by Ian W. Toll
O’Brien reminded Preble of another important consideration. The Bashaw of Tripoli had reneged on an earlier U.S. treaty. Why should he be trusted not to do so again? For appearance’s sake, he might keep the peace for a year or two, meanwhile turning his corsairs loose on other second-rate commercial powers. But “after they bowed to his caprice it would be our turn again. The result of course will be more frigates in this sea.”
From a variety of sources, Preble gathered intelligence on the nature and extent of Tripoli’s harbor fortifications. By January 1804, the commodore had pieced together a reasonably accurate picture of what he was dealing with. Numerous batteries, altogether comprising 115 guns, commanded various approaches to the harbor. It was said that many of the harbor guns and their carriages were ancient and decrepit, and some were in such a poor state that they could not be fired, even in a salute. Tripoli had always relied upon its fleet of gunboats to defend the harbor, but its gunboats were unrigged and hauled up onto the beach for the winter. The Bashaw evidently did not expect an American attack before the spring.
Using a telescope, William Bainbridge had surveyed Tripoli’s harbor defenses from the roof terrace of the officers’ prison house. Writing in cipher, and forwarding the letters through Consul Nissen to Malta, he warned that the town could not be taken from the sea. “Nature has strongly guarded the Harbor of Tripoli by Rocks and Shoals—the Town is too well fortified for our shipping, by an attack, to make an impression on it…,” he wrote on January 14. “[Yusuf] is only vulnerable to the United States one way; that is by eight or ten thousand men landing near his Town, which in my Opinion would soon become an easy conquest.”
Preble did not have eight or ten thousand men; he did not have a thousand. Total American forces in the Mediterranean amounted to one frigate, one brig, and three schooners—comprising in all about 100 guns and seven hundred men. And the brig, Argus, was stationed at Gibraltar, where she was needed to protect American merchant vessels passing through the Straits. The commodore did not know when—or whether—reinforcements would appear on the western horizon. But Preble’s self-appointed advisers in the diplomatic corps seemed convinced that the commodore was somehow able to call upon vast reserves of ships, manpower, and weaponry, and they offered him their unsolicited tactical advice on how to batter Tripoli into submission. O’Brien envisioned gigantic floating batteries capable of carrying heavy cannon into the inner harbor, where they would “fire on the Town, rake the Marine Sea Battery, and flank the Bashaw’s Palace or Castle.” He urged that Preble ask the government to lose no time in building 74-gun ships, as well as six more large frigates.
Added to Tripoli’s defenses was the frigate Philadelphia (soon to be renamed Gift of Allah), now anchored in the main channel about three fourths of a mile from shore. Most of her guns had been retrieved from the shallow waters into which they had sunk and remounted on the gun and spar decks. It was doubtful that the Tripolitans were capable of rigging and manning the great frigate, and the Bashaw was known to have advertised her for sale to Tunis or Algiers. But so long as she lay in the enemy’s harbor, the Tripolitan ensign at her mizzen peak, her guns mounted and charged, the Philadelphia would serve as a powerful and strategically positioned fortress. Worse, her very existence was a humiliating symbol of American powerlessness in the Mediterranean.
The idea to destroy the Philadelphia seems to have occurred independently to several American officers. Years later they would disagree on who had been the first to propose it. Preble said he resolved to do it the moment he first learned of her capture. “I shall hazard much to destroy her,” he had written Smith in December; “—it will undoubtedly cost us many lives, but it must be done.” From his prison in Tripoli, Bainbridge urged that a small crew of men be sent into the harbor in boats, armed with combustibles. The boats should approach the target surreptitiously, under cover of darkness; if the Tripolitans were surprised, Bainbridge predicted, the firing of the ship “could be easily effected.” Twenty-five year-old Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, commander of the schooner Enterprise, volunteered to take a hand-picked crew and do it himself, and several colleagues later corroborated his claim that the mission had been his initiative.
