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  And then, from the darkness came the heart-stopping alarm the American sailors had all dreaded: “Americanos!”

  Instantly, the Philadelphia’s gun ports swung open. The commandos could hear the tampions being knocked from the cannons.

  “Board!” shouted Decatur. The shock force surged toward the frigate with Decatur leading. While leaping to the Philadelphia, Decatur slipped, and it was Morris who claimed the honor of being the first aboard, with Decatur and Laws close behind. The Americans swiftly formed a line across the deck and attacked the Tripolitans with swords and knives.

  The enemy’s bloodcurdling screams shattered the harbor’s nighttime tranquillity. Within ten minutes, before the enemy crew could fire a single cannon, the deck was littered with dead Tripolitans. Some escaped by leaping overboard and casting off in a boat, which Lieutenant Anderson intercepted. His men killed several crewmen.

  The Philadelphia was back in American hands.

  Decatur fired a rocket, the prearranged signal to the Siren that he had seized the Philadelphia. The assault teams lit their candles and went to work burning the frigate.

  If the screams didn’t awaken them to the fact that they were under attack, the rocket and lit candles unmistakably did. The Tripolitans opened up with their fortress cannons. Crewmen from the two nearby corsairs, both within easy cannon-fire range, peppered the commandos with inaccurate small-arms fire, but the corsairs’ cannons, which might have done real damage, inexplicably remained silent.

  The Philadelphia went up so fast that the flames chased the boarders from below deck, shooting out of portholes and from the spar deck hatchways. The blaze arced into the rigging as the Americans fled to the Intrepid, already beginning to pull away as tongues of fire leaped out at her.

  Decatur was the last to leave. He looked around the burning deck one more time and flung himself into the Intrepid’s rigging. As she swung away, a round from a shore battery whistled through her topgallant sail.

  The attackers hastened to escape the harbor. In the two boats towing the ketch, the American crewmen strained at their oars, and the Intrepid’s sweeps also dug deep into the water. The rowers watched flames hungrily lick up the Philadelphia’s masts receding behind them. The frigate’s guns, loaded for harbor defense, suddenly began firing themselves, and, almost as if making a last defiant gesture, she blasted a full broadside into the city.

  Morris described the sight of the burning frigate as “magnificent”; the flames climbing the rigging and masts formed “columns of fire, which, meeting the tops, were reflected into beautiful capitals.” A little later, the frigate’s cables gave way and the dying hulk drifted under the bashaw’s castle. It burned there all night long.

  With seamless precision, the Americans had captured and destroyed a frigate in an enemy harbor, within range of 115 fortress guns and two warships, and escaped—all inside twenty-five minutes, with only one man slightly wounded. They had killed at least twenty enemy soldiers and taken one prisoner. The exploit would have embroidered the record of any commando unit, in any era.

  Five miles away on the Siren, Stewart watched the Philadelphia’s topmasts fall. He hadn’t gotten into the fight. The Intrepid’s early embarkation had thrown off the attack timetable. Thirty Siren crewmen in two boats had set off for the harbor, only to meet the Intrepid as she was heading out to sea. They turned back without getting a chance to damage other enemy ships in the harbor. The two ships met off Tripoli about 1:00 A.M. and set sail together for Syracuse. At daybreak, they were 40 miles away from Tripoli, yet they still could see the light from the burning frigate. The Philadelphia burned to the waterline. Her ribs weren’t found until 1903.

  On February 19, lookouts at Syracuse announced the approach of two ships. The quarterdecks of all the squadron’s vessels blossomed with field glasses scanning the horizon. To Preble’s immense relief, it was the Intrepid and the Siren. Having received no messages from Stewart and Decatur since they had left Syracuse two weeks before, Preble was full of gnawing fears and questions. At least now they had safely returned. The commodore signaled impatiently, “Have you succeeded?”

  “Yes,” the Siren answered.

  The commandos sailed triumphantly into Syracuse harbor to loud cheers from the crews of the Constitution, Vixen, and Enterprise. Stewart and Decatur wasted no time in boating to the Constitution. They reported to their commander that they had destroyed the Philadelphia without losing a single man. While Preble noted later that day in his memo book, with his customary terseness, “Syren and Intrepid arrived having executed my orders,” he was more fulsome in his praise when reporting to Navy Secretary Smith: “Their conduct in the performance of the dangerous service assigned them, cannot be sufficiently estimated—It is beyond all praise.”

