Two men in the uniform of 1814 level their muskets out over the water while a Baltimore water taxi passes behind them.

Society Opens the Third Annual Sailabration at Broadway Pier

Members of the Society of the War of 1812 in the State of Maryland mustered at Broadway Pier in Fells Point on Saturday, September 26, 2026, to open the third annual Sailabration: Sailing Traditions in Ink, the free waterfront festival hosted by Pride of Baltimore II. The Fort McHenry Guard Fife and Drum Corps played the crowd in at a quarter to ten. At ten, the “Old Line” Color Guard, which the Society fields together with the Sons of the American Revolution, presented the colors and gave a musket demonstration over the water.

Members of the color guard in War of 1812 uniforms fire a musket volley over the water, with Baltimore's harbor behind them.
The color guard fires a musket volley over the water at Sailabration.
Two men in the blue coats and white trousers of 1814 stand at the water’s edge holding their muskets upright, with the City Pier Broadway building across the water behind them.
Two men in the uniform of 1814 level their muskets out over the water while a Baltimore water taxi passes behind them.
A member of the color guard in a brown coat and tricorn hat fires a musket over the water, with smoke in the air and the bow of Pride of Baltimore II alongside the pier behind him.
Making ready, taking aim and firing over the water at Broadway Pier, September 26, 2026.

The festival takes as its subject the things sailors carried with them across oceans: their music, their stories, and the marks they wore on their skin. The organizers tie it to Fells Point itself, the neighborhood whose yards built the fast topsail schooners that sailed as privateers in the War of 1812 and earned Baltimore its reputation in London as a nest of pirates. Pride of Baltimore II, a reproduction of one of those Baltimore clippers and the state’s own tall ship, lay alongside with her decks open to visitors above and below, at no charge.

Before the electric tattoo machine arrived in 1891, the organizers point out, a sailor’s tattoo was made by hand, one poke at a time, with a sail needle and whatever would serve for ink: India ink, laundry bluing, even gunpowder. The historian Andrew Lyter took that up at eleven in a talk on what sailors chose to have inked, what the symbols meant, and how the practice became part of life at sea. The Baltimore Tattoo Museum worked on the pier through the day.

Music and living history ran until three. Ship’s Company Chanteymen sang twice, Ms. Story brought living history to the youngest visitors, Nathan M. Richardson appeared as Frederick Douglass, who learned the caulking trade on these very wharves, and the afternoon closed with Shelby Blondell and then Katie Long and Friends on Baltimore history, humor, and the ukulele.

The Society is glad to take its place beside Pride of Baltimore II, the Fort McHenry Guard and the Baltimore Tattoo Museum at an event that puts the War of 1812 in front of a crowd who came for the music and the harbor. Members who would like to turn out with the color guard at a future event are welcome to say so through the Member Portal.

Two men in the uniform of 1814 with muskets stand either side of two women in period dresses and bonnets, in front of Pride of Baltimore II and the ship’s information board.
Four of the Society’s party in period dress before Pride of Baltimore II, September 26, 2026.