A FELLOW OFFICER, when interviewed by a biographer years later, attempted to put his finger on the elusive quality that set Stephen Decatur apart. “In Decatur I was struck with a peculiarity of manner and appearance, calculated to rivet the eye and engross the attention. I had often pictured to myself the form and look of a hero, such as my favorite Homer had delineated; here I saw it embodied.” Born in a log cabin in Tidewater Maryland and raised in maritime Philadelphia, Decatur was tall, trim, broad-shouldered, and athletic, with curly dark hair and large, proud brown eyes. His physical magnetism was famous—upon entering a room, resplendent in his blue and gold-laced naval uniform, his mere appearance had been said to cause young women to actually collapse and lose consciousness. No officer of the period better personified the eighteenth-century ideal of the romantic hero. To Decatur, the object of war was personal and national glory, and he sought after both with a single-minded intensity.
There is no doubt that Decatur volunteered to lead the dangerous mission, but he was not the only officer to do so. Among the junior officers of the Jefferson-era navy, the only realistic hope of promotion was to be distinguished in combat, and the Tripolitan War had thus far provided little opportunity. The mission to destroy the Philadelphia, if successful, would transform its participants into national heroes, and the officers could count on being rewarded with rapid promotions. Predictably, Preble was inundated with volunteers. In choosing Decatur to command, the commodore was expressing his confidence that the young lieutenant was capable of leading the expedition to success. But he was also making the implicit judgment that Decatur was worthy of promotion to higher rank—of entering that select society of officers who would make a lifelong career of the navy, and inherit responsibility for its institutional success.
Preble had briefly considered the possibility that the Philadelphia might be “cut out”—recaptured, hastily made ready for sea, and navigated safely out of Tripoli Harbor. But he was deterred by the intelligence he had received of the state of the ship, the harbor defenses, the difficulty of the channel. “I was well informed that her situation was such as to render it impossible to bring her out,” Preble later wrote Secretary Smith, “and her destruction being absolutely necessary to favor my intended operations against that city, I determined the attempt should be made.”
The captured Mastico would carry the raiding party into the enemy’s harbor. No other vessel in the American squadron would do, said Preble, because “our frigates and schooners are so well known, that they create alarm the moment they are seen.” But the native-rigged Tripolitan ketch looked no different from a thousand other small merchantmen that plied the North African coasting trade. She could easily pass for a common trading vessel, inbound to Tripoli to embark a cargo of provisions for the British garrison at Malta. If the ruse succeeded, her approach would arouse no suspicions. She was given a new name, chosen by Preble himself: Intrepid.
On January 30, 1804, Preble ordered the prisoners transferred from the Intrepid to the flagship. The damaged ketch was towed into the inner harbor at Syracuse for repairs. She took on thirty days’ allowance of fresh water and provisions for a crew of seventy-five men.
The commodore wrote out his orders on January 31. Decatur was to transfer his crew from the Enterprise into the Intrepid. The Intrepid would sail in company with the brig Siren, commanded by Lieutenant Charles Stewart, to a rendezvous north of Tripoli. As Siren waited in the offing, Intrepid and the Siren’s boats would steal into the harbor under cover of darkness. “Board the Frigate Philadelphia, burn her, and make your retreat good,” wrote Preble. Before escaping to safety, Decatur must be certain that the ship had been completely and utterly destroyed. The raiding party was to ignite combustibles in the gun room, berth deck, and cockpit storerooms. “After the Ship is well
on fire, point two of the 18-pounders shotted down the Main Hatch and blow her bottom out.”
“The destruction of the Philadelphia is an object of great importance,” Preble added. “I rely with confidence on your Intrepidity & Enterprize to effect it.”
The expedition sailed from Syracuse the evening of Friday, February 3, in moderate breezes and pleasant weather. As a precaution against leaks, the enlisted men had not previously been told the purpose of the mission. The crew of the Siren was called aft and a letter from the commodore, explaining all the details, was read aloud. Afterward, the seamen “were pleased to express their satisfaction, by three hearty cheers.” When the officers asked for volunteers to join the raiding party, every man on board raised his hand.
