Barbary War Interlude in Messina

Midshipman Charles G. Ridgely firmly grasped a telescope as he perched himself at the bow of the schooner Nautilus on the night of 4 September 1804. First Lieutenant George Reed had ordered him to not lose sight of the ketch Intrepid as she sailed toward Tripoli Harbor. The Intrepid carried the Nautilus’s captain, Master Commandant Richard Somers, on a daring mission to destroy the harbor’s fortifications. The Navy had converted the 75-ton ketch into a fireship loaded with 115 barrels of gunpowder and 150 shells, and Somers planned to sail toward the harbor walls with a small crew, light the fuses, and in another boat row back to the blockading squadron.

Tension had risen after inadequate winds prevented attempts the previous two nights, but the wind picked up the night of 4 September, sufficient to carry the Intrepid into the harbor. Ridgely recalled:

At the end of an hour, about 10 o’clock, P.M., while I was engaged in this duty, the awful explosion took place. For a moment, the flash illuminated the whole heavens around, while the terrific concussion shook every thing far and near. Then all was hushed again, and every object veiled in a darkness of double gloom. . . . On board the Nautilus, the silence of death seemed to pervade the entire crew.¹

In a stunning loss to the Nautilus and the rest of the squadron, Somers and his crew perished in the Intrepid’s premature explosion.

Thus ended the 1804 campaign against Tripoli. The First Barbary War had begun on 10 May 1801, when Pasha Yusuf Karamanli declared war on the United States when it refused to meet his tribute demands. Instead, President Thomas Jefferson sent a series of naval squadrons to the Mediterranean to suppress the pirate nation. Commodore Edward Preble led the most active campaign against the Barbary pirates, but now he expected the arrival of his relief.²

For the Nautilus, however, the following year included the continuation of the war, as well as an unlikely drama that intertwined the lives of the ship’s crew with an American traveler, an English merchant, and murder.

A New Captain and Commodore

In addition to four crewmen and Somers killed in the Intrepid explosion, the Nautilus had lost Lieutenant James Decatur during the 3 August 1804 attack on Tripoli Harbor. To fill the squadron’s increasing officer gaps, Preble promoted Ridgely to lieutenant. Lieutenant Reed brought the schooner to Syracuse, where Lieutenant John H. Dent of the brig Scourge took command.³

Dent had entered the U.S. Navy in 1798 during the Quasi-War with France. As a midshipman on board Captain Thomas Truxton’s Constellation, Dent participated in the capture of the French frigate Insurgente and defeat of La Vengeance. While the Scourge was his first command, he also commanded Bombard No. 2 during the 3 and 5 August attacks on the harbor.⁴ Now Dent had little time to familiarize himself with his new command. After a few weeks’ refitting and replenishing, the Nautilus returned to convoy several merchantmen and maintain the Tripoli Harbor blockade.⁵

Commodore Samuel Barron arrived with the frigates President, Congress, Essex, Constellation, and John Adams in late September 1804 to relieve Preble. Unlike with previous squadrons, President Jefferson ordered most of Preble’s ships to remain under Barron’s command. With the addition of the frigate Constitution, brigs Argus and Syren, and schooners Enterprise, Nautilus, and Vixen, Barron commanded the largest force yet assembled by the U.S. Navy. Foul weather, however, would prevent much action against Tripoli until the spring. In December, Barron’s flagship the President put into Syracuse for repairs caused by rot in the fore and mainmasts.⁶ Barron sent the Nautilus north to Messina in northeastern Sicily to collect timber and other stores for the repairs.

The Nautilus Arrives

The schooner arrived at Messina the evening of 5 January 1805. Overhead, smoke from the volcano Stromboli filled the sky. The harbor had several ships quarantined outside the lazaretto for fear of yellow fever.⁷ The only other U.S. ship present, the Matilda, had arrived earlier that day from Genoa. Eager to speak with other Americans so far from home, the officers of the Nautilus sought out the Matilda when they arrived at the health office.

The Matilda carried a young New Yorker equally keen to meet other Americans: Washington Irving. Works such as “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” were still decades away. Up to that time, the 21-year-old’s only published writings were a series of letters to the New York Chronicle under a pseudonym. Irving had eight older siblings worried about his frailty and idleness. To strengthen and stimulate the young man, his brothers had financed a European tour for him.⁸

Irving regaled the Nautilus’s officers with stories of his travels. He had explored the breadth of France before departing for Italy, but not before a detainment in Nice under accusations of being a British spy. After two months in Genoa, he sailed for Messina in the Matilda. Off the Isle of Planosa, French pirates stopped the ship, but the event ended harmlessly. The pirates took only a few provisions and even left a receipt for reimbursement from the English Consul at Malta.⁹

