When the U.S. Consul in Tripoli looked out his window on 14 May 1801, he saw his flagpole had been cut down. It was the Bashaw Yusuf Karamanli's way of declaring war, an expression of his dissatisfaction over the amount of tribute he was receiving from the United States to restrain his corsairs from taking U.S. merchantmen.
The news that the nation was at war reached Washington several weeks later. President Thomas Jefferson's response was to order a squadron of his nascent navy to deploy under the command of Commodore Richard Dale. The commodore's orders restricted him to no combat other than engaging any Tripoline pirate found actually in the process of taking a U.S. ship. Not surprisingly, in a year's time, no progress was made in ending the conflict.
Because Navy enlistments were limited to a year, a new squadron was sent out in 1802. This force, under command of Commodore Richard Valentine Morris, had somewhat more belligerent orders. Unfortunately, the commodore himself was not bellicose, even to the extent of having brought his pregnant wife with him, and it was many months before he even bothered to scout out the enemy base. His performance was so dilatory he was ordered home as soon as Commodore Edward Preble could relieve him.
A major unit of the new squadron was the 36-gun frigate Philadelphia under command of Captain William Bainbridge. Unlike the earlier frigates in the service, this one had been designed by Josiah Fox, an expatriate Briton who had felt the previous units were too long and too heavily built to succeed. Even so, his design was much larger than comparable British units, being 157 feet on keel and displacing a calculated 1,240 tons. The ship was built at the yard of Joshua Humphreys in her namesake city and entered service in April 1800. She served in the Caribbean under the command of Captain Stephen Decatur Sr. from May 1800 until late March 1801, and then, after a short repair period, in Dale's squadron under Captain Samuel Barron. Returning to the United States in May 1802, she was placed in ordinary until the following March, when she was assigned to Preble's squadron.
Born in New Jersey of Tory parents, Bainbridge was commissioned a lieutenant in the renascent American Navy in August 1798, in the second batch of officers of that rank to be created. Like his peers, he had served in the merchant marine and captained his own ship. His first naval assignment was command of the 18-gun USS Retaliation, until the previous month the French privateer Le Croyable. Completing her outfitting in mid-September, Bainbridge took her to the Caribbean and patrol duty off the Leeward Islands. Just 12 days after reporting, Bainbridge rashly sailed his command directly into the grasp of two French frigates and thereby became the first officer of the new U.S. Navy to surrender his command to an enemy. Prisoner of war though he was, Bainbridge subsequently talked the governor of Guadeloupe into exchanging more than 300 Americans then held there for fewer than 100 Frenchmen in the United States. It was perhaps this success that averted his court-martial and so pleased Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert that he was promoted to Master Commandant on 29 March 1799. He received command of the 18-gun brig Norfolk, where he served principally on the Havana station until April 1800. The following month, he was promoted to captain.
Bainbridge next was placed in command of the 24-gun converted merchant ship George Washington. His assignment was to carry tribute to the Dey of Algiers; to provide the necessary cargo space, his crew was reduced by 40%. Arrival in Algiers that September plunged Bainbridge into another debacle. The Dey, then in bad odor with his sovereign, the Ottoman Sultan, had interpreted the 1795 treaty between Algiers and the United States to mean he could draft a U.S. warship to carry a diplomatic mission to Constantinople, threatening war if his desires were not met. Bainbridge was required to receive the delegation: the Algerine Minister of Marine with a suite of 100, another 100 black slaves, and presents including nearly 180 horses, sheep, and cattle, and a dozen each of wild animals and parrots. The ultimate insult was the requirement for Bainbridge to fly the Algerine flag from the main truck.
Bainbridge's arrival at Constantinople was a surprise to the Turks. The Stars and Stripes had never been seen there before, the United States having been a largely unheard-of country. The captain turned on the charm and soon captivated his hosts, especially the Sultan and the Capudan Pasha (the "Secretary of the Navy"). When he returned home in mid-April 1801, Bainbridge found the new Jefferson administration still getting organized and without a Secretary of the Navy, and a Navy in the throes of a peacetime reduction in force with himself as one of the nine captains to be retained. In this circumstance, his Algerine misstep was allowed to fade away with barely a mention. And then, in May, Tripoli declared war on the United States.
Early in June, Bainbridge, then in command of the 32-gun Essex, found himself again en route to the Mediterranean, this time as a member of Commodore Dale's squadron. That September, he saw Tripoli for the first time. Later he wrote, "It had a mean appearance, it looks little better than a Village. Their fortifications appear to cover a good deal of ground[;] it shows but few guns & apparently is slightly built." For the next eleven months the squadron sailed around that sea accomplishing little, thanks to confusing and very restrictive orders. From August 1802 until July 1803, Bainbridge was occupied with a miscellany of assignments ashore.
