The Shores of Tripoli

by James L. Haley

“Yes, sir.” Bliven began carefully sighting his guns on the same spot, midway between two slender buttresses.

  Hamet Pasha and his horde should have been halfway to the west side of the city, waiting on the thunder of the cannon. “Mr. O’Bannon, are you clear on the order of battle? Once the squadron engages the fortress with a few salvos, Mr. Putnam will fire on the wall to make us an opening. The sound of the heavy guns will signal Hamet Pasha to open the assault with his cavalry from the west. Then I will lead you and the marines and the Greeks from this side.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  O’Bannon’s marine returned from the signal fire, which was shooting flames twenty feet into the air. “Sir, our other two ships are moving in, but Mr. Putnam is right, it will be afternoon before they can get here.”

  “Damn.” Eaton sighed. “Well, Mr. Putnam, you must feel rather at home.”

  “How so, sir?”

  “A desperate battle about to begin, and all must wait on the favor of the winds and the currents.”

  Bliven smiled tightly and briefly. “Yes, sir. I mark the similarity.”

  “No wonder the ancients put their faith in sea gods and wind gods, and probably gods of every accident that can happen.”

  “How efficient we are to roll them all up into one, eh?”

  “Are you boys still hungry? Have you eaten sufficient?”

  Bliven and O’Bannon allowed that they had.

  “Well, let us have some more coffee. That is one commodity that this land seems to have in plenty. And we wait.”

  • • •

  THUS NOON CAME AND PASSED, and the officers ate some of the Berbers’ aromatic unleavened bread. “Lookout, sir,” Bliven remarked suddenly, about one-thirty.

  “Well?”

  The marine saluted. “All three ships have joined together and have formed a line to enter the harbor. They should be there in about half an hour.”

  “Very well. Gentlemen, if you are praying men, pray now, for there will be no time very shortly.”

  The water within the mole lay still as glass as the American ships stood in on the fresh landward breeze they had been waiting for. Eaton and O’Bannon formed their men at the top of their hill, and Bliven from his motte of trees observed the scurry of men on the walls of the fortress, limbering and quoining up their guns as others scampered out of fortified doorways with cartridges of powder.

  The bearing of the coast angled gently from west-northwest to east-southeast, with the thin mole stretching its spider arm straight to the east, giving the ships a westward direction into the harbor, straight into the muzzles of the fort’s guns. Hornet and Nautilus dropped anchor and opened their gunports within a hundred yards of them, content to engage in a contest of twelve-pounders. Argus was last in line and dropped her anchor just south of them, positioned to turn her big twenty-fours into the city itself.

  There was no exploratory or ranging fire; their bombardment commenced at two o’clock with full, crushing, almost simultaneous broadsides. Bliven watched intensely for the effects and saw chunks of limestone gouged from low in the fort’s wall, with chunks and chips flying far out into the water, as marked by their splashes.

  Tongues of orange fire, eight of them, spurted from between the crenellations, followed by the slap of their concussion and their reports—somewhat shallower than that from the ships. The cartridges should have been of a standard size, he thought; perhaps their powder was inferior. That suspicion he confirmed when he saw that the first return fire fell short, some fell far short, but two splashes overshot the ships, which made him think that the quality of their powder must be inconsistent; that would be a great advantage.

  The first salvo from Nautilus and Hornet, while they hit the fort, seemed to cause no damaging effect. There was no guessing how thick those walls were. They must have elevated the guns, for the second salvo struck much higher, one ball shattering a crenellation next to one of the Arabs’ guns, the stone chips like musket balls striking down half the gun’s crew, who spun around, arms flung over their heads, and lay still. Unless there were more men able to work the guns, their eight just became seven. The third salvo knocked a second gun from its carriage.

  “Mr. Putnam!” Eaton called down. “You may begin firing.”

  “Yes, sir. Battery! Prime your guns!”

  The Greek and Cypriot gunners looked at him dumbly. “Prime your guns!” he shouted again.

  “We have done that,” protested the one, named Demetriou, who spoke English.

