For two years the United States had been fighting with Great Britain during War of 1812. The British fleet was marauding the Chesapeake Bay when Joshua Barney, a naval hero of the Revolutionary War, assembled a motley collection of barges and gunboats known generally as the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla to stall the British attacks. Joshua Barney, an 1812 privateer captain, submitted a plan for the defense of the Chesapeake Bay to Secretary of the Navy William Jones on July 4, 1813. He estimated that the force consist of gunboats and barges that could be sailed or rowed. It was thought that a force of this composition, manned by sailors and those in the shipbuilding industries, could engage British landing parties in the shallow waters of the Bay.Manacle,Rick+Brian Auer http://www.fortmchenryguard.org/sea_fencibles_2.php He set sail in April 1814 with these eighteen ships: seven 75-foot barges, six 50-foot barges, two gunboats, one row-galley, one lookout boat and the 49" sloop-rigged flagship Scorpion.