Six Frigates

by Ian W. Toll

  In fifteen minutes, the small vessels cast loose and began their approach. At half past twelve, Constitution tacked and stood inshore behind them.

  Yusuf had mobilized his people for the expected attack. “The Bashaw is ready to receive the enemy whatever type of hostility the enemy wishes to attempt,” Beaussier had reported to his government in March. “This port bristles with cannon, quite independent of the twelve gunboats that defend the approaches. Now this prince does not rely upon the vigilance of anyone: he shows himself day and night and inspects everything.” A gang of fourteen master ship carpenters had been recruited from Spain to build new gunboats. Several dozen of the seamen-prisoners of the Philadelphia had been forcibly employed in erecting new batteries. Fearing for the safety of his wives and children, Yusuf had moved them all inland. Tripoli was as prepared as it had ever been for an assault from the sea.

  It was a brilliantly clear and sunny day. The city, the harbor, and the fortifications were plainly visible from the flagship’s quarterdeck. Preble’s spyglass brought the whole scene right up close to his eye—the Tripolitan gunboats, crowded with heavily armed defenders; the imposing sandstone batteries, with their lines of embrasures housing big brass artillery pieces; the huge, whitewashed edifice of the castle; the brightly colored banners flying from the masts and towers; the domes and minarets of the mosques; the rooftops and terraces of the houses, teeming with spectators. To the east was the long semicircular curve of the beach, backed by a row of well-tended date palms; and beyond them the Bashaw’s verdant gardens, with flowering hibiscus, sweet jasmine, pomegranates, and oleander trees. To the west, beyond the city walls, a sequence of fields cultivated with barley and tobacco—and then, further in the distance, nothing but “a Sandy Desert…as far as the eye could reach.”

  Twenty-two Tripolitan gunboats were arrayed in three divisions just outside the harbor rocks. Each mounted a 24- or 32-pounder brass cannon and was manned by thirty to fifty men.

  At 2:30 p.m., Constitution made the signal for general battle: a blue flag over a yellow/blue flag over a red/blue flag. As the American flotilla closed with the enemy line, one of the bomb ketches lobbed a shell toward the Molehead Battery; as it exploded, the Tripolitan boats and batteries opened fire all at once, and “in an Instant the whole Squadron was engaged.” Shots fell on every side of the bomb ketches, throwing up high columns of seawater and spray. On the foredeck of the Constitution, Richard O’Brien looked down from the starboard rail and saw that the sea under her bow “was kept entirely in a foam from the enemy’s shot.”

  The first American gunboat division, commanded by Stephen Decatur, opened fire with 24-pounder round shot. Each vessel had time to fire and reload three times before the Tripolitan boats began to retreat to within the rock barrier. Decatur’s boat pursued, navigating a 12-foot-wide channel through the rocks, taking heavy fire from the artillery in the Bashaw’s Castle. From a distance of about 20 yards, she got off a murderous volley of canister shot and musket fire, while keeping her sails filled to attempt a boarding action.

  As Decatur’s vessel collided with the first enemy boat, he and nineteen other boarders crossed the gunwales and fell on the defenders. Wielding pistols, pikes, axes, and cutlasses, they slashed, thrusted, hacked, shot, and stabbed their way across the enemy deck. It was the most ferocious and bloody engagement the navy had ever fought. In fifteen minutes, the boarders had possession of the boat. The casualty ratios leave the impression that the defenders refused to surrender, or the attackers did not give them much quarter, or both. Out of a crew of thirty-six Tripolitans, sixteen lay dead on the deck, fifteen lay wounded, and just five prisoners had been taken unharmed. The Americans had lost none killed, four wounded. “I find hand-to-hand is not child’s play. ’Tis kill or be killed,” Decatur remarked. “Some of the Turks died like men, but much the greater number like women.”

  Gunboat No. 2 was commanded by Decatur’s younger brother, James. He steered toward the second boat in the Tripolitan formation. Waiting until the range had closed to 20 or 30 yards, the Americans opened a well-directed volley of muskets and blunderbusses. The Tripolitans who were left standing hauled down the colors, and James Decatur ordered his men to cease fire. As he stepped across the gunwales to take possession of the surrendered boat, one or more muzzles were raised and fired. Decatur took a musket ball in the forehead and fell between the boats. As the Americans rushed to fish their fallen commander from the sea, the surviving Tripolitans took hold of their oars and started pulling for the inner harbor.