  Eaton saw Bliven’s shoulders sag and laughed. “It’s all right, Lieutenant,” he shouted. “Just have them get on with it.”

  “Yes, sir. Battery, fire!”

  The four howitzers roared to life, and he was satisfied that he had aimed well; he saw the balls strike within fifty feet of each other near the base of the wall, only one having struck the ground first.

  “Reload!” As the crews swabbed and rammed home cartridges and balls and wadding, Bliven sprinted to the two guns on the outside and shifted their aim a degree toward the middle. He judged their elevation adequate, for it was more useful to weaken the wall at its base and bring the whole thing down than merely create a elevated gap that must be scaled.

  Bliven looked up to his left and saw the forces closing tight behind the general, O’Bannon and the eight marines right behind him, the corporal bearing the colors. Behind them were three dozen Greeks under two pretended Greek lieutenants, and two dozen Levantines adding their mass to the force but with no command, and some few Arabs who, lacking horses, could not ride with Hamet Pasha.

  It was not much of a force with which to attack a city wall, and he prayed that this volley would breach it. “Battery, fire!”

  When the balls struck, a thin slice of the curtain of the wall wobbled and fell, revealing the construction rubble of its interior. “Reload!”

  “General,” Bliven called up to him, “I believe one more salvo will give you an entry, if you want to start down.”

  “Very well,” said Eaton, and he raised his sword. “Forward men, quick march, and let’s be on ’em!”

  “Battery!” Bliven glanced over at the nearest cannon, just as one of the Greeks—or Cypriots or Levantines, he could not tell them apart—touched his match to the pan—the same instant that Bliven saw with horror the ramrod still jutting from the barrel. “Stop!” he screamed. “Don’t!”

  There was a spray of fire from the pan that then spouted from the touchhole. Bliven fell flat, his feet toward the gun, and covered his head in the case it should explode. For that second the thought made him sick of having to gather up the parts of their bodies, and resolved even in that second he would not do it, but would make the other Greeks do it.

  The boom rolled over him, but he felt no injury and heard no scatter of debris to tell him that the gun had shattered. When he looked up he saw the gun crew, leaning forward from their cover, gesturing angrily and hurling insults at the city. The gun was intact, but its ramrod was nowhere to be seen. The crew looked at him, astonished and a little disgusted that he had sought cover from the shot; they were utterly oblivious to the risk they had run.

  “Idiots!” Bliven shrieked at them. “Simpering, blithering idiots!” He pounded his head with his open palms and tugged at his hair but did not pull it out. They could not be worth pulling out his hair. “How could you be so stupid!”

  He ran over to them and inspected the gun, which seemed undamaged. Then, in the simplest English and vigorous pantomime, he made them understand that the ramrod was to be withdrawn before the gun was fired. The first crew were laughingly happy to have been corrected from their mistake. Bliven had shouted his warning in time for the other three guns to hold their fire, and the crews shrugged the incident off, content that no real harm had been done. “You other guns”—Bliven raised his hand and flung it down—“fire!” This last salvo struck home on Derna’s
curtain wall, punching a hole through it almost at ground level; the mound of rubble at its base could not have been more than four feet high to have to scale up and over.

  Bliven ceased their fire after that salvo, as Eaton and his men were halfway up the wall and running downslope. Throughout these moments his eardrums had regularly throbbed from the concussion of Nautilus and Hornet reducing the fortress, gun by gun, until the opposing fire ceased. But as he saw Eaton and his men two-thirds of the way to the collapsed wall, he also beheld the fortress’s defenders, with their cannons now useless, streaming out of it and taking up positions in houses near it, ready to let loose on Eaton as they clambered through the wall. There must have been three hundred; it was shocking that the fort could have held so many, and they came boiling out like ants out of a mound. His anxiety only increased as he saw musket barrels begin to protrude from loopholes in their cut stone walls.

