Burn Philadelphia

It was as much of a decision about the wind as it was about any possibility of surprise. On board the four-gun ketch Intrepid, it seemed that both were dying away as quickly as the sunlight that was leaving the day of 16 February 1804. The Intrepid was at the entrance of Tripoli harbor, and her captain, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, with an all-volunteer crew of 84 men, was attempting to steal into this fortified harbor and destroy the most powerful warship afloat there: the 36-gun frigate Philadelphia, captured some three months earlier.

The Intrepid was the newest acquisition of the U.S. Navy. She was a lateen-sailed ketch of the Barbary corsairs named the Mastico until her capture and rechristening a few months earlier. As the Intrepid, she was attempting a dangerous ruse to enter Tripoli harbor, disguised as a Maltese trading ship with only a half-dozen of her crew topside, dressed in Maltese clothes, to work the sails. Also topside was the one civilian of the expedition, Salvador Catalano, an Arabic speaking Sicilian-born pilot. The outcome of the mission would rest heavily on his skills of navigating past the harbor’s shoals and negotiating past the Philadelphia’s sentries.

As an additional ruse, the Intrepid raised British colors as she neared the harbor before sunset. Coming into the anchorage, the crew could not be sure if the declining wind would hold for their entry and escape from Tripoli or if their counterfeiting ruse was fooling the Barbary corsairs. The one bright spot was that they had at least fooled the British. The Union Jack was raised over the British consulate to allow entry of this unknown British merchant ship. All doubts were laid aside as the Intrepid sailed past Tripoli’s shoals and shore batteries.

Three years earlier, in 1801, the war between Tripoli and the United States did not begin well for the Pasha. The U.S. squadron commanded by Captain Richard Dale initially blockaded the Pasha’s two best ships found in Gibraltar harbor. Then the U.S. ship Enterprise (12 guns), destroyed the Barbary corsair ship Tripoli (14 guns), without a single U.S. casualty. Unfortunately, Dale did not have enough ships to keep a tight blockade of Tripoli. His small squadron also was handicapped by the one-year enlistments of his crews. Counting transit to and from the Mediterranean, Dale had little time to hurt Tripoli for its presumptuous declaration of war before having to return to the United States.

A second squadron, dispatched in 1802 to relieve him, accomplished far less. Led by Captain Richard Morris, it did little to bring the war home to the Pasha. Morris left station from the blockade of Tripoli feeling that it was doing little real harm and instead kept just a paper blockade in effect. His lethargic leadership led him to be recalled to the United States and stripped of his command. His replacement, Captain Edward Preble, would not have any qualms of going into harm’s way to bring the war to Tripoli’s shores. Besides a pugnacious nature, Preble had the assets to fight the Barbary corsairs. His squadron consisted of the frigates Constitution (44 guns), Philadelphia (36 guns), New York (36 guns), John Adams (28 guns), and the brigs, sloops, and schooners Siren (16 guns), Argus (16 guns), Vixen (14 guns), Enterprise (then 14 guns), and Nautilus (12 guns).

The squadron’s first task under Preble was to squash an attempt by Morocco to break its peace treaty with the United States. Moroccan ships had been caught red-handed seizing U.S. merchant ships. When Preble reached the Mediterranean on 12 September 1803, he found that William Bainbridge, then captain of the Philadelphia, had seized the Moroccan ship Mirboka (22 guns), which was found with the captured U.S. brig Celia in tow. The John Adams under Captain John Rodgers and also part of Morris’s original squadron, arrived to meet Preble with the prize Meshouda (28 guns), a Moroccan ship found trying to reach Tripoli with a cargo of contraband of weapons and naval stores. Preble was quick to take action when this greeted him, and his intentions of what must be done were quite clear. Just five days after his arrival at Gibraltar, Preble noted in his Memorandum Book, “Went to Tangier to demand satisfaction for the insult offered our flag in the capture of the Celia." Upon being accosted by these facts and with being outgunned by this U.S. flotilla, the Emperor of Morocco blamed everything on the Governor of Tangiers. The Emperor agreed to honor the existing peace treaty, release another captured U.S. brig, recognize the blockade of Tripoli, provision Preble’s warships, and fire the offending official.

