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JOIN US! Annapolis Maritime Museum 2013 Winter Lecture Series

What:                  Annapolis Maritime Museum 2013 Winter Lecture Series:

Captain Jan C. Miles, Reliving Bicentennial History in the Pride of Baltimore Schooners

When:                 Thursday, January 24, 2013

Time:                   7:00PM – 8:30PM

Admission:      Museum members $12.50; Non-members $17.50

Where:               Annapolis Maritime Museum

723 Second Street

Annapolis, MD  21403

More info:        www.amaritime.org

The Annapolis Maritime Museum will present the second lecture in a series of ten presentations for their AMM Winter Lecture Series on Thursday, January 24, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM. Captain Jan Miles’s talk “Reliving Bicentennial History in the Pride of Baltimore Schooners” will be accompanied by a privateer history wall display and video showing PRIDE II under sail.

Captain Miles will highlight his experiences over the years sailing both Pride of Baltimore schooners as part of an international community of tall ships. He will describe the role that Pride II continues to have in raising awareness of the role of Baltimore Clippers as privateers in the war of 1812, leading the British to attack Baltimore and Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner.

Since 1981, Jan C. Miles has served as a captain of the reproduction Baltimore Clippers Pride of Baltimore and Pride of Baltimore II for the not-for-profit company Pride of Baltimore, Inc.  Captain Miles has sailed these topsail schooners as far east as St. Petersburg, Russia and as far west as Canton, China, demonstrating that skilled seamanship can achieve the superior sailing performance required for Baltimore Clipper success as privateers in the War of 1812.

During the War of 1812, America’s Second War of Independence, President James Madison attempted to overcome the small size of the US Navy by issuing Letters of Marquee and Reprisal to private ship owners. This document allowed its holder to arm his vessel and act as a privateer, or, in essence, a legal pirate, representing the United States. Privateers were permitted to prey upon the merchant fleet of the belligerent nation, Great Britain, and take captured cargo and vessels as prizes. American privateers, many of them sailing out of Fells Point in Baltimore Clippers built throughout the Chesapeake region, captured or sank some 1,700 British merchant vessels during the two and a half year war. Other Baltimore Clippers served as cargo vessels to bring needed munitions and other armaments through the naval blockade that the British imposed on the US coastline, including Chesapeake Bay.

For more information about the Museum: www.amaritime.org