“By the dawn’s early light,” Key saw that the fort’s flag - torn and singed from near-constant shelling - had remained flying above its walls. His vantage point aboard the British ship is said to have offered sweeping views of the ensuing battle, spanning the night of September 13 to the morning of September 14, 1814. Key, then a young lawyer and amateur poet, is said to have boarded a truce vessel in Chesapeake Bay in an effort to negotiate the release of a detained American doctor, according to documents from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.īut Key was himself detained overnight by Royal Navy officials to ensure their plans for the assault on the fort were not revealed to its defenders. The latter fought in the war of 1812 with the 5th Maryland Regiment and was himself a witness to the 1814 bombing of Fort McHenry, the star-shaped Baltimore fort whose shelling inspired Francis Scott Key’s immortal lyrics. A note on one of the other songs in the binding mark it as belonging to Mary Barnitz of York, Pennsylvania, or her father George, brother of Revolutionary War hero Joshua Barnitz and uncle of Joshua Jr. It was bound into a book in around 1820 along with sheet music from 48 other popular songs of the time. There are only 11 known copies of this edition, and the other 10 all belong to institutions, among them the Library of Congress and the Pierpont Morgan Library. The pre-sale estimate was between $200,000 and $300,000, but the rarity of this piece drove the bidding way up. An 1814 first edition copy of the sheet music and lyrics of “The Star Spangled Banner” sold for over $500,000 at a Christie’s auction in New York today.
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