Dent hoped to return to Syracuse in a few days and offered Irving passage if he could get around the quarantine. But duplicity and political scheming prevented the lieutenant from securing the needed timber and stores. To expedite the process, the U.S. Navy engaged English merchant John Broadbent as an agent for the squadron in Messina.¹⁰ The drama left the Nautilus there longer than expected, and Irving had similar delays as the health office imposed a 21-day quarantine on the Matilda.¹¹

The Author and the Officers

Irving found that prospect quite irritating. The only respites from restriction to the Matilda were brief strolls in the lazaretto courtyard; no boarding other ships, no interacting with their crews. To converse better with the Nautilus, and perhaps out of some impish pleasure, Irving sailed around the harbor in a little boat against the health office’s orders. Officials eventually caught him when he tried sneaking a letter on board the Nautilus and returned him to the Matilda.¹²

He made fast friends with the schooner’s officers. Irving recollected in his journal: “I found the society of the officers very agreeable. . . . Good humor reigned among them and they had always a joke or a good story at hand to make the time pass away gaily.”¹³ That the traveling artist and a group of naval officers found much in common may seem unlikely, but it was quite the contrary. They were the only Americans in a foreign city that treated them less than hospitably. They were also roughly the same age and shared similar educational and financial backgrounds. Later in life, Irving was known as a socialite with an inviting nature, and this charm seemed apparent already.

The Matilda’s quarantine was lifted on 24 January, and Irving quickly joined the Nautilus. He spent the day exploring the city with Dent and Broadbent.¹⁴

A Dead Body

Earlier that morning, officials in town had discovered a body. Apparently, the victim—an English sailor named George Hutchinson from a transport ship in the harbor—had been stabbed to death. Messina Governor Cavaliere Giorgio Guillichini informed Dent, “It appearing from the enquiries which I have caused to be instituted, that two Officers belonging to the Schooner Nautilus under your Comm^d, are the Authors of the Homicide committed on an English Subject at the Marina of this Port.” He demanded that Dent “take those steps which in like cases are prescribed for the punishment of the Delinquent as well as the satisfaction of the injured party by delivering up into one of the Castles of this City the perpetrators of so cruel a murder.”¹⁵

Dent had not been the only Nautilus officer to take liberty while in Messina. On the evening of 23 January, Lieutenant Ridgely had hosted a dinner in town with several officers and other guests. He admitted, “I drank too freely of wines and cordials as to make me in an entire state of iniebriety [sic].”¹⁶ The dinner concluded after ample toasting, and the partygoers dispersed. As Ridgely and Reed returned to the Nautilus together, they came upon 10 to 12 Sicilians threatening an English-speaking man. With sword drawn, Ridgely charged the crowd and demanded they leave their victim alone. Startled by Ridgely’s sudden and violent appearance, the mob ran off. After speaking with the would-be victim for several minutes, Ridgely and Reed left for the Nautilus with him very much alive.¹⁷

By saving Hutchinson, however, Ridgely may have doomed him. To exact revenge for threatening them, the mob likely returned, killed Hutchinson, and framed Ridgely for the act. After all, a dozen or so men had witnessed him drunk and brandishing a weapon near the victim. Dent refused to hand over Ridgely but appeased the Messina governor by promising that Commodore Barron would adjudicate the case.¹⁸

A Sight to Behold

In the meantime, an English schooner loaded with the stores and timber the Nautilus had been awaiting was ready to sail. The Nautilus, with Irving on board, left Messina on 29 January to escort the store ship to Syracuse. But after losing the vessel during the night, the Nautilus returned the following day. The Americans found the city in panic; a large fleet had been spotted nearby. No one knew if it was British or French. The Sicilians expected their island to be fought over again.¹⁹

The following day the fleet came within view. It was Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson’s hunting for a French fleet they believed recently had left Toulon. Under way again with the English schooner, Dent slackened the Nautilus’s pace to better observe Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory and the rest of the fleet. The 3,500-ton, 104-gun ship-of-the-line dwarfed the 185-ton, 12-gun schooner. Irving noted: “It was very pleasing to observe with what promptness and dexterity the signals were made, answered, and obeyd. The fleet seemed as a body of men under perfect discipline.”²⁰

The Nautilus and the storeship joined the U.S. squadron on 2 February at Syracuse, and Irving won over the other officers of the fleet as easily as he had the wardroom of the Nautilus. His journal illustrates their various adventures and excursions to theaters, operas, masquerades, and parties. They also explored nearby ancient ruins, cathedrals, and churches.