While Preble was dealing with the Emperor of Morocco, he ordered Bainbridge back to Tripoli to maintain steady pressure on that warring Barbary state. Bainbridge was to reintroduce to the Pasha a constant blockade by the U.S. Navy. Preble attached the schooner Vixen to Bainbridge’s Philadelphia and planned for the two to support each other— one with its firepower and the other with its shallow draft—in conducting the blockade. In his orders to Bainbridge, Preble envisioned an active role for this schooner: “It will be well to send the Vixen well in shore to look into Bays, and snug places, along the Coast.”

The two ships kept a tight blockade on Tripoli while Preble was dealing with Morocco. The tedium of blockade duty was broken on 19 October, when an outgoing Austrian ship informed Bainbridge that two of the Pasha’s raiders were loose on the open ocean. This news presented a serious dilemma to Bainbridge, tearing him between his duty to Preble’s orders to blockade the corsairs at Tripoli and his fear that these raiders could be plundering U.S. ships at will while he did nothing. In attempting to solve this dilemma, Bainbridge split his force. The Philadelphia remained on station off of Tripoli while the Vixen cruised off Cape Bon. A week after the Vixen had left the area, a gale-force storm blew the Philadelphia off station and to the east. Returning to station on 31 October, the Philadelphia caught sight of a Barbary ship sailing toward Tripoli, 18 miles away. When the cruiser, sailing close inshore, raised the Tripolitan flag, the Philadelphia pursued. The chase was close, but the Philadelphia’s deeper draft kept her from being able to overhaul in on the cruiser and either grab her with grappling hooks or rake her with a ship-stopping broadside to board her. When the Philadelphia was four-and-a-half miles from Tripoli, Bainbridge acknowledged defeat and ordered a cease-fire. He had lost the race and was still quite conscious of the risks he ran giving chase at eight knots so close inshore. The entire time, he had kept three men constantly taking soundings of the water’s depth. With the chase ended and the soundings indicating sufficient water beneath the keel, Bainbridge gave the order to leave green water for blue by turning to starboard.

Unfortunately, for the Philadelphia and her crew, this move did not take them to deep water; with a slow grinding thud, the Philadelphia ran aground. She inadvertently had found one of those “snug places” Preble had written about. U.S. naval charts, still mostly blank after three cruises to these waters, had a new feature to add: the Kaluisa Reef.

Bainbridge and his crew worked feverishly to lighten the Philadelphia to refloat her. The crew jettisoned cannon, pumped fresh water overboard, and cut off the foremast, but the day’s bad luck continued: the toppling foremast crashed into the ship’s main topgallant mast and took it off too. Still grounded, the ship was down by the stem and had canted to port, pointing her starboard battery to the heavens and her port guns ineffectively down toward the depths. When Tripolitan gunboats began to swarm around the hapless ship, Bainbridge fired his stem chaser to drive them off, but because of the ship’s positioning, these discharges set the stern on fire. The fire was quickly extinguished and Bainbridge had the stern works hacked away to bring some guns to bear in defense. The gunboats came nearer and began to fire into the ship’s rigging to prevent escape and preserve their potential prize. As one gunboat positioned itself off the stem and to starboard—where none of the Philadelphia’s guns could bear—Bainbridge realized that he was checkmated. He could not fight; he could not flee.

After conferring, the ship’s officers decided capitulate. They sent the ship’s carpenters below to hole the ship and gave orders to flood the magazine. Just before dusk, the Philadelphia struck her colors, and that night 309 sailors and Marines began their long captivity. The outlook for the prisoners was bleak. They had lost their ship and been looted of all personal possessions. Their only consolation at that moment was that although the Pasha had them, he could not use their ship. This faint consolation was dashed 40 hours later when, on 2 November, a gale blew enough water over the Kaluisa Reef to refloat the Philadelphia. Free divers also recovered many of the jettisoned cannon. A Tripolitan ship towed the prize to a berth inside the harbor. Once fixed with new masts and rigging, the Philadelphia would be the most powerful warship of all of the Barbary states. For Bainbridge, his crew, and Preble’s entire squadron, the disaster was complete.