Intrepid was a slow sailor, and she was taken in tow by the Siren. The weather was unseasonably mild for the first several days of the passage, but as the two vessels reached the offing north of Tripoli on the night of the seventh, the skies were threatening. Another winter gale, much like the one that had nearly done in the Constitution six weeks earlier, was gathering in the north. The Intrepid and Siren anchored in six fathoms of water abreast a line of rocks that formed the outer barrier to Tripoli Harbor. The night was “dark & hazy.” A pilot took a small crew in one of the boats and went to reconnoiter the channel. On returning, he said that “if we attempted to go in we would never come out again for the breakers were tremendously high owing to the late gale.” Decatur decided to sail the Intrepid back into the offing before sunrise, so that she would not be discovered by the Tripolitan lookouts. Siren’s crew tried and failed to win her larboard bower anchor, which was wedged in a rocky bottom—several men were knocked down by the capstan bars and “much injured.” With dawn fast approaching, and the Siren rolling her gunwales under the waves, Stewart finally ordered the cable cut and the anchor sacrificed, and the brig followed the ketch back out to sea, to a distance offshore of about ten miles.
For five days they lay to against the worst conditions the Mediterranean had to offer, carrying scarcely any canvas at all. Owing to her small size and “frail construction,” the Intrepid was wet, overcrowded, and miserable. Pitching and rolling in heavy seas, the crew suffered terribly from seasickness, and even those who could stomach their food were made sick by “an accidental supply of putrid provisions.” The hold was infested with rats and vermin. Morale suffered: some of the men thought the mission was doomed. Because they had shown themselves off Tripoli, they whispered, the enemy was on guard against their attack. Throughout the ordeal, Decatur maintained an appearance of absolute confidence and resolve. By all accounts, his leadership during those wretched five days kept the crew from descending into a state of total despair.
When the gale finally abated on February 12, the Siren and the Intrepid had been separated and driven far to the east. Each vessel navigated back to Tripoli by identifying features of the North African coast—especially Mount Togura, a few miles east of the city. On the fifteenth, the two vessels rendezvoused, and a council of officers was held aboard the Intrepid. Decatur decided the operation would be attempted the following night. Nine men from the Siren, armed with cutlasses, pistols, and muskets, went across in the cutter to join the raiding party aboard the Intrepid.
February 16 dawned with clear and pleasant weather. A fresh breeze sprung up in the afternoon, and Intrepid began her approach to the harbor, flying English colors. No more than six or eight men showed themselves on deck, all disguised in native Maltese clothing. Steering and handling the ketch in a careless and lethargic fashion, they created the illusion that she was a common merchantman—so much so that answering colors were raised over the town’s British consulate. When it seemed as if the Intrepid might reach the harbor before nightfall, Decatur ordered that ladders, buckets, and spars be towed astern to act as drags, slowing her progress. At dusk the wind fell off, the ketch’s speed dropped to 2 knots, and the drags were taken back on board. The Siren, meanwhile, had fallen far behind in the failing breeze, and her boats were late in reaching the mouth of the harbor. Decatur decided that the Intrepid would carry on alone.
She wafted down the channel, pushed along by an almost imperceptible breath of wind on her larboard quarter. Hours passed. The huge stone walls of the Molehead Battery and the Bashaw’s Castle rose up on either side, dimly lit by a crescent moon hanging low in the west. Eighty men were crammed aboard the little ketch, all but a few concealed belowdecks or stretched out prone behind the weatherboards. They were armed to the teeth, silent as the dead.
From the Philadelphia, moored ahead in the channel, the Tripolitan guards scrutinized the approaching vessel. They had no reason to suspect the Intrepid was not exactly what she seemed to be—an ordinary Maltese merchantman. But the Siren had been seen earlier, far out in the offing, and the sight of her had put them on edge.
When the Intrepid came within hailing distance, her Maltese pilot, Salvador Catalano, called out to the guards in Arabic. He told the story that Decatur had invented. The ketch had come to Tripoli to ship a cargo of livestock for the British garrison at Malta. She had suffered badly in the gale, losing both her anchors, and she needed assistance. Could she have permission to make fast to the frigate for the night?
