Perilous Fight

by Stephen Budiansky

  On the other hand, that very dependency on the American trade had quickly translated into a swaggering contempt on the part of Preble’s young officers for local law and authority. It was an attitude unintentionally encouraged by Preble himself, who had set the tone with his own high-handed impatience with the mostly innocent pettifogging of the local governor, an indecisive man who brought out the worst of the commodore’s temper. Preble so cowed the poor man that the Americans were soon a law unto themselves. All an American officer had to do was utter the magic words “I shall inform the commodore.” Disciplining the cocky Americans ultimately fell to the commodore himself, who was distracted by a thousand other details. In the end he admitted somewhat helplessly that “great irregularities have been committed by some of our officers” and passed the problem on to his successor, saying he hoped the new commander might “make an example” of some of the worst offenders.

  But the town was also frankly dangerous, as well as dreary, filthy, wretchedly poor, and depressingly decayed from its ancient grandeur of classical times. Mobs of beggars followed the Americans in the streets; at night gangs of cutthroats marauded more or less at will. Lieutenant Stephen Decatur and Midshipman Thomas Macdonough were returning to their ship, the brig Enterprize, one night not long after the Americans’ arrival when they were accosted by three armed men in a narrow street. The officers drew their swords and, keeping their backs to a wall, fought off their attackers, wounding two. All three of the assailants then fled, and Macdonough chased one of the men into a nearby house and up to the roof, where the man tried to escape capture by leaping to the ground—killing himself in the fall.

  The Sicilian nobility did not wear well either. They kept up a show of ostentation, but soon there was a story making the rounds about the dinner party given by Lieutenant Decatur aboard the Enterprize during which one of the guests, a Baron Cannarella, was intercepted by Decatur’s servant as he was about to slip two silver spoons into his pocket. (The servant held out his tray and deadpanned, “When you have done looking at them, sir?”)13

  It would be months before Preble’s urgent request for reinforcements, especially a frigate to replace the Philadelphia, could reach Washington and be acted on, and so his reduced squadron, now consisting of one frigate, two eighteen-gun brigs, and three schooners, settled in for the winter, biding their time in their less than completely easy new home.

  But something was afoot; a careful observer could see the commodore was in a state of expectant tension as the new year began. On February 3, 1804, Preble wrote to several of the American consuls in the Mediterranean and to Secretary of the Navy Smith, informing them that he had somewhat surprisingly decided to condemn, and take into his service as a lawful prize, a vessel he had stopped and boarded off Tripoli in late December. She was a ketch, a tall two-masted vessel, fore and aft rigged like a schooner. Though sailing under Ottoman colors when Preble had halted her, her crew had acted more than a little suspiciously—showing outright panic when the Constitution revealed herself to be American, hauling down the false British colors she had been flying and raising the Stars and Stripes in their place. On searching the ketch, the Constitution’s boarding party had found sidearms and clothes apparently belonging to officers of the Philadelphia.

  Since then, a Maltese merchant captain who had been in Tripoli harbor the day the Philadelphia was taken had come forward; Salvador Catalano told Preble that he had seen the very same ketch haul down her Turkish colors, raise the Tripolitan flag, and take aboard a hundred soldiers, then make her way out to the stranded Philadelphia, where she led the way, plundering and taking the American crew prisoner.

  American navy department regulations required prizes to be sent back to the United States for adjudication and condemnation by a prize court, but Preble brushed that aside, pointing out in his dispatches that “there cannot be the smallest doubt of her being a lawful prize” and that in any case—and this had lame excuse written all over it—“she is not a proper Vessel to cross the Atlantic at this season of the year.”14

  The crew, and forty-two slaves who were being shipped in her hold, were removed from the ketch, and soon the vessel was a beehive of activity. Lieutenant Decatur was seen leading daily work parties of his officers and men: towing her to the mole; ferrying boatloads of weapons, muskets, cutlasses, boarding pikes, and tomahawks from the Constitution; bringing up two guns from the hold. The commodore was now calling the ketch the Intrepid. On January 31, Preble ordered Lieutenant Charles Stewart to prepare his eighteen-gun brig Syren for a cruise and be ready to sail “as soon as the Signal is made.”15

