Also, these Frigates are part of the reason for the Battle of Baltimore and the assault on Fort McHenry on 13-14 September, 1814. Normally, when an enemy captures the capitol city of a nation, burns it, and sends its government fleeing into the hinterlands, the war has been lost. Not so with the War of 1812.
The British captured and burned Washington, D.C., but they knew the war was not won until the shipyards of the Chesapeake Bay were captured. Those yards could turn out Frigates, but also the feared Baltimore Clippers. The Clippers were only lightly armed, but they could out-maneuver, out-fight, and outrun anything else on the seas.
To capture the shipyards, they had to capture Baltimore. To do that, they had to subdue Fort McHenry. So, the British fleet and armies turned north from Washington. The defenders knew the same truth about the critical importance of the Chesapeake shipyards to the survival of America. So they prepared for the attack.
Major George Armisted was the commander of Ft. McHenry. He ordered a special flag to be flown there, perhaps the largest flag ever displayed in a battle, so defenders from any point in Baltimore could look to the fort from any distance and see that it still stood, by seeing that great flag.
Francis Scott Key, a Baltimore native, was well aware of the critical nature of the Battle of Baltimore to the survival of the nation. That's why it was not hyperbole when he wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner" after seeing that flag still flying over Ft. McHenry at dawn on 14 September. He knew that the nation had just survived subjugation, again, by Britain. (Key also knew that the British only had the ammunition for about 24 hours of continuous bombardment of the fort. If the attack failed in the first horrendous 24 hours, it could not later succeed.)
Our national anthem is not merely patriotic poetry. It is the true story of an actual battle, and sight of that flag told the victorious end of the story.
Sorry for the length of this, but it is a tale that most people know only small parts of. The whole story is more interesting, and affords more respect to that great flag, which Major Armisted's widow gave to the Smithsonian long afterwards.
Congressman Billybob