(Credit: http://www.seaportmuseum.org)

By Wally Kennedy

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Less than 30 years after the end of the Revolutionary War, America and England were fighting again, this time in the War of 1812.

“The British were fighting a war with Napoleon. They needed men, so they took them…just stopped our ships and they took them right off the ships,” says Craig Bruns, the chief curator of the Independence Seaport Museum on Penn’s Landing.

At the museum, there is a major display devoted to the many battles that took place at sea during the War of 1812. You can see, up close, the details of one of our country’s most ferocious sea battles–and even fire a life-size cannon!

Craig says there’s a reason this display is so important.

“So if you come here and immerse yourself in this exhibit, you start to feel how we became Americans,” he explains.

The Seaport Museum’s War of 1812 exhibit continues through March.

For more information, visit: www.phillyseaport.org