  On the same day that Preble had written the American consuls of his decision to condemn the ketch as a lawful prize, the Constitution’s sailing master, Nathaniel Haraden, noted in his logbook: “Towards evening sailed the Syren and the Prize. The prize was commanded by Capt Decatur and had on board 70 of the Enterprizes men and Officers. Six Officers from the Constitution were also on board her. They stood out to the Southd and are bound on some Secret Expedition.”16

  · · ·

  STEPHEN DECATUR Jr. was young, twenty-five years old, but he had already made a mark for himself in the American navy as a natural leader, one who inspired men rather than bludgeoned them into doing their duty. Brought up in Philadelphia, the political and maritime capital of the young nation, son of a captain of the American navy who commanded the Philadelphia during the Quasi War with France, Decatur perfectly looked the part of the dashing naval officer. Tall, trim, broad-shouldered, an excellent shot, a strong swimmer, a good horseback rider, with a mop of curly dark hair, slightly rakish sideburns, and puppy-dog brown eyes, he was the stuff nineteenth-century heroes were made of. He was also known for an aversion to corporal punishment as a means of discipline in an age when that was the norm, and was “proverbial among sailors, for the good treatment of his men,” said one marine private who hadn’t a good word to say about anyone else.17 Preble had singled out Decatur for this job, taking a chance on a man who had not yet distinguished himself with any great feat but who seemed to have the drive and dash that it would take.

  Ten days went by with no word or sign.

  On February 12, unable any longer to hide his apprehensions of disaster, Preble ordered a lookout posted on the masthead of the Constitution to keep watch for Decatur’s or Stewart’s return.

  Another week passed; then, at ten in the morning on the nineteenth, a Sunday, there they were, both American ships, running into the harbor. Atop the Constitution three numeric signal flags, no doubt long at the ready, flashed out at once: 2-2-7.

  A tense minute passed as the Syren’s signal officer flipped through the signal book to locate the meaning—“Business or enterprise, have you completed, that you was sent on?”—and assembled an answering hoist. And then the flags Preble had been waiting for broke forth gloriously on the Syren’s peak: 2-3-2, “Business, I have completed, that I was sent on.”18

  The commodore spent much of the rest of the day pouring out his relief in a flood of correspondence, beginning with a letter to the secretary of the navy, to whom he could convey the first good news he had had for nearly a year.

  At 10 AM the Syren and Ketch Intrepid arrived from the coast of Tripoly after having executed my orders highly to my satisfaction, by effecting the complete destruction of the Frigate late the Philadelphia in the Harbour of Tripoly on the night of the 16th Inst by burning her with all her Materials. The Frigate was moored in a situation from whence she could not be brought out. Of course it became an object of the first importance to destroy her. It has been effected by Lieut Decatur and the Officers and Crew under his command in the most gallant manner. His conduct and that of his brave Officers and Crew is above all praise.

  Later that day the commodore dashed off a second letter to Secretary Smith.

  Sir,

  Lieutenant Decatur is an Officer of too much Value to be neglected. The important service he has rendered in destroying an Enemy’s frigate of 40 Guns, and
the gallant manner in which he performed it, in a small vessel of only 60 Tons and 4 Guns, under the Enemy’s Batteries, surrounded by their corsairs and armed Boats, the crews of which, stood appalled at his intrepidity and daring, would in any Navy in Europe insure him instantaneous promotion to the rank of post Captain. I wish as a stimulus, it could be done in this instance; it would eventually be of real service to our Navy. I beg most earnestly to recommend him to the President, that he may be rewarded according to his merit.19

  Preble’s elation—an ebullition of joy rather than temper, for once—only increased as the full details of Decatur’s feat became known. It was a coup of the first order, a model naval operation, a redemption after months of shame.