  The Philadelphia’s destruction in Tripoli harbor electrified Europe and America. From the Victory off Toulon, Admiral Horatio Nelson called it “the most bold and daring act of the age.” Pope Pius VII was moved to extol the actions of Decatur and his men: “The American commander, with a small force, and in a short space of time, has done more for the cause of Christianity than the most powerful nations of Christendom have done for ages!”

  The U.S. Navy schooner Enterprise (right) defeats the Tripolitan warship Tripoli, on August 1, 1801, in the first battle of the Barbary War. (Naval Historical Center).

  Lt. Andrew Sterrett, the Enterprise commander, was a demanding officer who once ran a seaman through with his sword for cowardice in battle. (Naval Historical Center).

  The U.S. Navy frigate Philadelphia ran aground in Tripoli harbor on Oct. 31, 1803. The disaster gave Tripoli a frigate and 307 American prisoners. (Naval Historical Center).

  Upon surrendering the Philadelphia, Capt. William Bainbridge owned the unhappy distinction of having commanded the only two U.S. naval vessels captured during wartime. (Naval Historical Center).

  Commodore Edward Preble, the Barbary War’s most effective American naval leader, was dismayed by the loss of the Philadelphia, but quickly set into motion plans for her destruction. (Naval Historical Center).

  Lt. Stephen Decatur’s crew boards the Philadelphia before setting her ablaze under the enemy’s nose on February 16, 1804. (Naval Historical Center).

  Lt. Stephen Decatur led the daring mission to destroy the Philadelphia, becoming an international hero. (Naval Historical Center).

  The Philadelphia burns in Tripoli harbor. (Naval Historical Center).

  Commodore Preble’s squadron enters Tripoli harbor on August 3, 1804, to destroy enemy shipping and fortifications in what became known as the Battle of the Gunboats. (Naval Historical Center).

  Lt. Stephen Decatur’s deadly struggle during the Battle of the Gunboats with the Mameluke captain who Decatur believed fatally wounded his brother, James. (Naval Historical Center).

  The fireship Intrepid mysteriously exploded September 4, 1804, while on a mission to destroy shipping in Tripoli harbor, killing all 13 crewmen. It was America’s last naval offensive of the war. (Naval Historical Center).

  William Eaton, former U.S. Army captain and consul to Tunis, planned a surprise attack on eastern Tripoli in 1805 with the Tripolitan ruler’s deposed brother, Hamet Karamanli. (Naval Historical Center).

  William Eaton (right) and Hamet Karamanli (left) led an invasion force of U.S. marines, dissident Tripolitans, Arabs and European mercenaries 520 miles through the desert to the outskirts of Derna, Tripoli. (Naval Historical Center).

  Marine Lt. Presley O‘Bannon, William Eaton’s most trusted officer, planted the Stars and Stripes atop the battlement at Derna, the first American flag-raising on hostile foreign soil. (Naval Historical Center).

  Lt. Presley O‘Bannon’s headstone and historical marker in a cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky. (Photo by Walter Chisholm).

  The Tripoli Memorial, the oldest U.S. military monument, dedicated to the six naval officers killed during the Barbary War. It stands behind Preble Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. (Photo by
Brian Greenlee).

  During a 1949 ceremony, markers were placed at the Tripoli gravesites of five Intrepid crewmen. Among those present were (1-r) Captain William Marshall, commander of the USS Spokane; Orpay Taft, U.S. consul to Tripoli; Rear Admiral Richard H. Cruzen, division commander; and Joseph Karamanli, Tripoli’s mayor and a direct descendant of Yusuf Karamanli, the nation’s ruler during the Barbary War. (Naval Historical Center).

  This was what Jefferson had longed for all these twenty years: to show the world the United States was different from the Old World, that it was a nation of dauntless men, that the ship that bore Decatur and his crew to glory was aptly named and embodied the new nation’s spirit. He undoubtedly warmed to Consul George Davis’s report of the reaction at Tunis: “... it is the only occurrence, which has forced them to view the American character with proper respect.”

