Six Frigates

by Ian W. Toll

  By the first week of June, both frigates had anchored in Hampton Roads, where the President was to receive a new bowsprit. Most of the commercial center of Norfolk had been destroyed in a fire four months earlier; more than three hundred buildings, including storehouses, shops, and private houses, had been reduced to ashes. A witness had described the catastrophe as “a most awful sight to see…the columns of smoke, the bursting out of the flames, the cries of those that were on the streets saving their little properties, exposed to a most terrible, drifty and snowing night.” Jefferson had given $200 in charitable relief for the sufferers. With Norfolk’s maritime industries still reeling from the disaster, the navy’s patronage was more important than ever before to the city’s economy.

  Congress began taking on spars and cordage from the Gosport Navy Yard, and also recruited some additional seamen (Rodgers wrote) “in the place of that Number of Miserable Wretches…shipped in Baltimore, all of whom I shall be obliged to discharge, being totally unfit for service.” Having taken a careful inventory of the ship’s stores, the captain found that the Congress was missing “many Articles which are of the Utmost Importance.” He was convinced he had been swindled by one of the tradesmen at the Washington Navy Yard. Writing the man directly, Rodgers promised to report him to the Navy Office—but then added, characteristically, that he planned to mete out justice himself when he returned to the capital after his Mediterranean tour. “It is your Interest to pray that my Head may be Knock’d off before I return,” he wrote, “for be assured if you are not punished before that period I will revenge the Injury you have done me, with my own hands.”

  The Congress, Rodgers optimistically reported, “can be made ready for Sea in 24 Hours.” Even if it were true, it would make no difference, because the other frigates in the squadron were lagging behind. The President was at the wharf in Norfolk, getting in her bowsprit. Essex was anchored at Maryland Point in the Potomac River. Constellation remained in Washington, awaiting an anchor cable, and only a series of urgent notes from the Navy Office got her underway by June 13.

  On June 19, Commodore Barron charged one of the President’s ordinary seamen, Robert Quinn, with circulating a letter “calculated to excite a general mutiny.” He asked the second-ranking captain in the squadron, John Rodgers, to convene a court-martial.

  Rodgers’s first commanding officer, Thomas Truxtun, had preached that flogging was a last resort, to be used rarely and with great reluctance. But Rodgers was as bloody-minded a disciplinarian as any officer in the navy, and the court’s sentence reflected his taste for imaginative brutality. Quinn was sentenced to have his head and eyebrows shaved and the word “MUTINUS” cattle-branded across his forehead. Then he would be “flogged through the fleet.” Bound to an upright grating in a boat, wearing a white cap with the word “MUTINY” written across it in bold letters, he would be rowed through the squadron’s anchorage, coming up alongside the hull of each vessel in turn. At every stop a new boatswain would climb down with a new cat-o’-nine-tails and give him a new flogging. In all, he would receive 320 lashes, a quantity that had in other cases been tantamount to a death sentence. In the British service, there were instances in which the punishment continued even after the offender had expired.

  The punishment was carried out at 8:00 a.m. on June 25. Quinn survived but was severely maimed. He was “drummed on shore under a gallows in a boat towed stern-foremost…as unworthy of serving under the flag of the United States.” A week and a half later, on a hazy day, President made the signal to weigh anchor. At 3:45 p.m., four frigates were underway for the Straits of Gibraltar.

  BASHAW YUSUF WAS ENRAGED by the destruction of the Philadelphia, but he was also perplexed. Who were these Americans, who seemed so intent upon persisting in a costly and unproductive war? Hadn’t his ministers made it clear that Tripoli would return the prisoners and sign a new treaty in exchange for a moderate amount of money—say, $200,000 or $300,000? Wasn’t that sum reasonable when compared to the million-dollar peace settlements paid by countries like Portugal and Sweden? And wasn’t it far less than what the United States was obviously spending to maintain its Mediterranean Squadron?