  The two ships had left Syracuse in company in a moderate breeze and pleasant weather at five p.m. on the third, the small and none too strongly built Intrepid at one point taken under tow by the Syren as they cleared the southernmost reach of the harbor.

  On board the Intrepid was a crew of sixty-four volunteers from the Enterprize, along with all of the Enterprize’s officers, among them Midshipman Macdonough; Decatur’s second in command, Lieutenant James Lawrence; and Lieutenant Joseph Bainbridge, brother of the Philadelphia’s now imprisoned captain. From the Constitution Preble had sent five midshipmen, including nineteen-year-old Charles Morris, to complete the company. Salvador Catalano, the Maltese merchant captain who had confirmed the ketch’s identity and who knew Tripoli harbor well, had volunteered to serve as pilot. Surgeon’s mate Lewis Heermann, who had been confidentially informed of the mission in advance and asked by Decatur for an official report on any men or officers who ought to be excluded for physical causes, begged to be allowed to go along too. Decatur had proposed having Heermann sail on the Syren, which was to stand outside Tripoli harbor during the actual attack, but Heermann argued he’d be of more use accompanying the men directly into action, where his “professional services might be the most useful.” Decatur at last relented, so long as the doctor promised to “get into a place of safety” on the ketch “in the moment of danger.” Heermann replied that he considered “the permission you have given me to go in as an order.”20

  Only after they were under way did the crews finally learn their true destination: the cover story Preble had put out was that they were bound for Malta so the Intrepid could be rerigged. On board the Syren all hands were mustered at nine the following morning and the commodore’s orders read aloud. They would “proceed with all possible dispatch for the Coast of Tripoly.” Before nearing the coast they were to disguise the brig “to give the appearance of a Merchant Vessel”: striking down the topgallant masts that unmistakably marked a man-of-war, repainting her sides with a new color, housing the guns and shutting the gunports, concealing her deck with quarter cloths. The Intrepid, less likely to raise suspicion, would make its way into the harbor first under cover of night, supported by the Syren’s boats; on reaching the Philadelphia, they would board and burn her, having equipped themselves with “combustibles” for the purpose. Since “on boarding the Frigate it is probable you will meet with Resistance,” the commodore cautioned, “it will be well in order to prevent alarm to carry all by Sword.”

  He concluded: “The destruction of the Frigate is of National importance, and I rely with confidence on your Valor Judgment & Enterprize in contributing all the means in your power to effect it. Whatever may be your success you will return if possible directly to this place.

  “May the Almighty take you under his protection and prosper you in this Enterprize.”

  The crew let out three hearty cheers. When Stewart asked for volunteers from the Syren’s crew to take part in the actual attack, the entire crew stepped forward.21

  THE PASSAGE to Tripoli was miserable. The Intrepid was barely seaworthy. Conditions aboard would have been bad under the best of circumstances, but crowded with a vastly larger crew than she was ever intended to carry, the ketch bordered on the uninhabitable. Decatur, the three lieutenants, and the surgeon were packed into the tiny cabin; the six midshipmen and the pilot slept on a platform laid atop the water casks on one side of the hold, with barely enough room to squeeze in under the deck; the eight marines occupied a corresponding arrangement on the other side; and the men were left to their own devices to find a place among or on the casks. The officers had embarked with less than an hour’s notice and been told to bring only a single change of clothing. “To these inconveniences were added … the attacks of innumerable vermin, which our predecessors the slaves had left behind them,” recalled Midshipman Morris. The ship’s provisions, also hastily loaded, turned out to be putrid when the casks were opened.

