““The problem, at least for the British, was that by this time more than 13,000 American soldiers were in place and ready to defend Fort McHenry with 100 cannons. With the forces on land unable to continue the advance, the British turned to their naval superiority in an attempt to reduce the fort, and in his work, Pezzola described for his readers what kind of shells the British were using, making a reference to Francis Scott Key’s poem to drive the point home: “Just one of these cast-iron spheres contained a bursting powder charge of 9-lbs, touched off by a wooden fuse packed into the ball with finely ground powder, which was then launched from the ship by an 8000-lb mortar firing at an angle of 45-degrees. If the bomb ‘burst in air’ (to quote Francis Scott Key's later poem), the fragments showered down on the roofless forts, killing, wounding and maiming the unlucky defender-victims. If the ball struck the forts before detonation, it would smash what it hit to bits - and then explode.””
