The troops were landed at North Point, while sixteen of the bomb-vessels and frigates approached within reach of Fort McHenry, and commenced a bombardment which lasted twenty-five hours.

During this attack, the enemy threw "fifteen hundred shells, four hundred of which exploded within the walls of the fort, but without making any impression on either the strength of the work or the garrison," and the British were compelled to retire with much loss.
In 1815, a squadron of British ships, stationed off the mouths of the Mississippi, for the purpose of a blockade, ascended the river as high as Fort St.Philip, which is a small work capable of an armament of only twenty guns in all.

A heavy fire of shot and shells was continued with but few and short pauses for nine days and nights, but making no impression either on the fort or garrison, they retreated to their former position at the mouth of the river.
There is but a single instance in the war of 1812, where the enemy's vessels succeeded in reducing a fort; and this has sometimes been alluded to, by persons ignorant of the real facts of the case, as a proof against the ability of our fortifications to resist naval attacks.
Even if it were a case of decided failure, would this single exception be sufficient to overthrow the weight of evidence on the other side?
We allude to the reduction of the so-called Fort Washington by the British fleet that ascended the Potomac in 1814, to assist in the disgraceful and barbarous operation of burning the capitol and destroying the archives of the nation.

Fort Washington was a very small and inefficient work, incorrectly planned by an incompetent French engineer; only a small part of the fort was then built, and it has not yet been completed.

The portion constructed was never, until very recently, properly prepared for receiving its armament, and at the time of attack could not possibly have held out a long time.