  Still, spirits were high, the weather was unusually fair and mild, and the afternoon of February 7, 1804, found the two ships approaching their destination. But there were already indications of a coming gale; the wind was out of the west and freshening. When Morris and Catalano went ahead in a boat to scout the approach to the harbor, they found the surf breaking right across the narrow harbor entrance, hemmed in by a series of menacing shoals and reefs, and Catalano declared that “if we attempted to go in we would never come out again.” Decatur ordered the attack called off, and with the wind shifting to the north and mounting quickly to gale force, the ships had to laboriously tack their way windward through the night to be out of sight of the town when dawn broke. The Syren’s anchor was wedged so tight in the rocky bottom it took half the night to try to haul it in; three times the men at the capstan were knocked down by the bars, and several were seriously injured when the cable parted under the strain. In the end, the brig rolling up to its gunwales and daylight approaching, Stewart ordered the cable cut and the anchor left behind. And then the wind began to blow in earnest.22

  For four days they were blown eastward, scudding on nearly bare poles, the crew so sick most of the time that they didn’t have to worry about contending with their rotten food. The gale finally blew itself out on the tenth, and then began an arduous five days of working back westward. The storm, the hardships on board, the disappointment of the abandoned first attempt were beginning to take their toll. Morale was dropping dangerously; they had surely been seen from shore by now, the men were saying; the town would be thoroughly alarmed and the Philadelphia so heavily guarded that they didn’t stand a chance.

  On the fifteenth they were again nearing Tripoli. Again the attempt had to be abandoned as night fell before they had come close enough to catch sight of the town and take a bearing; it was now impossible to find the harbor entrance in the dark.

  The morning of the sixteenth of February began with light winds, pleasant weather, and a smooth sea: an auspicious start. The two vessels kept far apart during the day. Now the timing was critical; Decatur aimed to reach the harbor entrance just after dark while not arousing suspicions by obviously loitering outside the harbor. “The lightness of the wind allowed us to keep up all appearance of an anxious desire to reach the harbor before night,” recalled Morris; all sail set, to aid the deception a drag of spars, lumber, and ladder was dropped astern to further check their speed. The Intrepid aimed to pass as a Maltese trader, flying English colors; the crew was now completely concealed below save a half dozen on deck dressed in Maltese garb. As the sun set behind the white walls of the city and castle, the Intrepid was two miles from the eastern entrance of the harbor, the Syren about three miles behind. In the last glow of light they saw the English consul’s house along the shore raise the English colors in recognition of theirs.

  The plan was to drop anchor under cover of dark and wait for the boats of the Syren to come up before entering the harbor. But the wind was now dropping rapidly, and Decatur began to fear that unless he went ahead at once there would not be enough wind to carry the Intrepid in at all. Observing that “the fewer the number the greater the honor,” he gave orders to proceed without the planned reinforcements.

  The wind wafted them slowly into the harbor, a crescent moon barely lighting the looming batteries of the forts t
hat ringed the shoreline, the water smooth. Then the Philadelphia came into view, anchored just four hundred yards from the castle, seven hundred yards from the battery on the molehead, with a few smaller ships nearby. The Intrepid made straight for the frigate, her crew now stretched out on the deck, swords, axes, pikes at the ready. “At last the anxious silence was broken by a hail … demanding our character and object,” Morris recalled. Catalano, speaking in Arabic, answered that they had come from Malta to load cattle for the British garrison there, and they had lost their anchor in the gale. Could they tie up to the frigate for the night? Permission was granted.

  Catalano kept up a running conversation as the gap between the two ships narrowed. The guard on the frigate asked what the other large ship was that they had seen in the offing. Catalano replied it was the Transfer, a brig that the pasha had purchased from the British in Malta, and which the Tripolitans were expecting.

  Just as the Intrepid was about to make contact alongside the Philadelphia, the wind shifted, blowing directly from the frigate, sending the ketch about twenty yards off. “This was a moment of great anxiety,” Morris remembered. “We were directly under her guns, motionless and powerless, except by exertions which might betray our character.” But the Intrepid was towing one of the Syren’s boats, which had been sent over a few days earlier, and with a coolness that bordered on the preternatural, the boat was “leisurely manned” and rowed toward the frigate carrying a line. They were met by a boat from the frigate with another rope, and the two lines were made fast; the Intrepid’s boat returned, and the rope was passed onto the deck where the crew, still hidden, began hauling in the line as they lay facedown, slowly closing the distance between the vessels once again.