About this story: The War of 1812 reached the region 200 years ago with a 20-month blockade of New London that led to the British raid on Essex and the Battle of Stonington. This story is about the blockade's eventful first month. It was drawn from many sources, including the National Archives, the New-York Historical Society, the Robert L. Bachman papers at the New London Maritime Society, and Thomas Althuis of Groton.

Adm. Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy bore the American people no ill will as he moved his British squadron south from Canada in April 1813. He simply had a job to do.

A rising star in the Napoleonic wars, Hardy achieved odd immortality when Adm. Horatio Nelson's enigmatic dying words, "Kiss me, Hardy," were directed at him.

Now his mission was to blockade New York harbor, whose eastern exit led to Long Island Sound. As he took up station off Montauk, Hardy knew sentiment in New England was against the war. He was eager to cultivate goodwill.

When a Norwich man appealed to him for the release of his son, who had been impressed onto Hardy's ship years before, Hardy was happy to oblige. The gesture did not go unnoticed.

"If the term is admissible, he is an honorable enemy," the Connecticut Gazette declared.

But goodwill was secondary. Hardy was in local waters to halt American ships that crossed his path, those of one respected adversary in particular. He cruised off Block Island and waited.

• • •

Commodore Stephen Decatur had plenty to think about on May 24, as his squadron set out from New York to dodge the blockade.

Passing into Long Island Sound, his flagship, the United States, was struck by a lightning bolt that dropped from the sky like an accusing finger. The event seemed fraught with meaning. On one hand, the bolt had spared the gunpowder-laden ship rather than blown it to smithereens. On the other, it had homed in on Decatur's commodore's pennant, sending its charred remains fluttering to the deck, a dark omen.

But luck had never failed the hero of the Barbary wars, who once had burned an American ship in the grip of the enemy. Now he simply sailed on.

On June 1, his squadron emerged from behind Fishers Island and made a dash for the ocean, only to be confronted by British warships. Outgunned, Decatur retreated to New London.

One of the pursuing vessels, HMS Acasta, drew close enough to trade fire with the United States as it entered the harbor.

Six months earlier, Decatur had entered New London in triumph, fresh from his conquest of HMS Macedonian, with the captured warship in tow. Now the USS Macedonian was part of Decatur's three-ship squadron. But the circumstances were drastically different, both for Decatur, now trapped, and the city that had hailed him as a hero.

"I believe the citizens of this place would rather see almost any thing coming in than us - being fearful that it will invite an attack on the town," an officer on the Macedonian wrote.

With drums beating everywhere, the call went out for the militia.

• • •

Samuel Goodrich had an offer to work as an aide to his uncle, the lieutenant governor of Connecticut. Now that his artillery company had been called to defend New London, this seemed like an excellent time to accept.

But his uncle would not hear of the young man shirking his duty. As Goodrich marched south from Hartford, his uncle's parting advice rang in his ears: "If you come to a fight, don't run away till the rest do."

The next day, Goodrich found New London in upheaval. Terrified residents were leaving, moving goods and furniture inland. Banks were shipping their money to Norwich for safekeeping. Militiamen were arriving by the hundreds, and the shrill cacophony of fife and drum echoed off the buildings. Offshore, half a dozen British warships sat, menacing.

Goodrich's company crossed the river to Groton and reported to Fort Griswold. The old fortress had fallen into disrepair, and hasty efforts were being made to shore it up. Decatur had ordered several of his ships' guns hauled to the fort, then moved his squadron upriver to Gales Ferry.

Goodrich was dispatched on military errands throughout southeastern Connecticut, but Groton made a particular impression.

"I have never seen such fierce democracy as in this village, fed, as it doubtless is, upon the remembrance of the British massacre at the fort," he wrote. The fear that Benedict Arnold's 1781 invasion would be repeated had ignited the panic consuming Groton and New London.

