4
The Barbary War: A Steep Price for Peace
Chambers of Abd al-Rahman
London, England
March 28, 1785
The ambassador shifted in his seat. It had been twenty minutes and mysterious odors were beginning to waft into the waiting room from the kitchen. He impatiently glanced at the Arabic script and mosaic tiles covering the walls and heard his stomach growl. He missed his Virginia plantation and the meals his slaves cooked for him.
The ambassador was a man of contradictions. He was a revolutionary, but he’d never fired a gun in anger. He was a profligate spender and chronic debtor, but he hated government expenditures and fought ferociously against a national debt. And he was a well-known slaveholder, who was also his country’s most eloquent advocate for liberty and equality.
The only contradiction that currently mattered, however, was Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward the ongoing hostage crisis in the Mediterranean. Hundreds of American sailors, the victims of pirates backed by petty dictators on the Barbary Coast, were languishing in North African prisons. These pirates had also confiscated thousands of dollars’ worth of ships and goods. Jefferson hated the Europeans’ policy of ransoming their hostages and buying peace by bribing the marauders, but he was equally distrusting of the strong central government that would be required to build a navy strong enough to protect American commerce with force.
At last, a figure approached, silhouetted against the arched hallway. Jefferson stood and turned his tall, thin figure toward Abd al-Rahman, the personal representative of the Pasha of Tripoli, Ali the First. Though nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, Tripoli was a quasi-independent state that, like Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, had been harassing American ships.
Rahman wore a flowing white robe and dark turban. His scarred and pocked face reflected the brutal land he’d left behind. After some brief pleasantries, Rahman turned to the matter at hand, alternating his language between Italian, Spanish, and French, depending on which word he remembered first as he struggled to translate from his native Arabic. “The United States is our enemy,” he said, with a candor Jefferson had not been expecting. “Peace is possible, but peace has a price. One hundred eighty-three thousand guineas, to be exact. Otherwise, we will extract our fee by continuing to pillage your ships.”
Jefferson converted guineas to dollars in his head. The total owed to Tripoli and the surrounding Barbary States would approach $1 million. That was one-tenth the entire annual budget of the United States.
“Monsieur Rahman, our countries are being drawn toward a universal and horrible war,” Jefferson replied in flawless French, speaking slowly to make sure the Pasha’s envoy understood him. “We have no interest in sending soldiers across the Atlantic to fight your men.”
Rahman took a deep breath. He understood Jefferson’s words just fine but doubted that the young republic this man represented was really prepared to stand behind them. Far larger nations with far stronger militaries had chosen to pay for peace. He had no doubt that this one would as well.
“It is written in the Koran,” Rahman said, “that all nations without acknowledged Islamic authority are sinners. As Muslims, it is our right and duty to make war upon whomever we can find and to make slaves of all we can take as prisoners.”
Jefferson knew before he’d even arrived that he, as the United States Ambassador to France, was unlikely to succeed where the Ambassador to Britain, his friend John Adams, had already tried and failed. And now, as he listened to Rahman lecture him about the Koran and infidels and slaves, Jefferson knew he’d been right.
Dartmouth College
Five years later: August 1, 1790
There was no doubt that William Eaton liked the girl. He probably even loved her. But the line between love and infatuation was a bit too fine for the twenty-six-year-old recent college graduate. He had courted her, kissed her, and proposed to her. He would gladly promise to love her and honor her. But he wouldn’t obey her. Frankly, he wasn’t ready to obey anyone. So when this girl, his college sweetheart, said she’d only marry him if he promised to stay in New England and forgo his plans of returning to the army, he had no choice but to give up on her.
“My dear,” he said, kissing her cheek, “no man will hereafter love you as I do—but I prefer the field of Mars to the bower of Venus.”
A few years later, William Eaton joined the U.S. Army.
Washington, D.C.
Eleven years later: March 4, 1801
The inaugural address was eloquent. How could it not be? Even the new president’s fiercest enemies—he had many of them—had to admit that Thomas Jefferson had a way with words.