The bad news was passed to Preble as he was sailing to Tripoli from his success in Morocco. On 24 November off Sardinia, a British frigate from Malta gave him word of the grounding of the Philadelphia. When he reached Malta on 27 November, there were letters waiting for him from Captain Bainbridge giving a full account of the loss.

The strategic situation, so bright after the affair in Morocco, was now on the verge of being completely reversed. The only ship that could match the Philadelphia’s firepower was Preble’s Constitution, the other U.S. frigates having headed home from Morocco. Should the Philadelphia overtake the Constitution, and if the two were to get in boarding distance, the Pasha’s manpower advantage could be decisive, and then the rest of the squadron would be powerless against Tripoli. The entire force could be captured or swept from the Mediterranean. Preble was staring into the face of an impending disaster that could be the death knell of the new navy.

From his captivity in Tripoli, Bainbridge also knew what the Philadelphia’s capture meant and what had to be done about it. He was allowed to correspond with the outside world through the Danish consul in Tripoli. Bainbridge kept Preble appraised of the condition of his crew and the Pasha’s demands. In one dispatch, Bainbridge had a cipher smuggled to Preble so the two could communicate secretly. In a letter dated 5 December 1803, Bainbridge reported on the state of Tripoli’s fortifications and the disposition of her warships, and with that intelligence came a plan from him to deny the Pasha the use of the Philadelphia. “I think it very practicable with six or Eight good Boats well manned, and [with] determined Officers to destroy her,” he wrote. As to how to move past the harbor’s fortifications, Bainbridge suggested “chartering a Merchant Vessel, and sending her into the Harbour, with men secreted and steering directly on board the Frigate, it might be effected without any or a trifling loss.”

At roughly the same time, Preble was preparing to put his strategy for subduing Tripoli back on track. In a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Preble admitted that “this affair distresses me beyond description and very much deranges my plans of operation for the present. ... If it had not have been for the Capture of the Philadelphia, I have no doubt, but we should have had peace with Tripoly in the Spring.” Preble requested reinforcements but also had decided to act immediately. In this same letter he predicted to the Secretary that “I do not believe the Philadelphia will ever be of service to Tripoly; I shall hazard much to destroy her—it will undoubtedly cost us many lives, but it must be done.”

The Constitution and the Enterprise captured the Tripolitan cruiser Mastico on 23 December 1803. Preble had the will, the plan, and at last the means to enter Tripoli harbor. To put the three together, he chose Lieutenant Stephen Decatur Jr. to lead the raid.

Decatur, a daredevil young officer and an accomplished duelist, was a logical if not sentimental choice. His father, Stephen Decatur Sr., had been the first captain of the Philadelphia, and he himself was distinguished in the naval service, most recently as captain of the Enterprise.

On 31 January 1804, Preble ordered him “to take command of the Prize Ketch which I have named the Intrepid and prepare her with all possible dispatch for a cruize of Thirty days . . . and you will take Seventy men including Officers from the Enterprize if that number can be found ready to volunteer their Services for boarding and burning the Philadelphia in the Harbor of Tripoly.” With these orders in hand, Decatur held a formation of his crew on the Enterprise, informed them of his mission, and called for volunteers. Every man on board stepped forward. From his crew, he carefully selected the 70 men who would accompany him. Preble sent over five midshipmen to augment this force and also dispatched the Siren to assist in the raid.

On 3 February, the two ships left Sicily for Tripoli. One of the midshipmen, Ralph Izard, enthusiastically wrote his mother about the raid. “I am in hopes we shall see the Philadelphia in flames. We shall ambush the Bashaw’s weak mind with the noise of shot falling about his ears.” Before Izard and his shipmates could startle the Pasha’s “weak mind,” however, they would have to deal with Tripoli’s strong winds. The two ships reached Tripoli on the afternoon of 7 February, but the weather immediately worsened upon their arrival. At nightfall, Decatur sent a boat with his pilot and a midshipman to see if the Intrepid would be able to sail past the reef. The storm worsened while the two were away, and upon their return their boat smashed against the side of the Intrepid before it could be hauled up. Not wishing to make being shipwrecked off of Tripoli a trend, Decatur prudently moved back out to sea. The weather kept them from returning until 15 February.