  In America, Decatur quickly became the new Navy’s most celebrated hero. He was promoted to captain over the heads of other, more senior lieutenants, making him at twenty-five the youngest naval officer to hold that rank. Congress commended Decatur formally, awarded him a sword, and rewarded him and his crew with two months’ extra pay. A silent play written for the occasion, “Preparations for the Recapture of the Frigate Philadelphia, ”began with the song “Hail Columbia,” and ended with a procession honoring the Intrepid and her crew.

  Francis Scott Key was moved to pen a song to the tune “To Anacreon in Heaven.” “To Anacreon” was originally composed in the 1770s in Britain by John Stafford Smith for a London gentlemen’s drinking club, the Anacreontic Society, to honor its namesake, Anacreon, the convivial bard of ancient Greece. In 1798, Tom Paine wrote different words to the music and called it “Adams and Liberty”; it was a hugely popular political song. Key’s new, forgettable lyrics, which appear in his works under the simple title “Song,” were sung at a banquet honoring the Intrepid crew. A decade later, the British attack on Fort McHenry inspired Key to write new lyrics to the old tune. He called it “The Star-Spangled Banner.” One of the verses honoring America’s Barbary heroes:In conflict resistless, each toil they endur’d,

  ‘Till their foes shrunk dismay’d from the war’s desolation:

  And pale beam’d the Crescent, its splendor obscur’d

  By the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation,

  Where each flaming star

  Gleam’d a meteor of war,

  And the truban’d head bowed to the terrible glare,

  Now, mixed with the olive, the laurel shall wave,

  And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.

  Twenty years later, after both Preble and Decatur had died, the question that had long been debated by Navy men in ships’ messes and harbor taverns suddenly captured the attention of Congress: Could the Philadelphia have been saved? Susan Decatur made the issue timely by filing a claim, as Stephen’s widow, to government prize money for the Philadelphia. Her claim asserted that the frigate could have been taken intact, and that Stephen Decatur always believed that he could have towed the frigate out of the harbor. Salvador Catalano, the Intrepid’s pilot, also stated that he believed all along that she was salvageable, and had shared his opinion with Decatur moments before she was burned. But, he said, Preble’s orders prevented them from making the attempt.

  Other crew members, however, filed affidavits asserting that it would have been impossible to save the ship. Her sails were unrigged, there was no one to man her, and she was moored near two corsairs and within range of the fortress cannons. Mediterranean diplomat M. M. Noah urged the government to pay Mrs. Decatur’s claim, evidently as a gesture to a naval hero’s widow, for he also pointed out that it didn’t really matter whether the Philadelphia could have been saved or not; America made a stronger statement by burning her.

  The night of the commando attack, the American captives were jarred awake by screaming, shouting, and the rumble of the bashaw’s castle cannons. The commotion also awakened the Philadelphia’s officers at the consul’s house, where they flung open the windows facing the harbor and beheld the spectacle of flames swallowing their ship. How it came about remained a great mystery to them all until the next day.

  At daybreak the next morning, the crewmen’s keepers rushed into their prison and began beating everyone they could lay hands on, “hissing like serpents of hell.” As the reason for their fury gradually dawned on the Americans, they could not contain their exultation. Their obvious high spirits over the bashaw’s loss of his prize served as a goad to every Tripolitan they encountered. “Every boy we met in the streets would spit on us and pelt us with stones; our tasks were doubled, our bread withheld and every driver exercised cruelties tenfold more rigid and intolerable than before.” Their captors withheld the twice-monthly ration of pork and beef and confined the American officers to their quarters. Cowdery, forbidden to could visit patients, observed, “The Turks appeared much disheartened at the loss of their frigate.”

  The bashaw, who had watched her burn from his castle, summoned country militia to the city, expecting a full-scale assault by American troops. The city ramparts were hastily repaired, but when the soldiers tried to mount cannons salvaged from the burned hulk, the gun carriages broke down and one of the guns exploded, killing and wounding five soldiers.

  More guards were placed over all the captives, and the officers were summarily moved out of the relative comfort of the consul’s home into the castle. Their new home was a large, smoky room illuminated by a single grated skylight. “I have seen the Sea four times in five months,” Bainbridge grumbled to Preble in July 1804. “Close kept under lock & key.”