  Bliven’s helplessness turned to a cheer as he saw Argus open up with her big twenty-fours on the houses. They were beyond the range of Perry’s twelve-pounders, but a single ball from a twenty-four would bring a whole façade of stone crashing down, killing or at minimum destroying the cover of those within. Argus was only barely large enough to mount twenty-fours; he was not aware whose idea it was to rearm her in such a way, but at this moment it was proving brilliant. At her third deeply rolling salvo, two more houses near the fort collapsed, and the retreat of those soldiers loyal to Mustifa Bey and Yusuf Pasha who had lately streamed out of the fortress now streamed back in.

  Through his glass Bliven observed Eaton mount the rubble, his sword aloft, encouraging O’Bannon and the marines. Old man he may have been, but there was no doubting his courage. They followed him through, fanning out into a small, sparsely shaded square, taking cover behind tree trunks and corners of buildings; then the Greek and Levantine mercenaries, taking cover behind the marines.

  Then suddenly he saw the eruption of musket smoke into the little square from loopholes in the facing houses. By the time the popping rattle of the volley made its way up the hillside, two of the Greeks had toppled over, and one of the marines, caught in sprinting from one sliver of cover to another, flew backward in mid-stride and lay stock still, having never known what hit him.

  He could hear Nautilus and Hornet keeping up a lively fire on the fortress, so Mustifa Bey’s soldiers there would be too engaged to pay Eaton any attention. The danger was from those in the houses facing the square, and the execution they could work on Eaton’s little force, firing from their loopholes before Argus could sight them and root them out.

  For the next moments Eaton was pinned down, and he had too few men to cope with the emergency. With a metallic scrape Bliven withdrew his cutlass from its scabbard and turned to his gunners. He started down the hill, circling the sword over his head as he turned to his gunners. “Come on, boys! Forward! We are needed!”

  He dashed on, and in twenty yards he looked back and saw no one following. Demetriou, the one who spoke English, said, “We shoot cannons. We don’t do that.”

  “Well, you rot in hell!” Bliven screamed back. It was a calculation that took a fraction of a second—he could not go back for them. They would not fight, and there were sixteen of them to his one. If he forced them to follow him, one might cut him down before he ever reached the wall; if he threatened them, it would have been a simple matter for them to kill him, return down the road they had come, and melt back into the mishmash of a culture they came from. But from that moment Bliven settled on it that not one of them would be paid a single copper lepton if he had any sway in the matter.

  He did not fear turning his back on them, for they had no firearms, and he dashed down the slope, each footstep adjusting as it landed on rocks and tufts of grass. At least, he thought, there is no fire coming outside the walls now. He studied through the breach as he approached it, and saw Eaton and most of his men take refuge in a substantial house on the south side of the square; reaching that door became the immediate goal.

  He was through the breach before realizing that he himself had no firearm, but the marine lying dead between him and the door had fallen with one. He altered his direction and flung himself flat on the ground behind the body, scooting the musket out of the way as he worked the man’s belt to remove his packet of cartridges and balls. Of all the puffs of smoke directed at the house where Eaton was sheltered, two came directly at him, and it was almost unnerving to feel the body shudder as the balls struck it; apparently, the Berbers thought they might pass through the corpse to dispatch him as well, but thus far he was fortunate.

  The worst moment was to find himself flat on the ground after those balls struck, face-to-face with the marine. He had seen the bodies of Berbers shattered on board the Tripoli, but this was the first time he had encountered a visage similar to his own, and looked into eyes as blue as his own, and realized that they did not see him in return.

  When he finally was able to pull the packet off the man’s belt, with only his right ear and eye exposed above the corpse’s chest, Bliven observed until it seemed like most of the Berbers facing them must be reloading, and he dashed as he never had before, leaping headlong through the door and rolling on the floor.

  “Putnam!” shouted Eaton. “Good man!”

  “General.” Bliven arranged himself. “What do we do now? How do we proceed?”