“We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,” he told the audience gathered in the Senate chamber that day. The high-minded sentiment was quintessential Jefferson.
As Jefferson took office, a familiar problem nagged at him. His meeting with the Pasha’s representative sixteen years earlier had only led to another in a long line of expensive bribes. By 1801, the young republic was spending approximately 20 percent of its annual budget paying off the Barbary dictators. It sent ships brimming with gold, precious stones, lumber, spices, cannons, and powder in return for safe passage, but the bribes only invited even more aggression. Ships were still being captured, loot confiscated, and sailors held hostage for ransom.
The Barbary appetite for riches was apparently insatiable.
Jefferson distrusted the Barbary dictators and disliked appeasing them. He believed that war was, in the long run, more economical and more honorable than bribery. He knew there was no end to the demand for money, nor any security in their promises. Blackmail, he believed, would have to be replaced by gunpowder and cannonball.
But Jefferson’s actions were not always as resolute as his words. As George Washington’s secretary of state, he had personally overseen a policy of ransom and tribute to the Barbary states. As the champion of rural farmers, he had long opposed the creation of a navy and, in fact, was planning to decommission warships built to patrol the Barbary Coast. The budget, after all, had to be balanced.
Tunis
May 15, 1801
The short, muscular consul to Tunis was, after all these years, still looking for another fight. As a boy, the excitable lad had run away from home to fight the British. As a young man, he had chosen the U.S. Army over his would-be fiancée. And now, after service in the Indian war, a court-martial for disobedience, and a dishonorable discharge from the army, William Eaton had a new war in mind. This would be a war to accomplish a task America had never before tried: regime change.
Eaton’s mood today was even more bellicose than usual. The blue-eyed, bulldog-faced consul had just heard news of an attack on the American consulate in Tripoli. Without a Tripolitan Congress to pass an official declaration of war, the Pasha’s soldiers had followed their traditional process of chopping down the flagpole at the U.S. consulate.
For the first time in its history, America found itself at war in a foreign land.
William Eaton could not have been happier.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Two years later: June 13, 1803
William Ray was having a bad run of luck. Over the past few years, he had lost a string of jobs as a newspaper editor, schoolteacher, and general-store owner. Then, to top it all off, he’d found his girlfriend in the arms of a stranger—a Frenchman who, unbeknownst to Ray, was her husband.
After heavy drinking at a succession of pubs, the morose, frail thirty-four-year-old stumbled down to the banks of the Delaware River. His life a mess, he was ready to drown himself in the river’s muddy waters but something made him pause. It was a noise, distant but steady: the beating of a drum.
His curiosity piqued, Ray looked down the river in the direction of the sound. Through the fog he saw the hulking outline of the largest warship he had ever seen. Perhaps because he could think of nothing better to do, or perhaps because he wasn’t yet ready to meet his maker, Ray staggered along the riverbank toward the ship.
When he neared his destination—a thirty-eight-gun frigate with U.S.S. PHILADELPHIA stenciled in large letters on its side—he discovered a man in a blue and red uniform standing on the dock looking for recruits. “See the world!” shouted the Marine over the banging of the recruiting drum. “Serve your country and see the world!”
At the time, there were fewer than five hundred United States Marines, and it was not difficult to see why. Their pay was the lowest in the American military; their duties—mainly policing sailors and preventing mutiny—were the least glamorous; and their nickname was curious: leathernecks. The term had come from their dress uniforms, which included tall, stiff leather collars that made it difficult for a Marine to turn his head, or, more important, to lose it to the blade of a Barbary pirate’s saber.
At that moment, however, none of those things really mattered to William Ray. Guaranteed meals, shelter, and a distraction from his duplicitous girlfriend were all the compensation he needed.
What do I have to lose? he thought as he shook hands with the Marine and boarded the ship for a personal tour.
Washington, D.C.
July 1, 1803
Thomas Jefferson rubbed his temples. The candles didn’t shed enough light to prevent his aging eyes from straining, and it was starting to give him a headache. Everyone else in the executive mansion had already gone to bed.