Irving remained with the U.S. squadron in Syracuse until 11 February, when he left overland for Palermo with some officers on errands elsewhere on Sicily. It is hard to know exactly what the officers thought of the young Irving. Did they suspect his future success and popularity? Commodore Charles Morris recalled decades later, “We had the pleasure, for several weeks during this winter, of having Washington Irving as a companion in our mess, from which parties were made to visit the other cities of Sicily.”²¹

Awaiting Trial

The winter respite from the war ended with the improved spring weather, and the squadron resumed efforts against Tripoli, although not with Preble’s tenacity. There were no more attacks on Tripoli Harbor, just a continuation of the blockade. The war dragged on for the Nautilus, which had been in the Mediterranean since July 1803. The murder accusation also hung heavily on Lieutenant Ridgely. In April 1805, he wrote to Barron, expressing concern for his family discovering the accusations against him. Certain of his innocence, he vowed “to come forward for trial to re-establish my character (as I am now convinced that it must be injured from the cause of my accusation).”²²

Barron assented to Ridgely’s request but wished to avoid confining one of his officers in a foreign prison. Broadbent arranged for Ridgely to remain in the custody of the squadron in Messina while awaiting his trial. The Nautilus, however, could not stay in Messina much longer because Barron needed the schooner’s shallow draft to deliver two artillery pieces to William Eaton for his attack on Derna.²³

While Ridgely remained on board Captain Stephen Decatur’s frigate Congress awaiting his trial, the Nautilus shelled the fortifications at Derna to support Eaton’s attack. On 6 May, Barron ordered the Congress to collect powder and shot at Leghorn.²⁴ Now the last remnant of Barron’s squadron in Messina, Ridgely moved to the Citadel of Messina, but informed Barron, “My confinement is not very close, having permission to walk thro’ the Citadel two or three hours every day.”²⁵

War Ends, Trial Drags On

The war ended rather anticlimactically on 4 June, when U.S. diplomat Tobias Lear concluded negotiations with Tripoli and signed a new treaty. Ridgely’s trial commenced shortly after. Broadbent reported optimistically to Barron, “I have not the least doubt but he will soon be able to return to the Squadron.”²⁶ Instead, the tribunal dragged on. With the war over, the Nautilus returned to Messina for the officers to provide testimony in Ridgely’s defense.²⁷ The governor kept changing demands, to which Broadbent repeatedly tried to acquiesce while still providing for Ridgely. The Nautilus spent weeks in Messina, and the tribunal had not yet allowed any testimony from the officers.²⁸ Ridgely assessed the situation more accurately: “It is impossible to say when it will be settled, these Sicilians having a great deal of form in all their transactions.”²⁹

As hostilities ended with Tripoli, the other Barbary powers expressed dissatisfaction with their arrangements with the United States. The new squadron commander, Commodore John Rodgers, called the Nautilus away from Messina again and kept the squadron off the Tunis coast through the summer of 1805 to dissuade the state from declaring war.³⁰

Ridgely’s trial dragged on for three months and finally ended in late September. Broadbent elatedly informed Rodgers that the tribunal “declares his innocence and restores him spotless to his Country, to his friends, and to thy esteem.”³¹ Despite the cumbersome process, surrendering himself convinced many of his innocence and the tribunal found no credible evidence against him.

The Nautilus remained in the Mediterranean until June 1806. The schooner returned to Washington just more than three years after leaving for Tripoli. Many of the officers, however, already had left. Somers and Decatur died. Dent, Reed, and Ridgely all returned by January 1806. Others came and went—including Midshipman Oliver Hazard Perry—in the course of a month.³²

Irving’s brief time with the Nautilus was merely his first with the U.S. Navy. He wrote several naval biographies for Analectic Magazine before his writing career took off in the 1820s. After the War of 1812, he regularly dined with Captains Stephen Decatur, David Porter, and Oliver Hazard Perry. Decatur even invited Irving to join him on his flagship, the frigate Guerriere, for the Second Barbary War.³³ In the 1830s, the Naval Lyceum inducted Irving as an honorary member. Perhaps the lyceum’s first president, Commodore Charles Ridgely, had a hand in that occurence.³⁴

The war with Tripoli lasted just more than four years, but most battles occurred in, and most scholarship focuses on, February to September 1804. The experience of the Nautilus in 1805 illustrates another equally rich aspect of the war. Broadbent understood the magnitude of the situation, having written to Rodgers on the importance of Ridgely’s trial, in which he may as well have been discussing the greater purpose of the war: “The Government of America is in its infancy and the first impressions given by it will be lasting, therefore it behooves every one, in whatever capacity they may serve, to act with consistency and firmness otherwise these little tyrannical Governments would trample upon us as they do upon those who have not the means or courage to resist them.”³⁵