  At home in his palace, Yusuf’s rhetoric was as brave and bellicose as ever, but he simultaneously sent out new peace feelers. His agent on Malta approached Preble and offered a five-year truce, to begin immediately with no payment of money. Preble refused: he would accept nothing less than a return of the prisoners and a “solid Peace.” He also doubted the offer was real. Yusuf might merely be playing for time, or his agent might be negotiating without the Bashaw’s full authority. Preble was not averse to ransoming the Philadelphia’s crew, if the sum could be haggled down to $100,000 or so. But he would pay nothing for peace and no tribute. “If it was not for the situation of our unfortunate Country Men,” he told Smith, “I should be sorry to have a peace with Bashaw, until we could oblige him to beg for it as a favour, and sign any treaty that might be dictated to him.”

  When news of the Philadelphia’s loss reached Paris, the American ambassador to France, Robert Livingston, had asked the government of First Consul Bonaparte to intervene with Yusuf to secure the release of the prisoners. Because Bonaparte’s Foreign minister was none other than Talleyrand, the American government was thus thrown into the position of begging assistance from the same man whose attempt to extort a bribe from an earlier group of American envoys had been the immediate cause of the Quasi War, five years earlier. In 1803, however, in the friendly afterglow of the recently completed Louisiana Purchase, the French government was apparently inclined to use its influence on the Americans’ behalf. Talleyrand sent instructions to the French minister in Tripoli, Bonaventure Beaussier, to mediate the negotiations, and to make Yusuf understand “the ardent desire of the First Consul that a Peace settled on advantages to both parties would shortly put an end to the War which divides them.”

  But Captain Preble never trusted Beaussier; and when the French consul told him that peace would cost the United States between $250,000 and $500,000, Preble responded sharply: “The Bashaw’s pretension to the enormous sum you mention is, on his part, a vain one; nor will he ever obtain a tenth part of it for ransom. The negotiation for ransom and Peace must be separate, as we will not pay one dollar for Peace.”

  Preble was showing new interest in a scheme that had been under discussion among America’s Mediterranean envoys for several years. The idea was to lend financial and military support to Yusuf’s exiled older brother, Hamet, who had a competing claim to the throne of Tripoli. Yusuf had seized power in the same way that previous generations of Karamanlis had—by slaughtering all his rivals, and not sparing his blood relatives. Hamet had been lucky to escape with his life. In June 1795, Yusuf had tricked his older brother into leaving the city on a gazelle-hunting expedition, and then seized power in a coup d’état and closed the gates against Hamet’s return.

  With American support, Hamet now promised to march overland before an army of Arabs and Mamelukes who would seize Derna, then Benghazi, and then attack Tripoli from the lightly defended inland side. “Through these instruments,” wrote William Eaton, the plan’s most energetic sponsor, “I firmly believe the enemy may be taken from his sofa at the same instant that our fellow citizens are rescued from their chains.” Yusuf would be hanged from the city walls and the Americans could name the terms of a new treaty. Perpetual peace without ransom or tribute? Naturally. High-ranking Tripolitan hostages to be held in American custody as a guarantee against future aggression? Done. Could the United States install a permanent garrison in one of the principal batteries guarding Tripoli Harbor? Agreed. Would Tripoli free all its Christian slaves—not just Americans, but all the Maltese, Italians, and Europeans of every nation? Hamet, with nothing to lose and everything to gain, agreed.

  Hamet’s Maltese agent told Preble what was needed: five hundred barrels of gunpowder, six brass artillery pieces, and 80,000–90,000 Spanish gold dollars. Preble was paying attention. “I wish ea
rlier notice had been taken of this man and his views,” he told Smith in January 1804.

