by Ian W. Toll
Less than forty-eight hours after the Constitution’s arrival, two more American light frigates arrived from the east: the John Adams, commanded by Truxtun’s former first lieutenant aboard the Constellation, John Rodgers; and the Adams, commanded by the returning Commodore Morris. Both ships were homeward-bound, calling at Gibraltar only for provisions and to await favorable conditions for passing through the Straits. Morris and Rodgers agreed that their ships would accompany the Constitution to Tangier, so as to make a greater show of force.
Tangier was only thirty miles from Gibraltar, but ships passing westward through the Straits often found it difficult to make headway. “I find it hard sailing against wind and current,” Preble wrote on September 22. Reaching Tangier at last on the twenty-fifth, Preble learned that the emperor and his court were camped in the backcountry on the far side of the Alcassar River. Heavy rains had raised the river to such a height that it could be crossed only “on Goat Skins filled with Wind.” As night fell, the men on the deck of the Constitution were treated to a dramatic spectacle. Huge signal fires were lit along the peaks of the Rif Mountains, to give the alarm to the villages along the Moroccan coast.
For two weeks the squadron cruised between Cape Trafalgar (Spain) and Cape Spartel (Morocco), returning twice to Gibraltar. The Moroccan prisoners aboard the Constitution were treated as honored guests on a pleasure cruise. The two highest ranking among them, the captain of the Mirboka and a “priest” or mullah, shared Preble’s cabin. For the first few days after coming aboard, all of the Moroccans dined each day at the commodore’s table, and “after this they messed under the half deck and had the Commodore’s servants to attend them.” Writing to a female cousin with barely concealed mirth, Midshipman Henry Wadsworth told her that he had made friends with the Moroccan captain, who “invites me (after the War) to go home to Sallee with him and says he will give me four wives.”
On October 6, the squadron returned to Tangier Bay after a short passage aided by light easterly breezes. From the appearance of the harbor it was obvious that the emperor had returned. Twenty-five hundred troops had formed up along the beach. At half past one in the afternoon they commenced a march with “innumerable volleys of small arms, toward the town and Castle.” When the American colors were hoisted over the consul’s house, the harbor batteries opened with a salute of 18 guns and an equal number were returned by the Constitution.
As these salutes were exchanged, Preble later learned, the emperor was himself at the fortress at the end of the harbor mole, studying the Constitution through a telescope. He was impressed with her size and armament. Tangier’s fortifications were ancient and decrepit; many of the cannon had not been fired in years. According to Midshipman Ralph Izard, the Moroccans “were trembling in their shoes for fear we should batter down their town, which can very easily be done. For you can have no idea of the miserable situation their batteries are in. They have several Guns it is true but the carriages they rest upon are so rotten that three times firing will render them perfectly useless.” The emperor seemed interested in keeping the peace. As a gesture of goodwill, he presented the squadron with a gift of ten head of cattle, twenty sheep, and four dozen fowls.
The morning of October 10, Preble and a party of diplomats and officers went ashore under a flag of truce. Passing through a long, narrow passage lined with the emperor’s guards, they were escorted into an outdoor court adjacent to the castle walls. A moment later the emperor himself appeared and sat down on the steps. The Moroccans lowered their heads all the way to the ground, and the Americans removed their hats. Midshipman Izard described the scene:
I had connected with the idea of Emperor of Morocco something grand, but what was my disappointment at seeing a small man, wrapped up in a woolen heik or cloak, sitting upon the stone steps of an old castle in the middle of the streets, surrounded by a guard with their arms covered with cloth…. We stood before the Emperor with our Caps in hand & the conversation was carried on by means of an interpreter. The Emperor said he was very sorry that his governor had behaved so much amiss & said he should punish him “more than to our satisfaction.”
The emperor regretted the misunderstanding and said that he had ordered all American vessels that had been taken to be restored to their owners. He assured Preble that Morocco wished to remain at peace with the United States, and asked that the Mirboka and Meshouda be restored to him as a favor and a gesture of goodwill.