Commodore Preble received orders to command the third Mediterranean Squadron in May 1803, orders that finally included provision for offensive operations against Tripoli. His force was to consist of the frigates Constitution (44-gun flagship) and Philadelphia (36 guns), the brigs Argus and Siren (both with 16 guns), the schooners Vixen and Enterprise (both with 14 guns), and the brig Nautilus (12 guns). The ships, at various ports, were to sail independently for their new station, each relieving her opposite number in the squadron, at present commanded by the indolent Commodore Richard Valentine Morris. Bainbridge received orders to command the Philadelphia in June, and on 28 July sailed for the Mediterranean with orders to "subdue, seize, and make prizes of all vessels, goods, and effects belonging to the Bashaw of Tripoli or to his subjects." Two days after his stop at Gibraltar, he came upon the 22-gun Moroccan cruiser Mirboka escorting a brig. When he discovered the latter had been the U.S. merchantman Celia until a few days earlier, he sent the brig on her way under her own captain. Then he liberated her from her hold and escorted the Moroccan to Gibraltar to await the arrival of Commodore Preble, who came in on 12 September. (On learning of this action, Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith sent congratulations in November, and the Congress subsequently voted the Philadelphia $5,000 in prize money.)
When he learned what had transpired, Preble decided to take his squadron to Tangier to convince the Moroccan Emperor to change his ways. And in combining his ships with those of Morris's squadron, he also decided he had enough strength that he could begin operations against Tripoli. He ordered Bainbridge to take the Philadelphia and the Vixen (Lieutenant John Smith commanding) to convoy U.S. merchants along the south coast of Spain using the schooner "to look into the Bays, and snug places" for lurking predators. Once fairly into the Mediterranean, they were to stop at Malta briefly before heading to Tripoline waters to "annoy the enemy by all means in your power," and establish an "effectual Blockade" of the port.
Shortly before sailing from Gibraltar on 20 September, Lieutenant David Porter reported aboard as the Philadelphia's new first lieutenant. He proved to be a martinet, and according to one crew member, by the time they reached Malta on 3 October, there "was a general murmuring among the men of insufferably bad usage, and it is my real opinion that had we not been stranded, mutiny would have ensued." The Philadelphia and Vixen sailed from Malta on 4 October, and took up station off Tripoli three days later. All was quiet; no traffic sailed in or out of the port.
Tripoli is located deep in the Gulf of Sirte, at a point where the coastline is configured a bit like the cross section of a wave. The back of the crest is to the west, and the spume trails off parallel to the main shore as first a spit and then a series of increasingly less apparent reefs and sand bars, until they end some miles to the east. The town itself is located in the curl, with major armaments mounted in town and on the spit, and lesser installations to the east and west. While an entrance to the harbor is immediately east of the spit, larger craft enter from farther east, between the coast and the end of the offshore reefs.
A strange sail could be seen finally on the 19th. It turned out to be an Austrian brig. Her master had told the U.S. officers he had heard that two Tripoline warships were out on a cruise. Beyond that, he had no information. The next day, the Vixen was ordered to the waters off Cape Bon, Tunisia, to the narrows of the Sicilian Channel, completely outside Bainbridge's station. Bainbridge wrote to Preble on the 23rd that he had been "on this solitary station, without the good fortune of seeing our enemies except under the refuge of well-fortified works." He would remain on station, he said, for another month, by which time he expected the weather would cause "dangerous Cruising; in fact it is so at present." Then he added, "But fervent zeal in the cause of my Country . . . will induce me to persevere to the last." The Vixen was not mentioned.
Confirming Bainbridge's otherwise pompous statement, the next day a strong gale struck from the northwest, driving the Philadelphia 20 miles or so eastward. Off Cape Bon, it drove the Vixen to Malta, where she stayed for repairs, never having sighted any Tripolines. A week passed as Bainbridge beat his way back against prevailing westerlies to his "blockade" of Tripoli.
He was still some 10 miles east of Tripoli when, at 0900 on 31 October, a lookout reported to Bainbridge the presence of what appeared to be a Tripoline corsair just visible from his position aloft. The captain ordered immediate pursuit in a situation somewhat akin to a terrier trying to catch a prey before it could reach its burrow. The Tripoline sailed close inshore, paralleling the coast, while the Philadelphia remained a bit more to seaward, with three leadsmen actively engaged. For two hours, the chase continued, and the hunter had begun firing occasional shots at the prey. The Philadelphia was making eight-and-a-half knots. A leadsman's call that there were but seven fathoms of water beneath the keel made it apparent to Bainbridge that he could not come up with his contact before she made port, so he bore off to seaward, at the same time ordering Porter aloft to scan the port. They then were slightly more than four miles distant from it.