  James Madison had admitted some scruples two years earlier, when the scheme was first proposed. Could the world’s lone democracy, in good conscience, subvert a corrupt, repressive, and unfriendly regime, only to replace it with a corrupt and repressive regime that was friendly to American interests? And yet, the Secretary of State reasoned, it was Yusuf who had declared war against the United States, in flagrant violation of the treaty he had signed a few years earlier. “Although it does not accord with the general sentiments or views of the United States to intermeddle in the domestic contests of other countries,” Madison had written Eaton, “it cannot be unfair…to turn to [our] advantage the enmity and pretensions of others against a common foe.” But from the moment the United States committed itself to Hamet, Madison warned, the country would have to protect his interests. It would be dishonorable to use him as a negotiating chip to be thrown onto the pile. If Hamet’s campaign to regain the throne should ultimately fail, the United States would have to “treat his misfortune with the utmost tenderness, and to restore him as nearly as may be to the situation from which he was drawn,” perhaps even insisting upon a favorable treaty provision in a final settlement with Yusuf. Beaussier, meanwhile, told Yusuf that the Americans were plotting to bring his brother back to the throne. Yusuf professed unconcern, as his brother was “without means, inclined to drunkenness, and incapable of acquiring partisans.”

  A formal alliance with Hamet—the money, particularly—would require more explicit instructions from Jefferson and the approval of the Congress. In the interim, Preble continued to plan and prepare for his summer operations. What he needed most of all were shallow-draft gunboats. Three years of war had demonstrated beyond any doubt that a fleet composed of frigates and brigs was poorly suited to attacking Tripoli. Preble had known of this deficiency even before his arrival in the Mediterranean. While outfitting Constitution in Boston in July 1803, he had asked Secretary Smith for authority to purchase or charter gunboats “constructed and rigged in a manner peculiar to the Mediterranean,” which could be used “for the purpose of capturing or destroying the Tripoline Merchant Vessels, and distressing their coast.” Smith had acknowledged the merit of the concept but pointed out that Congress had not authorized it.

  Now Preble renewed the call: “If you will allow me to expend $100,000 in such additional naval force as I think proper, I will take Tripoli or perish in the attempt. I am confident that it may easily be destroyed or taken in the summer with gun and mortar boats protected by our cruisers.” Nor was Preble willing to await legislative approval. So confident was he of success that he was sure Congress would retroactively agree to reimburse his expenses. In fact, though he would not know it until later, Congress had already acted. The March 26 legislation authorizing a relief squadron and setting up the Mediterranean Fund had given the president authority “to hire or accept on loan in the Mediterranean sea, as many gun boats as he may think proper.”

  The same day Congress gave its authorization, Bainbridge sat down at a desk in his cell to write Preble a letter in lime juice. The juice-ink was undetectable to the eyes of the Tripolitan censors, but became legible when heated with a candle. Bainbridge assured the commodore that a shallow-draft flotilla, well armed and manned, could puncture Tripoli’s harbor defenses. “I am clearly of Opinion that if you could arm about 18 or 20 ship’s boats you can destroy all the Gun Boats, which would be attended with the most favorable consequences towards a peace; the Gun Boats carry about 25 or 30 men,—they are a dastardly set of wretches…. A few bomb shells thrown into this Town would do damage and cause great alarm. Their Batteries are all in bad order, and they are very bad Gunners.”

  As early as January 1804, Preble began inquiring whether the squadron might obtain two or three mortar boats and three or four gunboats in Toulon, Leghorn, or Naples. From Leghorn, where he had been sent in search of the needed vessels, Consul James Cathcart sent the commodore a plan of a typical Mediterranean gunboat mounting a 24- or 32-pounder cannon. Such vessels, constructed of oak, elm, and pine, with “Sails, Oars, Anchors, Cables” but not including guns, could be built for an estimated $3,776 per vessel. But the contractor wanted four and a half months to build four vessels, and Preble did not have that much time. Cathcart also wrote the American commercial agent in Marseilles, but armed boats could be built in France only with the permission of the French government, and it was unlikely that France would implicate itself in the conflict with Tripoli. Meanwhile, a Florentine foundry estimated that it would take a year to make four mortars for the American mortar boats.

  Preble turned his attention to a cheaper, faster alternative: he would borrow gunboats from the Italians, who were more or less perpetually at war with Tripoli. Working through American commercial agents, Preble put out feelers to several seaports in Sicily and the Italian mainland. There was some indication that the Kingdom of Naples might be willing to oblige the squadron. To make the formal application, Preble and the Constitution sailed from Palermo for the Bay of Naples on May 7. Passing between the islands of Ischia and Capri at one o’clock on the afternoon of the ninth, the frigate let go of her best bower anchor that evening shortly after sunset, a mile from the densely populated harborfront. It was a calm and moonless night, with a light breeze from the west southwest. The enormous cone of Mount Vesuvius loomed over the harbor, more dramatic than the view of Etna from Syracuse because it was so much closer.

