Six Frigates

by Ian W. Toll

“How awfully grand!” Midshipman Spence exclaimed. “Everything wrapped in dead silence made the explosion loud and terrible. The fuses of the shells, burning in the air, shone like so many planets. A vast stream of fire, which appeared ascending to heaven, portrayed the walls to our view.” Several of the mortars detonated late, some at a height of 300 feet. “For a moment, the flash illumined the whole heavens around, while the terrific concussion shook every thing far and near,” Midshipman Charles Ridgeley wrote. “Then all was hushed again, and every object veiled in a darkness of double gloom.” From the deck of the Constitution, men could hear terrified cries from the inhabitants of the town and the low roll of kettledrums beating out an alarm.

  The squadron waited for the two rowboats in which the Intrepid’s crew were to have made their escape. Hours passed. Preble ordered sky rockets fired at ten-minute intervals. As the first blue glow of dawn broke on the horizon, lookouts at the mastheads scanned the horizon. There was no sign of the Intrepid or her boats. Hopes faded.

  Preble and the other officers rallied around an explanation that they may or may not have actually believed. In his official letter to Secretary Smith, Commodore Preble wrote that the Intrepid had come under attack and Somers, preferring death to capture, had “put a match to the tram leading directly to the magazine, which at once blew the whole into the air, and terminated their existence.” The story was echoed by the other officers in the squadron. “What a Noble Death, & truly characteristic of that Noble Somers,” wrote Spence to his parents. It was a version of events that allowed the family and friends of the Intrepid’s crew to believe they had died a glorious death. It also drew attention away from the likelihood that thirteen American lives had been thrown away to no good purpose.

  In fact, no Tripolitan vessels or lives were lost in the attack, and it is almost certain that the Intrepid exploded accidentally before reaching the inner harbor. “The explosion caused only a frightful noise and a general shock felt well out into the countryside, without damaging the fort,” Beaussier reported to Talleyrand. To Preble, the French consul said the mission “was fatal only to yourselves…. The fort was not shaken, and the explosion caused only a general shock in the city and the countryside. In my own case I lost all the windows in my house.” Dr. Cowdery was awed by the magnitude of the blast, but agreed that it “did but little damage.” The Tripolitans observed a day of thanksgiving for the town’s deliverance, filled with prayers and singing, “accompanied with the sound of an instrument made by drawing a skin over a hoop.”

  Captain William Bainbridge was granted permission to examine the Intrepid crew’s remains, which had washed up on the beach at the edge of the harbor. He was accompanied by Lieutenant David Porter and an armed guard. In his private journal, Bainbridge described what he found:

  [We] there saw six persons in a most mangled and burnt condition lying on the shore, whom we supposed to have been part of the unfortunate crew of the fire vessel…Two of these distressed-looking objects were fished out of the wreck. From the whole of them being so much disfigured it was impossible to recognize any known feature to us, or even to distinguish an officer from a seaman.

  Yusuf had the bodies transferred into the arsenal, where they were placed on public display. The Bashaw, reported Consul Zuchet, “amused himself by watching his people hurl curses and insults at the corpses.” They were partly eaten by stray dogs. Not until three days later were Dr. Cowdery and a gang of the Philadelphia’s enlisted men permitted to bury the bodies in a communal grave east of the town wall.

  On the morning of September 5, Preble went up the companionway to the Constitution’s quarterdeck and took in a discouraging scene: the wind was shifting to the north northeast, a heavy swell was setting on shore, and “the weather wore a threatening aspect.” The summer campaign against Tripoli, he decided, had come to an end. Provisions had not arrived from Malta. Several vessels were badly in need of refitting, and low in stocks of fresh water, provisions, and ammunition. Officers and men were physically exhausted. The commodore ordered the gunboats and bomb ketches to disarm their guns and mortars and transfer them into the holds of the Constitution and John Adams. The John Adams, Siren, Enterprise, and Nautilus took the smaller vessels in tow. That evening at 6:30 p.m., the flagship hoisted the signal that sent most of the squadron back to Syracuse: “Make the best of your way for your intended port.” The Argus and the Vixen would remain on the station with the Constitution, keeping up the blockade and awaiting Barron’s arrival.

  THE FOUR FRIGATES OF SAMUEL BARRON’S squadron crept into Gibraltar Bay on August 12, after a thirty-eight-day transatlantic passage. Following seas and a steady southwest wind had delivered them from the Virginia Capes to the Azores in just two weeks. But then the wind had veered directly ahead, and for 1,000 miles the squadron had been obliged to beat tediously to windward, sometimes making scarcely more than 20 miles between noon and noon.

  At Gibraltar, Commodore Barron heard rumors that the emperor of Morocco was again threatening to send his cruisers to attack American shipping. The U.S. consul in Tangier, James Simpson, begged the commodore to leave a portion of the squadron in the vicinity of the Straits. Barron agreed. The President and Constellation would sail up the Mediterranean in search of Preble and the Constitution. The Congress under Captain Rodgers, and the Essex, commanded by the commodore’s younger brother, James Barron, would sail for Tangier to make a timely show of force and obtain the emperor’s assurances that he was not contemplating a breach of the treaty he had ratified less than a year earlier.

