Mill Prison, Plymouth. Later, in 1782, as commander of the privateer Hyder Ally, he engaged the British sloop General Monk in Delaware Bay in a battle cited by nineteenth-century naval historian James Fenimore Cooper as "one of the most brilliant that ever occurred under the American flag" up to 1839, when Cooper wrote his History of the Navy of the United States of America.

Joshua Barney

Maryland Historical Society

After the Revolution, he returned to the merchant service, then controversially took a commission in the French navy at the time of the undeclared "Quasi War" with France (1798–1801). This move hindered his prospects in the U.S. Navy, and at the start of the War of 1812 he was refused a commission. He returned to privateering, and in the opening months of the war as commander of the Baltimore privateer schooner Rossie, he captured a spectacular haul of eighteen or so British vessels, valued at one and a half million dollars.

In spring 1813, the British began plundering in the Chesapeake Bay to divert American attention from British possessions in Canada, which was the main warfront. On July 4, 1813, Barney proposed to Secretary of the Navy William Jones to build a flotilla of gunboats and row barges to battle the British. Jones agreed to Barney's proposal and gave him a commission as commodore. At the end of May 1814, the flotilla of eighteen vessels sailed from Baltimore, intent on attacking the British fort on Tangier Island, Virginia. The British forced Barney into the Patuxent River, where he fought two battles with the British on St. Leonard's Creek. in June. These enabled Barney to escape and sail his flotilla up the Patuxent.

A British invasion force arrived in the Chesapeake Bay in mid-August 1814. The expedition's first objective was to capture or destroy Barney's flotilla. A British squadron forced the flotilla high up the Patuxent. Under orders from Secretary Jones, Barney's sailors blew up the flotilla east of Upper Marlboro near Pig Point on August 22. Barney and his men subsequently played a brave and significant role in the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24. Barney, in command of about 400 U.S. Marines and sailors, held off the British as they swept toward Washington, DC. Eventually outflanked, Barney's men were forced to surrender, having suffered two killed and several wounded, including the commodore who was severely wounded in the thigh. Captured and paroled, Barney spent the rest of the war at his farm near Elk Ridge (now Elkridge). The effects of his wound led to his death in 1818.

—Christopher T. George