To the audacious man, Andrew ventures further, the settling of old scores is as agreeable as the taking of prizes. He himself has a little grudge against Josh Barney (at whose house in Baltimore their mutual friend Jérôme Bonaparte was introduced to Miss Betsy Patterson) for nearly capturing the St. Lawrence en route to this present conversation. Like the picaroon Joseph Whaland before him, Barney strikes quickly and then runs his shoal-draft boats up into creeks too shallow for his pursuers to follow. Moreover, the fellow has good tactical sense: the current presence of his flotilla in the upper Patuxent argues that he anticipates an attack on Washington. Let him then be hoist with his own petard: along with other diversionary maneuvers, let the main landing force go ashore at Benedict on the Patuxent and strike first at Barney’s boats, which Cockburn’s fleet will prevent from escaping. The Americans thus will be kept from guessing until the last possible moment whether Baltimore, Washington, or Annapolis is to be attacked first (and indeed the target can be changed if unforeseen defenses should arise), or whether Barney’s flotilla is the sole objective.
Cockburn is now clapping Andrew about the shoulders like dear dead Barlow, eager to be on with it. July is running like the tide; Cochrane will have changed his mind seven times since Andrew left Bermuda; the Americans have captured Fort Erie and won so decisively at Chippewa, just above Niagara Falls, that their gray uniforms worn in that engagement have been officially adopted by the military academy at West Point. It is time to move. The St. Lawrence is redispatched to Bermuda with detailed plans for the operation: one small diversionary force to be sent up the Bay to feint at Baltimore and the upper Eastern Shore; another to move up the Potomac and take Fort Washington and Alexandria; the main force to ascend the Patuxent, land at Benedict, march on upriver between Washington and Baltimore — and then swing left to assault the capital. By the time the dispatch boat reaches Bermuda, the convoys from France and the Mediterranean ought to be there too; unless Cochrane in the meanwhile has dreamed up some harebrained alternative, Washington can be theirs by the time of the Perseid meteors in August.
Shall Andrew fetch the plan to Cochrane himself, to insure its effective delivery? Cockburn smiles: Mr. Cook will remain where he is, to insure its accurate delivery. Once the St. Lawrence is safely out of the Chesapeake, he may either begin his campaign of sowing the Eastern Seaboard with doctored letters, or join the Royal Marines in their sporting raids upon the Maryland tobacco crop.
Andrew opts to do a bit of both: on July 27 he drafts an anonymous letter to President Madison, informing him plainly of the British plan (the same classical tactic used by my father in 1941 vis-à-vis Pearl Harbor), and with Cockburn’s approval “smuggles” it ashore to be mailed.
Your enemy have in agitation an attack on the capital of the United States. The manner in which they intend doing it is to take advantage of a fair wind in ascending the Patuxent; and after having ascended it a certain distance, to land their men at once, and make all possible dispatch to the capitol; batter it down, and then return to their vessels immediately…
(Signed) Friend
A few days later he lands with a foraging party from H.M.S. Dauntless near the village of Tobacco Stick (since renamed Madison after the addressee of the foregoing), thinking to make his way to the place where in 1694, having escaped death at the hands of the Bloodsworth Island Ahatchwhoops, his ancestor Ebenezer Cooke was reunited with his twin sister. Andrew wants to review his own position from that perspective, to reassure himself that he really means to aid the destruction of Washington rather than its preservation. His woolgathering separates him from Lieutenant Phipps’s party, who are guided by a liberated slave woman. The tender leaves without him, runs aground in the Little Choptank, and is captured by the local militia, who jail the 18 Britishers and return the black woman to the mercies of her former owner. Andrew must make his way back to the fleet via Bloodsworth Island and a stolen bateau.