  As Stephen Decatur’s gunboat No. 4 was pulling back to the safety of the flagship, with her captured vessel in tow, she came within hailing distance of No. 2. From Midshipman Thomas Brown, Decatur learned of the sham surrender, and then looked down and saw his younger brother, shot through the head and probably mortally wounded. Most of gunboat No. 4’s original crew had been detached to the prize, so Decatur was undermanned—but he nevertheless bore away and chased the fleeing enemy. For the second time that afternoon, Stephen Decatur boarded an enemy vessel. Nine men followed him. It was a rash action—there were twenty-four defenders aboard and they were willing to fight. Again Decatur and his men stabbed, slashed, and hacked their way across the enemy’s deck. As Decatur exchanged blows with the boat’s Tripolitan commander, his (Decatur’s) cutlass broke just above the cross-guard, leaving him defenseless. The two men grappled and fell to the deck, sprawling across the gunwale. The Tripolitan drew a yataghan—a long, curved Turkish knife—and was on the verge of plunging it into Decatur’s exposed chest when the lieutenant found his pistol and fired it into his antagonist’s side, mortally wounding him. Four more Tripolitans were advancing on the still-prone Decatur and were about to cut him to pieces when the lieutenant’s personal servant and a marine private rushed into the fray, armed with a tomahawk and cutlass. They fell upon the four and killed them all. Again the ratio of killed to wounded defenders was a measure of the savagery of the combat. Twenty-one Tripolitans lay dead; only three had been taken alive.

  Gunboat No. 6, commanded by Sailing Master John Trippe, was engaged in an equally desperate battle. Running aboard the third gunboat in the enemy line, Trippe led a party of marines across—but before all the American boarders had crossed, the boats separated. Trippe and a handful of marines found themselves engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the thirty-six-man crew. Trippe grappled with the enemy commander, “a remarkably athletic, gallant man, about twenty-four years of age: his height considerably exceeded six feet. Before he engaged in battle, he swore upon the Koran that he would conquer or die.” The two adversaries rolled on the deck; other Tripolitans closed in and slashed and hacked at Trippe as he lay prostrate on the deck, wounding him eleven times. One of the Americans rushed into the melee with a boarding pike and ran it through the Tripolitan commander’s body. Before he died, he shouted to his men to avenge him.

  The battle was over in fifteen minutes, and “20 Turks lay weltering in their Gore.” Trippe prevented his men from massacring the prisoners, and even pulled some of the survivors from the sea. The casualty ratios imply that Trippe showed more mercy than had Decatur: out of a crew of thirty-six, twenty-two Tripolitan prisoners were taken, fifteen of them unwounded. The Americans laid hold of the oars and began pulling out of the harbor, chased by a furious cannonade from the harbor guns. One sailor, Jacob Boston, reported that a cannon ball passed within six inches of his shoulders: the wind of the ball left a deep bruise where it passed. Another shot took the mast down, but Trippe and his prize escaped safely out of range.

  From the deck of the Constitution, Commodore Preble saw that the advancing line of American gunboats was entering the range of the Molehead Battery, and that two divisions of Tripolitan gunboats were preparing to pass back through the rock barrier. He ordered the signal: “Cover the boats.” The Constitution stood in for the inner harbor, followed by the brigs and schooners. As her bow chasers and the forward guns of her starboard battery came to bear, the flagship discharg
ed a volley of grape shot that sent the enemy gunboats into confusion. When she had approached to within a few hundred yards of the rocks, she wore and stood to the west. The maneuver brought the Constitution’s full larboard battery to bear on the Bashaw’s Castle, the enemy flotilla, and the Molehead. She poured out three ear-splitting broadsides, her shots blasting large chunks of masonry out of the fortifications and momentarily obscuring the enemy guns behind a cloud of dust.

  As the flagship passed to the west, the shore guns came back to life. It was a dangerous moment. Constitution was exposed to heavy fire, at a range of 300 or 400 yards, from weapons that had the advantage of being mounted on a stationary platform. Fortunately for the Constitution and her crew, the Tripolitan gunnery was very poor. They had not found the range. Sailing Master Haraden estimated that two hundred shots were fired at the Constitution, almost all of which overshot or fell short. Many fell close to the ship, sending high columns of spray over the bulwarks and soaking the men on deck. The commodore himself had a near escape—he was standing in the starboard gangway when an enemy shot hit the 24-pounder cannon nearest to him. The hit blasted fragments of iron shrapnel from the weapon and shattered a marine private’s arm “to pieces.” Preble’s clothing was torn by the blast, but he was otherwise left unscathed.