  “It is dire, it is dire,” said Eaton with agitation. “Look you, O’Bannon, come here!” They peered through a window of the house, exposing as little of themselves as they could. “There may be a dozen of them in that house, but see, there are scores more giving them a flanking cover from that garden wall on the right, and a couple of hundred more in the houses beyond that. Argus is taking down the houses one at a time, but they don’t know where we are; they are as like to strike us as the enemy. They will not cease fire until they see our colors on the fort, so that must be our object.”

  “Yes,” said Bliven, “I see.” He was dubious, and saw that they all were dubious, even Eaton. Equally he saw that in making such a reckless charge, the reports and future generations would extol their valor, when in truth this was their only hope to avoid annihilation.

  “Look you.” Eaton pointed again. “Most of the loopholes in that house are on the side facing us. When we run, let us run hard around to the front of the house, before they can reposition how to shoot, and the house itself will screen us from most of the garden wall. Do you see?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bliven, and O’Bannon echoed him.

  “When we have done that, if we live, we will repeat the action on the fort. The walls there are too thick for loopholes. We must storm right through the gate so fast that they cannot take us all. But first this house.

  “All right, everyone, hear me, now. Everyone load and prime your muskets, but do not fire until you enter the house, and then shoot the first thing that moves. We may just see the better side of this.”

  They heard the crack of a musket as stone chips scattered from the wall behind them. “Load and prime muskets,” ordered O’Bannon, indicating to Eaton when they were ready.

  Eaton crouched by the door, his saber sheathed and musket in his right hand. “All right?” All the marines and a few of the mercenaries nodded. “Go!”

  Eaton was first out the door, wanting nothing in speed to stay ahead of the younger men behind him. They flew across the courtyard as on their left a volley erupted from house and garden wall together. One of the marines cried out as he was struck and thrown down onto his side in the dirt. Three of the Greeks were similarly struck in the same instant, two attempting to crawl out of harm’s way, the third lying still.

  Once they were across from the front of the house, Eaton’s cry of “Charge!” became more a primal bellow of rage, kept up for several seconds, and taken up by all the rest as they surged toward the house, shouting as though mad to keep their courage up.

  A half-dozen mus
ket reports flashed from the door and windows; Bliven was running immediately behind Eaton when he heard a ball strike; Eaton cried out and dropped his musket as his left hand was thrown down to his side, a bloody hole in his wrist that immediately began draining blood.

  “General!” cried Bliven.

  “Go on! Go on! I’m all right!” With his good right hand Eaton pulled his saber from its scabbard even as his men surged around him, and he took up the charge again. O’Bannon and the marines were all through the door, virtually together, and Bliven braced himself for the explosions of musket shots indoors, but there was nothing.

  He heard doors being kicked open, but heard the marines repeating, “Nothing. Nothing.” They burst through a door to the rear room of the house, and out the window beheld the Berbers leaping like athletes over the garden wall, and they and the others there disappearing at full run into the warren of narrow streets beyond.

  Eaton reached the door, his saber ready and his left arm limp at his side, but O’Bannon met him at the entry. “General, the house is ours. They have fled.”

  “Very well! Very well! Your muskets are still ready?”

  “All of them, yes, sir.”

  “Then we must be on the fort, there is not a moment to lose.”

  “General, your wound!” Bliven saw a cloth lying on a table that he ripped into a strip and bound Eaton’s wrist as tightly as he could, noting the blood, but also noting that there was no spurting or voluminous discharge, so the vessels must be intact.

  “Thank you, Mr. Putnam. Thank you.”

  “General Eaton, sir,” O’Bannon called from the front door, “come look at this!”

  From there they had an oblique view of the back of the fortress, from which they saw what must have been the entirety of the garrison flooding out in a full run, fleeing to refuge in the hive of the city.

  “Well, that is understandable,” said Eaton. “Their cannons have been knocked out. They have no stomach for close combat.”

  A few seconds after what seemed the last of them dashed out, Eaton said, “Men, we must assume there are still some remaining within. We will charge them in close order, just as we did the house. If the inside is ours, find the staircase up to the parapet as fast as you can and hoist our colors. Then we can have some sailors land and see to our needs and our wounded.”