The guards relaxed and assented. The water in the harbor was as smooth as glass, and the wind had all but died off. It did not seem as if the ketch could reach the frigate without being hauled in by a line. A boat was lowered from the Philadelphia and a hawser taken in hand to be rowed out to the ketch. A boat simultaneously put out from the Intrepid. The two boats met and the hawsers were made fast. Men aboard the Intrepid began hauling on the line, hand-over-hand, drawing the ketch closer to the target.
It was the moment of maximum danger. The Philadelphia’s gunports were open and the tompions had been taken out of the guns—she could easily have blown the Intrepid out of the water. As the distance narrowed, the Tripolitans on board the Philadelphia could look down onto the deck of the ketch. One noticed that she had not lost her anchors, as Catalano had claimed—and another caught sight of one of the armed men lying prone on the deck. He cried out: “Americanos!”
Catalano lost his nerve and shouted to Decatur to give the order to board. The lieutenant, seeing there was still a gap between the vessels, answered firmly: “No order to be obeyed but that of the commanding officer.” The crew restrained themselves for a few critical seconds as the Intrepid drifted closer. The guards seemed confused—some shouted that it was a trick, but others remained uncertain. When the ketch was directly alongside, just under the Philadelphia’s forechains, Decatur shouted: “Board!”
“The effect was truly electric,” Surgeon’s mate Lewis Heermann later recalled. “Not a man had been seen or heard to breathe a moment before; at the next, the borders hung on the ship’s side like cluster bees; and, in another instant, every man was on board the frigate.”
The rail was 10 or 12 feet higher than the Intrepid’s, so the men had to climb the hull as if scaling a rampart. Decatur leapt first and clung to the fore chains: eighty men were just behind him. So quick and tightly choreographed was the assault that by the time the commander slipped over the bulwark, the frigate’s decks were already swarming with attackers. Some came over the rail; others darted in through the gun ports. To keep the noise to a minimum, they worked with edged weapons only: swords, pikes, and knives. No shots were fired.
The battle for possession of the Philadelphia was short and savage. Taken by surprise, the Tripolitans made a feeble and halfhearted defense. Some ran to the forecastle and others to the starboard rail, “whooping and screaming” as they went. A dozen or so scrambled into a boat and rowed to safety. Most simply leapt overboard and swam toward the beach. About twenty men turned on their attackers and fought. As a reward for their courage, they were slashed, hacked, and stabbed, and their ruined bodies thrown into the harbor. The raiding party took only one prisoner, and he was so badly lacerated that he was not expected to live through the night. One America
n was slightly wounded, none killed.
In ten minutes the fighting was over, and Decatur gave the order to destroy the Philadelphia. Like every other aspect of the mission, the firing of the ship had been meticulously planned in advance. The raiding party separated into squads, each assigned to set fire to a different section. Each squad carried a single lighted lantern and each man a three-inch length of spermaceti candle soaked in turpentine. Combustibles were passed from the Intrepid up to the deck of the Philadelphia. The squads took them below and planted them in the storerooms, gun room, cockpit, and berth deck. All was ready in minutes. Decatur walked back along the spar deck from forward to aft, pausing at each hatchway to shout: “Fire!” Each man lit his candle at the lantern and ignited the combustibles.
The conflagration spread so rapidly that the men had to scramble up the ladders to escape. The lower decks, said Heermann, were soon “enveloped in a dense cloud of suffocating smoke.” One officer was nearly trapped on the orlop deck when flames spread across the berth deck, above his head, and filled the after hatches with smoke. He ran toward the bow and went up the forward ladders. Decatur waited until the last of his men had climbed down to the deck of the Intrepid, and then followed. Flames were roaring out of the hatchways “in volumes as large as their diameters would allow.”
As soon as the lieutenant was aboard, the men worked frantically to fend off before the ketch was consumed. The bow hawser was thrown off and the Intrepid began to fall astern, with her main boom running afoul of the frigate and her jib sail flapping dangerously close to the flames. The stern hawser jammed and men raced to cut it with their swords. Long oars were brought up to be used as poles to fend the vessel off, but the fire sucked in air from every direction and the Intrepid was repeatedly drawn back. Finally, Decatur sent a crew to take one of the boats ahead to tow the ketch’s bow around. Her sails filled and she began to make way.