Huge, `Amazing' U.S. Flag From War Of 1812 Is Coming Home

LONDON - A huge U.S. flag captured during the War of 1812 is going home.

The garrison flag from Old Fort Niagara, N.Y., is to leave a Scottish castle today to begin its journey back to America. It is to be officially welcomed back to its original home in a ceremony on Saturday.

"It's an amazing flag," said Bob Rieger, president of the Old Fort Niagara Association. "The star pattern is unique among American flags."

The flag has 13 stripes and 14 stars. The stars are arranged in a comet pattern, with a cluster of stars in the right corner of the blue field with stars shooting out to the left. Each star is about one foot across, Rieger said.

The flag has been housed in Megginch Castle in Errol, Scotland, about 30 miles north of Edinburgh in the home of the Baroness Strange.

It was Lady Strange's great-great-grand-uncle Maj. Gen. Sir Gordon Drummond, the commander of the British forces in Upper Canada during the War of 1812, who captured the flag. It was given to the prince regent, later King George IV. It was returned to Drummond in 1845.

The Old Fort Niagara Association learned of the flag's existence eight years ago, Rieger said. The association wrote to the baroness, but it was not until Rieger's daughter, Diane, then 18, wrote last summer that they got a response.

Two weeks after Diane wrote, the association received an invitation to Megginch Castle to examine the flag. Sotheby's appraised it, and the association and the baroness settled on a sale price of 100,000 pounds, about $150,000.

"It is an extremely rare American flag. We believe it is the eighth-oldest to exist," Rieger said.

He believes the flag dates from 1793.

The flag measures 30 feet by 19 feet, so big that Rieger still hasn't seen the whole thing because there was no room in the castle to unfurl it fully. It will be flown back in a 16-inch-diameter plastic pipe painted in a red, white and blue flag motif. The empty pipe weighs 300 pounds, the flag about 50.

The baroness says she is thrilled that the flag is being returned.

"It ought to go home. I'm terribly happy that it is going back to where it came from," she said.

But how to fill the empty space?

"I shall make a replica and I shall write underneath, `This is a replica.' "