It was that easy. Moroccan governors and ship captains were enjoined against any further hostile action against American shipping, on penalty of “severe punishment.” The emperor reaffirmed his commitment to abide by the American treaty that had been signed by his father in 1786.
Preble had already decided to return the Mirboka, which, he said, was “such a miserable piece of naval architecture that I do not believe we have an officer in our service that would be willing to attempt to cross the Atlantic in her for ten times her value.” He was more reluctant to part with the Meshouda, since she had been (by all reports) a Tripolitan vessel. The commodore suspected that the emperor was angling for the best bargain he could get, but Preble finally agreed to let Morocco have her as a “gift,” with the stipulation that she remain in port for as long as the conflict between the United States and Tripoli continued. In his report to Secretary Smith, Preble justified the concession by pointing out that the emperor “has such an extensive seacoast on the Atlantic, and is so advantageously situated on the Straits for annoying our commerce, that it is very much in our interest to be on good terms with him.”
Parting company with the homeward-bound vessels, the Constitution ran back through the Straits before “fresh Gales and Rain.” On the morning of October 15, she steered into Gibraltar Bay for the fourth time in a month, coming to anchor in 15 fathoms of water. The commodore had every right to be pleased. He had neutralized the Moroccan threat, and he had done so in the space of three weeks, without firing a single shot in anger. Now he had nothing standing between him and Yusuf, and could bring his entire force to bear against Tripoli.
WHILE PREBLE WAS AWAY SETTLING affairs with the Moroccans, twenty-five-year-old Lieutenant Charles Stewart of Philadelphia had been left in Gibraltar as the senior American officer on the station. He commanded the sloop of war Siren, with the Mirboka and Meshouda anchored under her guns.
Gibraltar was thought to be a safe shelter for the U.S. Navy. Britain and America were at peace; the narrowly averted exchange of broadsides between the Constitution and Maidstone had been laughed off; Preble had visited the senior civil and military officers of the place, and been politely received. With a few exceptions, English officers were instinctively courteous toward their former countrymen, with whom they shared a language, a culture, and a profession. Most of the American officers, in turn, were Federalists who favored closer Anglo-American relations, and said so. British dockyards and shore establishments in the Mediterranean welcomed the American frigates because they were paying customers and good for business.
But while Constitution was away in Tangier, a quarrel had broken out over the issue of deserters. On October 7, three British-born sailors who were enlisted in the American squadron, and assigned temporarily to the captured Mirboka, had gone ashore for provisions. While in town they had deserted and enlisted aboard the Medusa, one of several English frigates anchored in the bay. Lieutenant Stewart wrote a formal protest to the captain of the Medusa, John Gore, and demanded the return of the three men, whom he branded “as Felons and Deserters.” Gore’s response was courteous in tone; but he refused to return the men on the grounds that they were “subjects of his Britannic Majesty and have returned to their duty and allegiance.”
In the following days, Stewart and Gore exchanged several more letters, and with each exchange the rhetoric escalated. Not only did Gore refuse to return the deserters, who “having again placed themselves under the Flag of their Liege Sovereign cannot possibly be given up either to the United States or any other Foreign power,” he demand
ed two other seamen serving on board the Mirboka who were, he said, known to be British-born. More alarming, one of Gore’s lieutenants passed on a spoken threat that the captain presumably did not dare put into writing: If every British sailor serving in the American squadron was not given up, they would be seized by force.
The expanding European war had raised the scarcity value of professional seamen—men who spoke English no worse than the next man and who could hand, reef, and steer without being taught. Neither the British nor the American Navy cared much about the nationality of the sailors they enlisted. Sailors were frequently induced to desert one service and reenlist in the other, and every man bearing a grudge against his officers could be expected to make the attempt as soon as he saw the chance.
