Enduring the Covid-19 lockdown was painful, but ultimately rewarding for a plucky one-helicopter tour operation in this port city near scenic Chesapeake Bay.
From 700 feet above Baltimore Harbor, you get the same vantage of Fort McHenry that British rockets, glaring red, had in 1814.
Not far away, near where a shipping channel marker now floats, Francis Scott Key stood aboard a British ship watching the bombardment. When he saw the American flag still flying over the fort at daybreak, he was inspired to write the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” which was later set to music to become “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
That immediate sense of history is part of the charm that Baltimore holds, and part of the allure of flying with Charm City Helicopters, headquartered just across the Patapsco River from the famous brick-and-earthen fortress.
Charm City offers a variety of tours in its four-passenger Bell 206, but the signature ride is above downtown Baltimore and its Inner Harbor. Vertical was invited along on a ride in late July, courtesy of chief pilot John Morris, also a flight instructor at Maryland’s Middle River Aviation.
The 15-minute flight lifted off from Pier 7 on the western bank of the Patapsco, and took a counter-clockwise spin around the city, overflying the busy port where stacks of shipping containers waited to be carted thousands of miles across the ocean.
“You see that channel marker out there, just before the bridge?” Morris asked during our flight. “That’s at the exact point where the ship was anchored that Francis Scott Key watched the bombardment from. Beyond the bridge is North Point, site of the largest-ever foreign invasion of U.S. soil during the War of 1812.”
Morris is a trained tour guide and narrates the entire flight through headsets that are sanitized for passengers between every tour flight. All tours are private, meaning single-party trips at the moment, because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In normal times, the company will sometimes book two separate pairs for the same tour. Asked about his infectious interest in the city’s history, he responds that it is part of the experience.
“We are all trained tour guides because we didn’t want passengers to just listen to a pre-recorded tape and go to sleep,” he said. “This way, I can be sure what folks are seeing and answer any questions we have while we are right over certain parts of the city. They really seem to like the personal touch.”
Then an arc north of the harbor past Johns Hopkins University and through the canyon formed by Camden Yards (home of the Baltimore Orioles) and M&T Bank Stadium (home of the Baltimore Ravens), both at the time empty, as they have been since the pandemic struck.
The flight then headed for the Inner Harbor, where lies the USS Constellation, the fourth-oldest still-floating square-rigged warship in the world. Just beyond is the National Aquarium, almost as stunning from the outside as the fish are from inside.
On final approach back to Pier 7, the grand finale is Fort McHenry, the city’s main historical attraction, with its enormous American flag wafting in the breeze. Only from this vantage point can you witness the entirety of the structure’s star-shaped ramparts that successfully repelled the British in 1814.