• • •

Anna Warner Bailey remembered, and nursed a lifelong hatred of the British. As a young woman, she had made her way to the fort in search of her uncle, one of its defenders, only to find him dying. As he gasped out a wish to see his family one last time, she obeyed, running 3 miles home and saddling a horse to deliver wife and children to his deathbed.

When the United States declared war on Britain in 1812, Bailey was overjoyed, but now she too prepared to flee. As the bonnet-wearing innkeeper closed up her house on Thames Street, a soldier from Fort Griswold appeared, in search of something to use for cannon wadding.

Bailey saw an opening for a grand gesture. Without modesty, she dropped her flannel petticoat - out in the street - and offered it to the cause. At the fort, it was mounted on a pike and waved as a banner of defiance.

"It was a right good article … bound with good quality binding," she recalled.

Word of Bailey's act spread, and she became Groton's chief patriot. In later years, two presidents would call at her door to pay their respects.

• • •

James Stewart embodied all that Bailey hated, which is to say he was British. He also was the calmest man in New London. As the exodus continued, he was at ease in his waterfront home, built by the family of the city's founder, John Winthrop.

Stewart was popular with his American neighbors, among whom he had lived for years, lately as British vice consul, then as agent for prisoners of war. And he was serene about his fate if the city were attacked by his countrymen, for whom he was eyes and ears behind enemy lines.

What Stewart didn't know was that, as he played both sides, he was being watched.

The very day Decatur entered the harbor, Connecticut's federal marshal sounded the alarm that Stewart was communicating with the blockaders. Secretary of State James Monroe ordered him to be sent 40 miles inland.

When the marshal, Robert Fairchild, arrived June 28 to evict him, Stewart stalled for time. He had local business interests and a pregnant wife.

"I know all this is of no consequence to the great folks at Washington," he wrote.

A battle of wits followed. Stewart refused to go voluntarily, insisting he be put in irons and removed under guard. Fairchild learned a plot was afoot to sue him for false imprisonment. So he gave Stewart several days' leisure to disobey so his arrest clearly would be justified.

Meanwhile, Stewart called in favors. A petition was drawn up and signed by 30 of the city's eminent men, including the mayor, asking that Stewart be left alone. The authorities were unmoved.

On July 1, Stewart was hustled out of town, and the war effort in New London was free from British observation. Except for one thing: Stewart had left behind his wife.

• • •

John Scudder was in New York, safely away from Stewart's prying gaze. There, he stoked his hatred of the enemy and made plans to do something about it.

Scudder was out to avenge his relatives on the frontier, who had suffered at the hands of Britain's Indian allies, and also soldier-explorer Zebulon Pike, killed in a battlefield explosion two months earlier. Congress had just passed the Torpedo Act, encouraging private attacks on British ships for pay. Scudder's patriotism might prove profitable. With an enemy squadron nearly immobile off New London, he had found his target.

Scudder and co-conspirators loaded 10 kegs of powder, sulphur and turpentine into a schooner, the Eagle, and rigged a trap that would detonate the ship when a barrel in the hatchway was moved.

When the Eagle appeared off Millstone Point in Waterford on June 25, the British gave chase and the crew abandoned ship. British sailors seized the prize and tried to bring it alongside Hardy's flagship, HMS Ramillies, but wind and tide did not cooperate. Someone moved the barrel.

"The body of fire appeared to rise upwards of 300 feet into the air, with a blue streak on the outside, and then burst like a rocket," Scudder wrote.

The towering blast, felt for miles, obliterated the Eagle. Tar and pitch rained down on the Ramillies, a mile away. Though no enemy ships were destroyed, Scudder bragged that 100 British had been killed. The actual toll was a lower but still bloody 11, with three more badly burned.

This "diabolical and cowardly contrivance," as a British admiral called it, would not be the last attack of its kind and was not the work of New Londoners. But they paid the price as Hardy tightened the blockade so that any vessel, military or not, would now be fired upon.

And so it would be for the rest of the war.

j.ruddy@theday.com