  Six weeks after the raid, Preble returned to Tripoli with the Constitution and Siren to find out whether the bashaw wished to parley. Yusuf was more intransigent than ever, refusing to exchange prisoners and demanding at least $500,000 for the captives and peace. One reason for the stiff terms was that the Tripolitans believed that Decatur and his commandos had massacred some of the Philadelphia’s Tripolitan crew. Three bodies had washed up “covered with wounds,” Tripoli’s foreign minister, Sidi Mohammed Dghies, informed Bainbridge, asking, “How long has it been since Nations massacred their Prisoners?” The bashaw wanted to question the Tripolitan prisoner in U.S. custody.

  Preble refused to bring the prisoner ashore and said Decatur had reported no massacre. The boarders had fought with edged weapons, and “people who handle dangerous weapons in War, must expect wounds and Death, but I shall never countenance or encourage wanton acts of Cruelty.” Preble also declared that he would sooner sacrifice all the Philadelphia prisoners than submit to unfavorable terms. The bashaw forbade Preble to send clothing ashore for the captives; he said such items could only be landed in a neutral vessel.

  Preble sailed away and resumed preparations for the summer attacks on Tripoli that he was planning.

  XI

  PREBLE’S FIGHTING SQUADRON

  I find hand to hand is not childs play, ‘tis kill or be killed.

  —Captain Stephen Decatur, Jr., in a letter to Keith Spence, Philadelphia’s purser and father of Midshipman Robert T. Spence

  Around me lay arms, legs & trunks of Bodies, in the most mutilated state.

  —Midshipman Robert T. Spence, in a letter to his mother

  August 3, 1804 1:30 p.m.

  Anxious to begin the attack, Commodore Edward Preble scanned the old port of Tripoli through his spyglass from the Constitution’s quarterdeck. Fair weather had returned after a week of gales. Now his squadron stood before the enemy capital, ready for action. Months of preparation would come together this day—for the bashaw as well as Preble. In Tripoli, gun crews manned 115 cannon on the fortress walls, and 25,000 Tripolitan soldiers recruited, trained, and massed for this contingency waited in prepared positions to repel any amphibious landing. From behind the two-mile-long arm of rocks and shoals protecting the harbor waited the alert crews of twenty-four ships and gunboats commanded by Grand Admiral Murad Reis.

  The comman
ders of Preble’s fifteen warships, gunboats, and mortar boats watched the Constitution for the signal to deploy. Preble sorely missed the Philadelphia, whose loss left him with just one frigate, his flagship. Five frigates were on their way to the Mediterranean, but he was unsure when they would arrive, and he couldn’t delay any longer. The coming fall storms would foil his plans to use the six gunboats and two mortar vessels loaned him by Naples. They were ideal for maneuvering in shallow water, where the Constitution and the assembled squadron’s six brigs and schooners dared not venture. But the gunboats were flatbottomed and heavy, and did not row or sail well—they had had to be towed from Syracuse. They would be unusable in stormy seas. Each bomb vessel carried a 13-inch brass sea mortar—per—fect for lofting shells over the fortresses and into the city. The gunboats were armed with long 24-pound bow guns. Preble’s flotilla bobbing at anchor outside Tripoli’s reef was manned by 1,060 Americans and Neapolitans.

  Since taking command of the Mediterranean squadron in 1803, Preble had ached for the chance to cripple Tripoli’s warmaking ability, “by destroying their vessels in port, if I cannot meet them at Sea.” But as Dale and Morris also had recognized, Preble saw that he needed shallow-draft ships to draw close enough to the city to unleash a punishing bombardment. Cathcart had tried to procure gunboats from France, and, failing at that—French shipbuilders were absorbed in supplying Napoleon’s navy—he proposed building them from scratch at Leghorn, and had sketched possible prototypes. But Preble had a better idea: Naples was hostile to Barbary, friendly to America, and expanding its navy, so why not borrow the gunboats from Naples? Prime Minister Sir John Acton informed Preble in May that Naples would be happy to lend the United States the floating batteries, and threw in six additional 24-pound guns. Preble mounted all six on the Constitution’s spar deck, giving her an impressive fifty guns. “They are fine Battering Cannon, and I expect will do good service,” the commodore noted cheerfully. Acton also generously supplied 200 barrels of gunpowder, as well as muskets, pistols, and ninety-six Neapolitan sailors to help crew the vessels.