  Midshipman Melancthon Woolsey had been aboard another American frigate, the Boston, when she harbored in Naples two years earlier. He recorded his impressions then in his journal:

  We were no sooner anchored than we were serenaded by a band of music who came off in a small boat and laid under our stern. Before night we were surrounded by boats, some loaded with fruit, others containing jugglers who gain their subsistence by performing sleight of hand tricks. One of them I particularly noticed. After performing several tricks with the cups and balls, either to excite our pity or surprise, I cannot say which, [he] tortured himself by running an iron skewer or pin upwards of six inches in length up his nose. He also imitated the notes of different birds in a most surprising manner.

  The morning after the Constitution’s arrival, Preble called upon Prime Minister John Acton, who received him sympathetically. Acton suggested that Preble submit his request for gunboats in a letter which he would pass on to King Ferdinand. The commodore had the letter delivered to Acton’s offices the same day. “I was so much engaged while at Naples that I did not see Pompeii, Herculaneum, or any of the curiosities for which that country is so much celebrated and so much visited,” Preble wrote Mary. He was amazed at the size and density of the city: “the city of Naples is perhaps the most populous in the world for the ground it covers. The houses are five and six-story high, and each floor generally inhabited by families that have no acquaintance with each other.”

  On May 13, Preble received welcome news. The kingdom would provide six gunboats, two bomb ketches (vessels specially designed to throw exploding shells), six long 24-pounder cannon, and a “discreet quantity” of shot, match, shells, gunpowder, and other supplies. All of this would be presented to the Americans without charge, “under the Title of a friendly Loan.” The vessels were at Messina, and the Americans were invited to take possession as soon as they could be made ready for sea.

  CHAPTER NINE

  On July 25, 1804, at two hours after midnight, Constitution and her little flotilla of borrowed Italian gunboats and bomb ketches fell in with the blockading vessels Siren, Argus, Enterprise, and Scourge. Preble’s force now numbered fifteen sail: the flagship, three brigs, three schooners, two bomb ketches, and six gunboats, manned by 1,060 men. In two and a half years of war, it was the largest American naval force that had ever been assembled before Tripoli.

  A heavy sea was running on shore, and as anxious as Commodore Preble was to begin his attack on the town, he was forced to admit that cond
itions were not right. It was, by now, a familiar ordeal. For a week, the squadron was forced to stand off and on the coast while awaiting an improvement in the weather. During intermittent periods of clear air, the men on deck could see the distant shape of Tripoli’s walls and harbor fortifications. From the masthead, through a telescope, the lookouts spotted an encampment of troops along the south side of the bay, a flotilla of gunboats that appeared heavily armed and manned, and a total of 115 cannon in the outer batteries.

  The morning of July 30, the wind built up to gale force and Preble ordered the squadron to separate so that each vessel could gain a safe offing. The Constitution lay to under double-reefed courses. On July 31, with “the wind blowing very heavy, and a rough sea,” the foresail and mizzen topsails were torn to shreds. The next night, more of the same: “we split the foresail from clew to Earing.” The crew struck the topgallant yards and rigged preventer stays to buttress the masts. All that night, Constitution lay head-to-wind “under low sail with a rough sharp sea.”

  The wind finally subsided to a breeze on the morning of August 3, and the squadron set a course for Tripoli. At the noon observation, Constitution was about two miles northeast of the Molehead Battery. Preble signaled for the other vessels to draw in closer to the flagship, so that he could speak directly to their commanders across the water. His plan was simple: The gunboats and ketches would approach the town in two divisions, sailing in a line abreast. They were to engage the enemy gunboats positioned outside the rocks at the entrance to the harbor. Constitution and the other cruisers would hover in the offing, firing at long range if necessary.