A midshipman and eight men from the Siren transferred | to the Intrepid, bringing the assault force to 84. Decatur 3 tried to move the ships into attack positions that night, but the darkness caused them to miss the harbor completely. On the 16th, Decatur prepared for his third try. With the U.S. blockade notable by its absence, the continuing reappearance of these two vessels that had yet to dock must have seemed suspicious. Clearly the chances for surprise were small.

Surprisingly, no one in Tripoli—Arab or American— understood the appearance of these two ships for what it was. On the very day, Bainbridge was writing again to Preble with details of the Philadelphia’s berth and with advice on how to destroy her, not knowing that his pleas were to be addressed by his countrymen just a few miles away. In fact, the Pasha himself was about the town that night and would end up watching the entire affair.

The plan was simple. The Intrepid would enter the harbor, bluff her way alongside their target, destroy it, and sail away. The Siren would stay at the harbor’s mouth and launch several boats to follow the Intrepid in to protect her flanks against the other corsair boats in the harbor and to cover her retreat. As in earlier attempts, the wind had no respect for plans. It began dying before the Intrepid had rendezvoused with the Siren’s boats. Decatur called an officers’ council, and they decided to attack immediately, because further waiting could mean becoming becalmed in the harbor if the wind died. Decatur would attack with what little vestiges of surprise and wind remained. There was to be no fourth boarding attempt.

At 1900, 16 February, the Intrepid entered Tripoli harbor. It then took her two-and-a-half hours to reach the Philadelphia with the wind. Tripolitan guards shouted at the vessel to identify herself and to stand clear. The Philadelphia’s guns were all loaded, and two fully manned Tripolitan cruisers (originally the targets of the Siren’s boats) were anchored within musket range. The Intrepid also was at the mercy of the Pasha’s shore batteries. Decatur was more than figuratively in the lion’s den.

Fortunately for him, Salvador Catalano proved to be the key to the operation. When challenged, he claimed they were a Maltese ship that had lost her anchors and needed to tie up alongside the Philadelphia so as not to drift aground. Due to the recent Mediterranean tempest, this was a believable request, and the Philadelphia’s guards not only agreed but also sent out a small boat with a line to tie in with one from the Intrepid. As the two small boats met, it must have seemed to Decatur that he had gone as far as he could go stealthily and that surprise was about to be lost. Incredibly, in the dark night, the lines were passed and joined together without the guards noticing anything amiss. As the two ships were pulled together, one of the guards began to take a more careful notice of the Intrepid. “Do you have any Americans on board?” he asked. “No,” replied Catalano. “Just a mixed crew of English and Italians.” The masquerade was finally over when the guards caught sight of the Intrepid’s anchors, which were not lost as they had claimed. “Americanos, Americanos,” they cried as a warning, but it was too late. The ships were coming fast together and the assault was seconds away.

All pretenses of innocence were dropped immediately on board the Intrepid as her crew scrambled topside and Catalano cried, “Board, Captain! Board!”—not realizing in his eagerness that the two ships still had open water between them. Decatur kept control with a loud cry, “No order to be obeyed but that of the commanding officer.” Then as the two ships finally touched, he gave the much expected order, “Board!”

Topside, few of the guards bothered to try to meet the charge across the Philadelphia’s deck and fled over the side to splash in the relative safety of the harbor’s waters. Below on the gun deck, resistance was more determined, if only for the fact that there was no place to flee. With the cutlass, pike, tomahawk, and dagger, the Intrepid’s crew crushed resistance throughout the Philadelphia. Not a shot was fired, and the action ended quickly with the lopsided result of some 20 Tripolitans dead and only one American crewmen slightly wounded.