Porter was about halfway to the mizzen top when he nearly was flung overboard. The Philadelphia had run onto Kaliusa Reef, actually the sandy extremity of the spume, streaming from the tip of the Tripoline wave. All heard a "harsh, grating noise . . . chilling the blood of every seaman aboard, and the next instant the bow shot five or six feet out of the water, the shock throwing many prostrate upon the deck." She was aground to a point near the after part of the fore chains.
Bainbridge panicked. First, he ordered all set sail to try and drive her over the bar. That succeeded only in setting the frigate more firmly aground, and she began a list to larboard. Realizing then that deeper water lay astern, the captain ordered three anchors cut away, guns run aft and the sails backed. The ship remained immobile. His next effort involved heaving overboard most of the gun batteries, saving only a few for defensive purposes. Nothing. Then he had the water casks pumped out overboard. Still nothing. In desperation, the foremast was cut away. The ship's list increased.
It was getting on to the first dog watch. Tripoline gunboats had begun to sortie from the port, and one even came close enough to lob a few tentative rounds at the U.S. ships. Eventually, nine were deployed. Bainbridge held a council of war, as was done commonly in those days on such desperate occasions. The captain himself later admitted he rejected both a suggestion that kedging be attempted and any thought of blowing up the ship. Attempting to defend the ship does not seem to have been considered seriously. Reportedly, all agreed that the ship should be scuttled and the crew surrendered. The captain ordered the magazines flooded, pumps disbabled, and trunnions knocked from the remaining guns while the carpenter's crewmen were to open "her bottom with chisels and augers in sufficient places" to sink her. With those orders issued, Bainbridge ordered the ensign hauled down and awaited his captors.
The Tripolines were extremely cautious and made no immediate move to take possession of the Philadelphia. They may not have understood that hauling down the Stars and Stripes was an act of surrender. In any event, Lieutenant Porter eventually was sent off in a ship's boat to close with one of the gunboats and make them understand the situation. There was still another pause as word was sent back to the port. This resulted in the Bashaw's ketch Mastico and five more gunboats sailing out with troops embarked to take possession of their prize.
At this point, all caution disappeared. The Tripolines swarmed aboard and proceeded to loot wherever something caught an eye. In Bainbridge's words:
The treatment we received from these Savages was such as raised our utmost indignation—Nothing was sacred or escaped their prying search, all our chests, trunks, with every article of clothing, and all our books were carried off—Our swords were snatched from us, our pockets searched and emptied; some of us had our boots pulled off, to examine if something were not concealed there, and some had their very coats pulled off their backs.
In short order, all the U.S. crewmen were hustled into waiting boats and taken to Bashaw Yusuf's "palace," where he questioned them at some length about their late ship and the Mediterranean Squadron before ordering all 307 of them into confinement.
About 40 hours later, with a shift in the wind, the Philadelphia was floated off the sand bar, her guns and acoutrements retrieved from the shallows, and towed to an anchorage close inshore to the town. If the Bashaw's minions could get her back in shape, and if they could muster a crew capable of handling such a large and alien rig, he would have a man-of-war adequate to his ego.
Bainbridge obviously had not learned from his previous impetuous actions, and so tasted bitter fruit for a third time. Had he not been so stubbornly determined to catch the chase—never an odds-on proposition in this case—he might have stayed in safe waters. Had he not ordered the Vixen away, she might have been able to catch the chase at no risk to the Philadelphia. (Or if only the frigate was in position to chase, then she might have provided an adequate defense until the ship was refloated.) Had Captain Bainbridge taken more adequate measures at scuttling, or at least ensured that such orders as he did give were carried out thoroughly, the Bashaw might have been denied his prize.
More than one new year would dawn before Bainbridge was free to face the prospect of U.S. naval discipline and public censure again. More immediately in the future was what Commodore Preble—on learning of the disaster from the 38-gun HMS Amazon on 24 November while on passage to Syracuse, Sicily—would do now that his second strongest unit was in the enemy's possession. His first recorded reaction, in reporting to Secretary Smith on 10 December, was "Would to God, that the Officers and crew of the Philadelphia, had one and all, determined to prefer death to slavery, it is possible that such a determination might have saved them from either."