  The prevailing easterly breeze was carrying the flagship away from the fight. Preble had no choice but to bear up and stand to the northward. For the better part of an hour, the Constitution was taken out of action as she maneuvered to come in for another pass. As she stood in from the northeast, she again made the signal: “Cover the boats,” and again ran right in under the guns of the castle and Molehead. Her first broadside “drove the Tripolitans out of the castle.” One shot struck a mosque inside the city walls, and as the men on the deck of the Constitution watched in astonishment, its minaret—the tower from which a muezzin summoned the faithful to prayer five times each day—trembled and fell crashing to the ground.

  At four thirty in the afternoon, the wind was freshening and a heavy sea setting onshore. Preble gave the signal to withdraw, and the gunboats began pulling out to sea. Constitution sent her barge and jolly boats to assist in towing the gunboats. At five, the full squadron rendezvoused about two miles north of the town. The mortally wounded James Decatur was brought aboard the flagship, and was shortly thereafter pronounced dead by the surgeon.

  The attackers had won a resounding victory. Three Tripolitan gunboats had been captured, fifty-two men taken prisoner, and an estimated forty-four killed. Enemy casualties in the harbor fortifications, castle, and town were unknown, but assumed to be numerous. American losses, by contrast, had been surprisingly light: thirteen men wounded and one killed. No vessels had been lost.

  Though she had taken heavy fire from the shore batteries, the Constitution had not sustained the sort of damage that would require her to return to a friendly port. Her mainmast had suffered a direct hit from a 24-pounder shot, about 20 feet above the deck, but the mast had not fallen and appeared to be strong enough to carry sail. A dozen or more balls of grape shot were pried out of her hull, but none had done serious damage. The rigging was fairly shot up: the main royal yard and main topgallant yard had been shot away entirely, and various shrouds hung limp and useless. The foredeck jacks could look forward to hours of knotting and splicing to repair the damage.

  Fifty-two Tripolitan prisoners were brought aboard the Constitution. Half were wounded, and four died before morning. On the fifth, Preble sent fourteen of the most severely wounded into Tripoli under a flag of truce, asking that an equal number of the Philadelphia prisoners be sent out. Minister Dghies, however, refused to release any American prisoners.

  Dr. Cowdery, the Philadelphia’s surgeon, was summoned to the castle and ordered to attend to the Tripolitan casualties. So reluctant was he to assume this new responsibility that he dishonored his Hippocratic oath. “I was ordered to dress the wound of a mameluke who had his hand shattered by the bursting of a blunderbuss,” he wrote. “I amputated all his fingers but one, with a dull knife, and dressed them in a bungling manner, in hopes of losing my credit as a surgeon in this part of the country—for I expected to have my hands full of wounded Turks in consequence of the exploits of my brave countrymen.”

  AUGUST 5 AND 6, the squadron lay in the offing six miles north of Tripoli, “in continual preparation” for a second attack. Some of the hands were set to work altering the captured gunboats from lateen rigs to a more familiar sloop rig. Once again, the Americans were forced to await a change in the weather: “The wind to the Northward of East heaves such a swell on shore as to make it improper to attack,” wrote Purser Morris.

  There had been a lot of talk about the idea of lobbing exploding shells over the city walls. Writing in lime juice from his prison on June 22, William Bainbridge had assured Preble that the inhabitants of Tripoli “have dreadful Ideas of bombs and their houses [are] slightly built….” A bombing attack on the town, he predicted, would set off an exodus of refugees and bring pressure on Yusuf to end the war. But the bomb ketches had performed poorly in the August 3 engagement. Each of the 26-inch-caliber mortars had fired several shells, but almost all had fallen short of the walls; they had not achieved the promised range. To be effective, the bomb vessels would have to be maneuvered much closer to the city walls, but this would bring them within easy range of the harbor guns.