Decatur’s crew immediately moved to their next task. They passed prepared bundles of combustibles aboard and took them by preassigned teams to the store rooms, gun room, cockpit, and berth deck of the ship. Despite the excitement of the struggle, this operation was done quickly and efficiently. Surgeon’s Mate Lewis Heerman noted that, “the execution of these objects, with the greatest regularity, consumed a smaller space of time than could possibly be imagined.”

So intent was Decatur and his boarding party on their duties that a further action on the waters below went unnoticed. A boat commanded by Midshipman Anderson and manned by men transferred from the Siren was positioned to prevent any escape from the Philadelphia or interference from ashore. Several Tripolitans had escaped from the Philadelphia by boat, and Decatur in his later report assumed that they got away. In actuality, the Tripolitans ran into Anderson’s picket force and all perished in hand-to-hand combat. This action remained absent from the official records until 24 years later, when mentioned in an official affidavit by Surgeon’s Mate Heerman.

This oversight was understandable as Decatur’s attentions was directed not over the side but at the hatches of the Philadelphia. He called through each to confirm that the squads below were ready and then gave the order, “Fire!” down each hatch. When the squads below lit their combustibles, the Philadelphia caught fire so quickly that one witness described the squads as being chased from below deck by the flames. Decatur was the last to leave as he ordered the Intrepid to shove off and then at the last moment leapt to safety into her rigging.

In every raid, there is the danger of the unexpected. The Intrepid had moored to the leeward side of the Philadelphia so as not to be blown back into her when the fires began, but the inferno on board the Philadelphia created a vortex that was drawing the Intrepid toward her. Adding to the danger was that the crew on board the Intrepid was so jubilant that they were totally unaware of their danger. Decatur alone recognized this and regained control of his crew by threatening to cut down with his cutlass the next man who made a noise. The crewmen then used oars from the longboats to shove away from the conflagration.

Another boat joined Anderson’s, and the two finally towed away the Intrepid. As the Intrepid moved away, the harbor’s fortifications finally came alive. Their fire was too high to be of any danger, but just as the Intrepid was nearing safety there was a much closer sound of cannon fire. The fire on board the Philadelphia had set off her loaded guns, threatening the Intrepid’s crew and Tripoli’s inhabitants alike.

The Intrepid met with the Siren at the harbor’s entrance, and both ships set sail to rejoin Preble. By dawn, 40 miles off the coast of Tripoli, the glow of the burning Philadelphia could still be seen over the horizon.

The raid caused considerable terror in Tripoli. Many thought that the town itself was being assaulted. One captive, Marine Private Ray, described how “Tumult, consternation, confusion, and delay reigned in every section of the town and castle.” The Pasha himself, who had witnessed the burning of the Philadelphia, was equally distressed. His mood no doubt worsened when Bainbridge informed him that the raid “was an occurrence which his Excellency ought naturally to have expected from the fate of War.”

War continued against Tripoli, with additional attacks by the U.S. Navy. The following year, the U.S. Marines captured the Tripolitan town of Derna. Finally in 1805, the Pasha concluded a peace treaty with the United States and released the captives.

Academy and Institute Team to Save Monument

The U.S. Naval Academy and Naval Institute have joined forces to save the oldest military monument in the United States. Known as the Tripoli Monument, memorializing the six naval officers who died at Tripoli, it came from Florence, Italy, to the Washington Navy Yard on board the USS Constitution and later moved to the west facade of the U.S. Capitol before coming to the Naval Academy in 1860.

After more than 190 years of exposure, its delicate Carrera marble is crumbling. A drive to fund the restoration is now under way. Contributions should be made to: Tripoli Project #7347, c/o Virginia Schultz, Manager, Naval Institute Bookstore, 118 Maryland Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21402-5035. Donors of at least $35.00 will receive a hardcover copy of the historical novel Annapolis by William Martin.

