Civil War General Cornelius Gilbert Attwood Received Remnants of the Star-Spangled Banner

On June 22, I wrote about George Preble giving this man pieces of the flag that flew over Fort McHenry.

Cornelius Attwood fought in the Civil War with the 2nd Massachusetts.

I have been writing about him in my Saw the Elephant Civil War blog and you can check him out by going to My Blog List to the right of this and clicking on the Civil War blog.

--Brock-Perry

Fabric from "Star-Spangled Banner" Goes to Auction-- Part 3: Pieces Given to Cornelius Attwood for Civil War Service.

These two pieces of the flag were given to General Attwood for his service with the  25th Massachusetts in the Civil War.  There are also other flag fragments from flags associated with him.  The scraps in question from the Fort McHenry flag were probably given to him by his friend George Preble who looked after the flag in the 1870s.

About eight feet of the original Fort McHenry flag is gone and believed to have been given to war heroes,

Cornelius Gilbert Attwood was given the pieces which were taken care of by him and his family ever since.

The auction was May 11.

--Brock-Perry

George Henry Preble

The last four posts have been about this man and the flag he captured from a Chinese pirate.

Here is some more information about him.

February 25, 1816 - March 1, 1885.

American Naval officer.  Wrote a history of the United States flag and took the first picture of the Fort McHenry banner.

He was born in Portland, Maine, into a seafaring family.  His father was Enoch Preble and uncle was Commodore Edward Preble of the Tripolitan Wars fame.

Preble entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman on December 10, 1835, and served on the frigate USS United States (built in 1797) until 1838.

In 1841, he was in the Seminole War in Florida and was on the sloop USS St. Louis during its circumnavigation of the world 1843-1844.

He was involved in China, the Mexican War and the Civil War.

--Brock-Perry

Preble's Flag-- Part 4: Encounter at Tylo Bay, China

On November 2, 1854, Lt. Preble and the Queen fired on ten Chinese pirate junks at Tulo Bay.  During twenty minutes of battle, Preble tested water depths and the range of his weapons and then left the scene to get reinforcements.

Nearby was British Admiral Sir James Stirling in the 52-gun 4th Rate Ship-of-the-Line HMS Winchester. He was accompanied by a squadron including the six-gun paddle sloops HMS Barracouta, HMS Styx and the 14-gun screw sloop HMS Encounter.

In addition, there were two more local steam boats and the Portuguese ship Amazonia.  It was quite an international fleet.

On November 3, the allies landed and set fire to two pirate ships and the pirate encampment.  Preble returned with the inscribed flag of pirate chief Luc Ming Suy Ming.  This is the recently found flag at the USNA Museum.

--Brock-Perry

Preble's Flag-- Part 3: Lt. Preble Had a Famous Uncle

On September 1, 1854, Commodore Perry ordered the charter of local steamship Queen to patrol the Chinese coast between Hong Kong and Macau at a monthly cost of $750.

Captain Joel Abbott of the Macedonian placed Lt. George Henry Preble in command of the Queen with 40 sailors and 14 Marines.  Five decades earlier, Lt. Preble's more famous uncle, Commodore Edward Preble, had commanded the Third Squadron against the Tripoli pirates in the Mediterranean.

Young Lt. Preble fought Chinese pirates often with his command.

--Brock-Perry

Preble's Flag-- Part 1: Recently Rediscovered at Annapolis

From the January 2018, War On the Rocks:  Preble's Flag:  An Emerging Navy Fights Chinese Pirates" by Claude Berube.

In December last year, the staff at the USNA Museum in Annapolis rediscovered quite a few flags from the 18th century that were thought to have been lost, including ones from the Spanish-American War and the Korean Expedition of 1871.

One of particular interest was a flag captured by George Henry Preble, a young Navy lieutenant in his first command.  It was from a largely-forgotten fight with Chinese pirates in 1854.

This story is a bit beyond the scope of this War of 1812 blog, but quite a few of the ships and people in the story were involved with the war, so I will write about it.

--Brock-Perry