Jefferson had spent the day wrangling with the domestic problems of state, but by evening he had turned his attention to international troubles. Chief in his mind was the situation on the Barbary Coast. It had been more than two years since the Pasha attacked the U.S. consulate in Tripoli and declared war on them, and, so far, the American war effort was going nowhere.
The first squadron Jefferson sent to blockade the enemy port had returned before its timid leader even put up much of a fight. The second squadron’s leader, a dilettante named Commodore Richard Morris, had spent more time at parties than at sea. All the while, gold and hostages kept disappearing into the black hole that was Tripoli.
Now what? Jefferson heard the advice of his bitterly divided cabinet members in his head. Robert Smith, his hawkish Secretary of the Navy: “Nothing but a formidable force will effect an honorable peace with Tripoli.” Albert Gallatin, his dovish Secretary of the Treasury, had the opposite view: “I sincerely wish you could empower our negotiators to give, if necessary for peace, an annuity to Tripoli.”
Jefferson rubbed his temples again. Damned pirates, he thought. We have enough problems to worry about here. From debates over the size of the national debt and tensions with some American Indian tribes, to congressional ratification of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson already had his hands full domestically.
After a few more torturous minutes Jefferson made a decision: He’d send one more squadron. He had heard good things about a frigate christened the USS Philadelphia. The name was a good sign: Philadelphia was where the colonies had voted to take a stand against tyranny; perhaps the Philadelphia would finally take a stand against piracy. In either case, Jefferson was determined to not go down in history as the first American president to lose a war.
Mediterranean Sea
Off the North African Coast
Aboard the USS Philadelphia
October 31, 1803
The wooden decks were bleached white from the hot Mediterranean sun. The sails on the three masts strained against the riggings in the stiff breeze off the Sahara. The yellow sands of North Africa that stretched endlessly south were now just a mile or two away.
These were the shores of Tripoli.
William Ray had heard all the stories about the desolation, the punishing climate, and the inhospitable people—many of whom were Muslim holy warriors who made no secret of their hostility to infidels.
Three months at sea had taken a toll on the crew of the Philadelphia. Morale was dragging and brotherly love was in short supply. The salt tack was mealy and the grog perilously low. The holds emanated a pungent stench of old seawater, rotten fish, and body odor, all tinged with excrement. The smell generated by 307 men crammed into three decks on a 157-foot vessel made many sailors retch and heave. They grumbled in hushed tones about making it back home before Christmas and before the winter gales off Greenland made the long voyage even more hellish.
Making matters worse, the men felt useless. Like all the troops fighting in the war against Tripoli, they had done little to assert American power, free American hostages, or protect American ships. The men of the Philadelphia were fighting in a war stuck in the mud.
Ray, lost in thought as he stared off at the distant shore, heard a shout from the crow’s nest. “Enemy ship ahead, port side!” He looked to the left, and saw, a mile or so in the distance, the Philadelphia’s prey: a small ship flying the colors of Tripoli. This, no doubt, was one of the marauders guilty of harassing merchant vessels in the area. There had been little fighting during the Philadelphia’s three months at sea. Now, William Ray thought, adrenaline coursing through his veins, perhaps that was about to change.
The eighteen cannons along the leeward side were locked into position as the Philadelphia quickly closed the distance to the enemy ship. “Full speed ahead!” ordered the captain.
They were close enough for Ray to now make out the panicked faces aboard the Tripolitan vessel ahead. These pirates knew what was about to happen next: the Philadelphia would pull alongside and unleash a fierce volley of cannonballs that would tear into them and likely send their ship to the bottom of the Mediterranean.
A smile formed on William Ray’s face as he thought of all the terror these pirates had inflicted on his countrymen. This would be payb—CRACK! His thoughts were interrupted by the piercing sound of splintering wood. The Philadelphia lurched to a stop, Ray and the sailors around him spilling forward from the sudden reversal of momentum, some falling over onto the deck and into the ocean below.
Ray looked over the side of the warship and saw a vast reef in the shallow water. They were stuck—dead in the water.
The Tripolitan pirates in their smaller, lighter ship had known the reef was there and had baited the Philadelphia right into it.