‘Through the Mouths of Cannon’

The Barbary corsairs had been a nautical fact of life in the Mediterranean for generations. Technically, they were part of the Ottoman Empire and acknowledged the Sultan of Istanbul as their political and spiritual superior. In fact, the Emperor of Morocco, Dey of Algiers, Bey of Tunis, and Pasha of Tripoli conducted their affairs as they pleased and acknowledged Turkish suzerainty only by the payment of tribute to Istanbul. The corsairs from these four Barbary states preyed upon the merchant vessels of the Mediterranean and sometimes even ventured into the wide Atlantic in search of victims. Once captured, a ship would have her cargo plundered and her crew thrown in prison to be held for ransom or sold into slavery. To release a crew or to sign a peace treaty, the Barbary states demanded tribute to be paid in specie and in goods, often naval stores, to increase their plundering proficiency. Most seafaring nations, even Great Britain, did so but also kept warships in the area to protect against sudden changes of mind.

After the American Revolution began, U.S. merchant ships were no longer under Royal Navy protection. Congress attempted to replace British protection with protection from our wartime European allies; France and the Netherlands, however, would not agree to protect U.S. ships but only to act as intermediaries with the Barbary states. After independence, the United States faced the dilemma of rescuing captured crews from states with whom it had no formal relations.

In 1787, the United States formed a treaty with Morocco, but other states were not so inclined. This was one of the first foreign policy problems faced by the new federal government. George Washington proposed to Congress a two-tiered approach to protect U.S. ships and crews in the Mediterranean. The first tier was to continue negotiations with the Dey of Algiers to free American captives and to conclude a treaty of peace. The second tier was to begin construction of a navy of six frigates, none of them to mount less than 32 guns. The construction of these was to be stopped only if the negotiations in Algiers proved successful. This plan was approved by Congress on 27 March 1794 as “An Act to provide a Naval Armament.” Progress in both shipbuilding and diplomacy was made rapidly. On 2 March 1796, the Senate ratified a treaty with Algiers just as construction was nearing completion. As part of the treaty, the United States agreed to pay ransom for its captives and an annual tribute to the Dey—part of which was to include naval stores and even a frigate for Algiers.

The treaty did not end debate in Congress about naval construction as it was originally planned. Consequently, construction on three frigates continued as insurance against the vagaries of the Barbary states and other powers. In 1797, the frigates United States, Constellation, and Constitution, all with 44 guns, were launched. This new U.S. navy grew steadily over the next three years to protect U.S. shipping from another predacious maritime foe: Revolutionary France.

The Quasi-War with France lasted from 1798 to 1800, and at its end the U.S. Navy had grown in size to more than 50 ships. In 1801, the new President Thomas Jefferson used an act of Congress enacted at the end of the Quasi-War to decrease the size of the navy. The act of Congress planned to keep a Navy of 13 frigates, but only six were to be manned. President Jefferson initially believed that even that was too large a force and that three frigates would be sufficient and better for fiscal restraint. But as soon as his administration began, an incident in Algiers enraged national pride and questioned the United States’ military and fiscal restraint.

In 1800, the sloop George Washington left the United States to bring the annual tribute to the Dey of Algiers as specified by the treaty reached in 1796. When William Bainbridge, captain of the George Washington, arrived in Algiers harbor, the Dey made additional demands: a cargo of tribute plus numerous passengers, two lions, two tigers, and 200 sheep to the Sultan of Istanbul. The final insult was that the George Washington had to haul down the Stars and Stripes from her main mast and fly the Algerian flag during the journey. Helpless underneath the harbor’s fortifications, Bainbridge had no choice but to agree. When news of this humiliation to the nation, its flag, and to the memory of its recently deceased President reached the United States, the public outcry was intense. Bainbridge himself best summarized the feeling when he wrote that, “the next time I am directed to deliver tribute, I hope it will be through the mouths of cannon!”

In response, President Jefferson sent most of his then puny navy to the Mediterranean to act as a “squadron-of observation.” Envisioned as a midshipmen training cruise and a show of force, this squadron was not to use force except in self-defense or in case of war. No acts of retribution were planned or to be allowed. By the time the squadron reached the Mediterranean, however, the Pasha of Tripoli had declared war against the United States.

P. Wasielewski