  Lieutenant Charles Stewart believed he had the solution. West of the city, an indentation in the coastline formed a shallow bay with a long, curving beach. Tripoli’s harbor guns did not cover this bay. The bomb ketches, he reasoned, could approach unmolested, drop anchor, and heave their mortars over the city’s western wall. The Tripolitans might respond by sending their gunboats through the rock barrier into the western bay, but if they did so, they would expose themselves to the Constitution’s covering fire. Richard O’Brien objected to the scheme, saying, “I think a blow in the face is better than a kick in the stern,” but Preble was inclined to try it. If it did not succeed, he reasoned, there would be every opportunity for a second frontal attack on the town.

  On August 7, at ten o’clock in the morning, Commodore Preble ordered the signal: “Advance in a line abreast.” The weather was mild, but contrary breezes and currents forced the squadron into confusion. Each vessel had to stay out of range of the harbor batteries, while also avoiding being swept onshore by the wind. Evidently, the Americans had not yet learned the local current patterns. The gunboats and ketches were carried out of position, far to the westward, and their exhausted crews had to row for hours against the current. It was not until after noon that the first bomb ketch dropped anchor about a mile and a half from the city wall. From this range her mortars could hit the western quarter of the city, and they did considerable damage. The explosions echoed through the town and smoke rose above the rooftops.

  As the other vessels straggled into the anchorage, they came under unexpected cannon fire. Yusuf, foreseeing the attack, had ordered two small batteries hastily constructed to cover the western bay. An artillery duel ensued. The larger and more dangerous of the shore batteries was “almost totally destroyed”—big holes were blasted in its newly erected walls and all but one of its guns were dismounted. Each time the gunboats stopped firing at it, however, its one remaining weapon persistently came back to life.

  At about three o’clock in the afternoon, a flotilla of fifteen Tripolitan gunboats made a brief foray beyond the safety of the Molehead Battery. They concentrated their guns on the first American bomb ketch, which was anchored closer to the city than any of the other attacking vessels. Shot fell on every side of the little vessel, and (Preble wrote) “the clothes of every man in the Boat were wet through with the spray of sea which the Enemy’s shot threw over them.” Her commander had no alternative but to cut her cables and withdraw to a safer distance. The Tripolitan gunboats, keeping a wary eye on the Constitution, rowed back to the safety of the reef and the harbor fortifications.

  At three t
hirty, every man’s head was turned by an ear-splitting explosion. Gunboat No. 9, commanded by Lieutenant James Caldwell, had blown up. Dr. Cowdery witnessed the event from the roof of the Bashaw’s Castle: “I saw the mangled bodies of my countrymen precipitated into the air.” Preble saw a blinding white flash and a column of smoke. Midshipman Robert Spence, who was commanding the crew of No. 9’s bow gun, survived the blast. “I went up some distance in the air and lighted by the gun again,” he later wrote. “Around me lay arms, legs, and trunks of bodies in the most mutilated state.” Spence recognized Lieutenant Caldwell, who was “without arms, or legs; his face so mutilated that I could not discriminate a feature—by his dress only I recognized him; he was not dead, although he sank instantly.”

  The event seemed to stun both the attackers and defenders; all guns fell silent for several minutes. As the smoke wafted away, all that was remaining of gunboat No. 9 was the bow section. Spence exhorted the gun crew to load and fire one last shot, but as they were attempting to do so, the bow and the gun sank beneath the surface. With defiant bravado, the survivors gave a cheer as they went down. Spence, who was “ignorant of the art of swimming,” hung on to an oar until he could be pulled from the sea. All the men who had not been killed in the explosion were picked up by the other boats.

  The explosion of No. 9 was a major blow to the squadron’s fortunes. Ten Americans were killed instantly, including James Caldwell and Midshipman John Dorsey. Six others were wounded: four critically and two mortally. Preble attributed the explosion to a direct hit by a red-hot shot from one of the shore batteries, but it is more likely that the magazine was touched off by flaming wad from No. 9’s bow gun.

  The battle continued for two hours. The Tripolitans fought on with renewed ferocity. Several of the other American gunboats came under heavy fire. No. 6 had her lateen yard shot away, which made it almost impossible for her to maneuver into safer range. No. 4, commanded by Stephen Decatur, was hit by a 24-pound ball that blew a hole in the hull above the waterline. No. 8 was also struck in the hull, and the shrapnel-like splinters thrown off by the impact killed two of her crew.