Ray looked back at the pirates and realized instantly that he’d been wrong: It wasn’t panic he had seen on their faces.
It was anticipation.
Tripoli
Two months later: December 25, 1803
After the Philadelphia had beached itself on the reef, Tripolitan ships had surrounded it, leaving the captain no option except surrender. Relieved of their uniforms, the sailors and Marines were brought, naked and shivering, into port and jailed. The Pasha of Tripoli renamed the ship The Gift of Allah.
William Ray and hundreds of other U.S. sailors and Marines were his prisoners.
Now, almost two months into their captivity, Ray stood with an empty stomach in the bitterly cold ocean, shoveling sand from the seafloor. The Pasha’s cruel slave masters seemed to take joy in the prisoners’ suffering. Each day, from sunrise through midafternoon, the Americans were kept in the ocean without so much as a morsel of bread. When men fainted from exhaustion, the guards beat them until they somehow found the strength to rise again.
In the afternoon, the sailors and leathernecks were usually given some water and black bread. As they ate, Ray and the others tried everything possible to get warm, from clapping their hands to running in place. They were then returned to the freezing water to work until sunset. Bed was a stone floor covered in tiny rocks. They slept in the same cold, wet clothes they worked in.
William Ray had not always been a praying man, but on this night his plea was solemn and sincere. “Dear God,” he whispered, “I pray that I might never experience the horrors of another morning.” Ray thought back to that night on the bank of the Delaware River and wished that instead of turning his head toward the sound of the drum, he’d stuck it under the rushing water.
Mediterranean Sea
Off the North African Coast
Aboard the USS Essex
February 16, 1804
Stephen Decatur paced from starboard to port and back, unable to hide his anxiety. His commodore had asked him to undertake a suicide mission. Always the loyal officer, Decatur hadn’t hesitated to accept. When he asked his crew for volunteers, none of them had hesitated, either.
“We are now about to embark on an expedition which may terminate in our sudden deaths, our perpetual slavery, or our immortal glory,” he said to the sixty-seven men gathered on the deck of the USS Essex.
At sunset that evening, Decatur and his men—all dressed as Maltese sailors—left their frigate and boarded an aptly named ketch called the Intrepid. The Intrepid would attract less notice than the Essex both because of its smaller size and because, as a ketch that had been previously captured from the enemy, it would not look to the Tripolitans like a threat.
The course was set for the port of Tripoli, only a few miles in the distance. At nine thirty the silhouette of the city’s ramparts, dimly lit by lanterns, appeared on the horizon. A few minutes after that, the three masts of the captured USS Philadelphia, now The Gift of Allah, came into view. They glided silently forward, knowing that if Tripoli’s sentries were alerted they didn’t stand a chance.
“Man hua?” a voice cried out. Who goes there?
Decatur didn’t speak any Arabic, but his helmsman did. He yelled back that they were Maltese traders seeking port for the night.
“Tayyib.” Very well.
With the wind dying down in port, the sixty-foot ketch coasted on its own momentum toward the docks. Its destination was not, however, any slip.
It was the Philadelphia.
Silent, except for the heavy breathing of the crew and the lapping of water against the hull, the ketch maneuvered alongside the great warship. It’s a shame it has come to this, Decatur thought.
His men grabbed the cannon nozzles of the Philadelphia and affixed ropes to the hull.
“Board now,” Decatur whispered. The sailors clambered over the gunnels.
“Amreeki!” Shouts rang out from ship—Americans! Twenty Tripolitan guards on board the Philadelphia had seen Decatur’s men. They were swiftly silenced with muskets, but the secret was out.
Decatur’s men turned the Philadelphia’s great cannons toward the city, launching volley after volley and making quick work of the clay and brick buildings in port. Then they lit a fuse to the ship’s store of gunpowder and jumped back aboard the ketch.
Whether it was called the Philadelphia or The Gift of Allah, the once-mighty warship, now burning from bow to stern, would soon be of no further use to anyone.
U.S. Capitol
Washington, D.C.