On Preble’s return, Stewart provided the commodore with copies of his correspondence with Captain Gore, adding that “you will perceive that we are liable to great inconvenience and contention with the Officers of the British Navy.” The Medusa had put to sea, but she was expected to return in a few days. Preble prepared a strongly worded letter to be delivered to Gore on the ship’s return. If the three men were not restored at once, Preble wrote, he would appeal to the British admiral on the station and also make “a representation” to the U.S. government. “The Officers of our Navy have invariably given up deserters from the British Navy or Armies, on the first application; and have a right to expect the same liberality on your part.”
Preble knew full well that the squadron under his command employed large numbers of British-born sailors. It was an open secret among the American officers. Stewart had worried that if the Royal Navy made a policy of demanding all British-born seamen, “many of our men may be claimed on the same principle.” Preble could hardly claim that none of the common seamen under his command had been born in England, Scotland, or Ireland. Instead, he told Gore—in language artfully contrived to evade the point—that “I know of no such person as a British Subject, on board any of the Ships of the Squadron under my command: I know them only as Citizens of the United States, who have taken the Oath of Allegiance to our Government, and have volunteered their Services.”
The point that Preble evaded was this: Did British-born sailors have a right to be naturalized as American citizens? The American government asserted that they did; the British government insisted that they did not. With lawyerly prudence, Preble did not actually admit that some of his men were British-born American citizens. His immediate goal was to recover the deserters and shut off a route of desertion he knew more men were likely to try. Captain George Hart of the Monmouth offered an exchange: all American seamen to be returned from British ships, with “a like number of British seamen” given up in return. This Preble could not do. The U.S. Navy was a volunteer service, and sailors could not be simply handed over to a foreign navy against their will. To do so, Preble realized, would represent a breach of faith with the men under his command.
In his report to Secretary Smith, Preble pointed out the obvious: that the British government claimed rights and privileges it would not recognize in others. “The British make a practice of taking from our Merchant Vessels every man that has not a Protection [a certificate of American citizenship], and very often those who have. What would be said if our Ships of War were to take by force even Americans out of English Merchant Ships?…And why have we not as good a right even to impress from their Ships English Men when destitute of Protections, as they have Americans from Ours?” The answer, as Preble himself knew, was that England had eight hundred ships of war afloat, while the United States, after the downsizing of 1801–02, had fewer than ten.
Midshipman Wadsworth wrote that the English frigates deliberately moored close to the Constitution, as an invitation to deserters. On November 12, a sailor enlisted on the Argus dove into the bay and swam toward the British ship Donegal: a boat picked him up and returned him to the Argus, where he was confined in irons. When junior officers of the two navies met in town, harsh words were exchanged; a British officer reportedly said it was the Royal Navy’s policy to “afford protection to every man who has an opportunity to claim it, and will say he is an Englishman.” On the evening of the nineteenth, a group of American officers from the brig Siren encountered a group of English officers at Bernard’s Tavern. “Some misunderstanding” occurred; but (as one of the Americans reported to his commander) there was “no riot, or other improper conduct…it was confined to the room in which it originated, and has since been amicably and honorably adjusted.”
In the last week before sailing, Preble decided to move the squadron to the opposite side of Gibraltar Bay, near the Spanish town of Algeciras, safely out of swimming range of the British fleet. Here the Constitution lay at anchor for several days under strong breezes and rain, the crew employed in cleaning the ship between the decks.
As the commodore submerged himself in the tedious details of victualling and preparing the squadron for sea, he made an important decision. Previously, Preble had intended that his base of operations would be Malta, because of its proximity to Tripoli. But Malta, like Gibraltar, was a British naval base—and “at Malta the Ships lay so near the shore that it will be impossible to prevent [desertion], which has determined me to make Syracuse…the General rendezvous of the Squadron. It is an excellent harbor, safe and easy of access.” When the Constitution hove up her anchor on the morning of November 14, her destination was Sicily.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After parting with the Constitution in the Straits, the Philadelphia had run up the Spanish coast as far north as Cabo de la Não, and then hauled off to the east, passing south of Majorca and Minorca, through the approaches to the Bay of Tunis, and arriving at the Grand Harbor of Valetta at Malta on October 3, 1803—a passage of fourteen days.
Preble’s orders to Captain William Bainbridge had emphasized that he was to take the Philadelphia to Tripoli as swiftly as she would sail. Once there, he was to maintain a rigorous blockade of the harbor until relieved by the flagship or other vessels in the squadron. He was to remain at Malta no longer than twenty-four hours. Preble was aware that his predecessors had squandered weeks and months in port, and he was determined to keep the squadron at sea as long as possible, especially during the summer months when commercial traffic in the Mediterranean was heaviest.
Philadelphia was reckoned a very fine ship. At 1,240 tons burden, she was a heavy frigate, though not so heavy as the Constitution. Though she was not one of the original six frigates, she might as well have been. She was one of the “subscription” ships, commissioned in a private contract by the merchant community of the city for which she was named, built in 1799–1800 by Joshua Humphreys in the same yard that had launched the United States, and offered as a kind of loan to the navy. In the Quasi War she had captured five French privateers in the West Indies. After the Constitution, she was the largest ship in the Mediterranean Squadron, representing about a third of its total strength.
Bainbridge was twenty-nine years old, six feet tall, and heavyset. His thick, fleshy face was framed by an impressive pair of muttonchops that fell from his ears halfway down his jawline to his chin. He had been born in Princeton, New Jersey, to parents who had remained loyal to England during the Revolutionary War; his father, a physician, had served as a surgeon to a British regiment. Just eight years old at the end of the war, Bainbridge was too young to fully understand his father’s choices and their consequences, but he learned what it meant to have been a loyalist when his family’s property was confiscated after the Peace of Paris.
Among his brother officers, Bainbridge was well liked and respected, both as a gentleman and as a talented seaman. But he was unpopular with the enlisted men. He was a ruthless disciplinarian, even by the standards of the era; he readily admitted that he regarded seamen as inveterate miscreants, unworthy of the slightest courtesy. Once approached by a man who tried to address him respectfully, Bainbridge cut him off, saying: “I don’t allow a sailor to speak to me at all.” In a letter to Preble,
he summed up his view of the men who served before the mast. “I believe there never was so depraved a set of mortals as sailors are. Under discipline they are peaceable and serviceable—divest them of that and they constitute a perfect rabble.”
From his first days at sea Bainbridge had used physical intimidation to enforce shipboard discipline. On most ships, the captain’s dirty work was carried out by the boatswain and his gang of mates; Bainbridge did not hesitate to beat a troublemaker with his own fists. In 1802, Bainbridge had been assailed in print as “a man destitute of reason and humanity” by one John Rea, an ordinary seaman who had served under him in 1800 on the George Washington. If Rea’s twenty-four-page pamphlet was to be believed, Bainbridge had injured a drunken sailor during the voyage by striking him on the head with his sword. Not only did the attack split the unlucky man’s head open, fracturing his skull and sending him into violent convulsions, but the blow was dealt while the victim’s hands and feet were confined in irons. Not satisfied, Bainbridge had afterward ordered the bleeding man seized up at the gangway and flogged. As the punishment was meted out, the captain had allegedly remarked: “I have no compassion on such a damned rascal.”
But Bainbridge’s unpopularity with his men seems to have been founded on something more than his reputation for brutality. It was known throughout the navy that Bainbridge had surrendered the Retaliation to the French in 1798, and then been forced to navigate the George Washington under an Algerian flag in 1800. In both cases he had been subsequently exonerated by courts of inquiry. But seamen were notoriously superstitious, and Bainbridge was dogged by the belief that he was terminally unlucky. To be lucky or unlucky was no small matter in the eyes of a sailor—all sought to sail with a lucky captain, and all would go to great lengths to avoid serving under an unlucky one. The belief that Bainbridge sailed under a dark star—that mishaps, defeats, and ill fortune would inevitably follow him and any ship he commanded—seemed to be widely held among the enlisted men of the navy. Indeed, Bainbridge himself seems to have accepted his unluckiness as inevitable; he often referred to himself as a “child of adversity,” and admitted to Edward Preble that “misfortune has attended me throughout my naval career.”