  President and Constellation sailed from Gibraltar on August 16, but before they had doubled Cape Gata the wind abruptly died, and for five long, languid days the two frigates lay becalmed under a relentless sun. The sea was as clear as gin and “uncommonly smooth.” One of the President’s civilian passengers fixed a deep-sea line to a cream-colored porcelain plate and sank it over the stern; he was amazed to see it at a depth of 148 feet. The foremast jacks indulged an ancient superstition by whistling and scratching the shrouds and stays with the backs of their knives, convinced that if they whistled and scratched long enough they would summon the wind. The technique invariably worked, eventually. After five days, a little breeze sprang up from the west and the ships spread their sails.

  On the afternoon of the twenty-third, an ominous shudder ran through the President. From beneath the hull came a sound of rumbling and grinding, and the deck moved violently enough to throw men from their feet. Samuel Barron described it as “a violent shock like striking on an uneven, rocky bottom, which at every stroke seemed to lift and let fall the ship about one foot.” He rushed up the companionway to the quarterdeck, assuming (with every other man aboard the ship) that the President had run aground. Once on deck, however, he “discovered no appearance of the shoal, nor had the ship lost her way.”

  The Constellation maneuvered to within hailing distance, and her officers reported that she too had grounded. Like the President, she had mysteriously passed over the shoal without losing velocity or suffering any damage. A passing Spanish merchantman later gave a similar account.

  By eliminating every plausible explanation for the phenomenon, the officers of the two frigates determined that they must have sailed through the seismic effects of an undersea earthquake. Although they had heard of such things, none had imagined how loud or violent such an event could be. The President’s common seamen were overcome with superstitious fear. “Their alarm, agitation, and amazement appeared much greater than what had been created, I believe, had the ship been actually aground,” Barron remarked.

  WITH MOST OF COMMODORE PREBLE’S force having sailed for Syracuse, the blockade of Tripoli was carried on by the Constitution, the Argus, and the Vixen. Though Preble knew the September gale season would soon force him to end the blockade, he wanted the new commodore to find him off Tripoli, and not in port.

  About midday on Sunday, September 9, the Constitution was cruising about a dozen miles northeast of Tripoli Harbor wh
en the Argus, several miles to the east, flew a signal: “Discovering strange ships Northeast.” The flagship tacked and stood toward the Argus. In an hour, Preble had a visual fix on two big ships, hull-down on the horizon, dead to windward, and standing down on the Constitution and her consorts. They appeared to be warships. American? Yes—as the distance closed, some of the Constitution’s keener eyes recognized the familiar shapes as the President and Constellation. Preble ordered his commodore’s broad pendant lowered as a gesture of submission to the man who had arrived to take his place.

  Secretary Smith had taken pains to emphasize that he and Jefferson were perfectly satisfied with Preble’s performance, and regretted seeing him superseded. They hoped he would be willing to stay on in the Mediterranean as a frigate captain, acting under Barron’s command. But there was never the slightest chance of that; the proud down-easter had grown accustomed to his role as the supreme American military commander in that part of the world, and he was not the type to suffer demotion with equanimity. “Commodore Barron’s arrival to supersede me in the command of the fleet has determined me to return,” Preble told his wife, Mary. He would never accept another naval command short of a full squadron, “having served so long a time in that capacity…with reputation to myself and honor to my country.”

  An hour before dawn on Wednesday, with a gentle wind in the northwest, Constitution was close-reaching on a larboard tack, in position to cross safely over the bows of the President, which was approaching the same point on the opposite tack. The maneuver was routine, and would have come off without incident had it not been for a sudden and untimely wind shift. The Constitution was “brought up all standing”—at one moment she had been moving through the water at about 3 knots; at the next she was dead in the water and directly in the course of the rapidly oncoming President.

  The two 1,500-ton frigates collided, President’s larboard bow to Constitution’s stem. The former’s cathead crashed into the latter’s upper cutwater; Constitution’s bowsprit ran afoul and her jib booms carried away; fragments of dislocated timber rained into the sea directly beneath the impact. Shrouds and yardarms were intricately engaged; the anchors fell afoul; the frigates helplessly embraced one another. The same wind shift that had backwinded the Constitution had simultaneously filled the President’s sails, and she sailed on, hauling her sister along with her. The two crews made a hawser fast from bow to bow, and then worked to clear the rigging, using hatchets when necessary. A spring line was run back from President’s bow and made taunt to the capstan on Constitution’s quarterdeck. After forty-five minutes, the bow hawsers were cast off, and the Constitution began to pay off to leeward. At last the spring line was cast off, and the two big frigates were free of each other.

  Both Edward Preble and Samuel Barron were silent about the incident; no reference to it appears in their official letters to the Navy Office. Both men must have grasped the uncomfortable symbolic implications of a violent collision between the current and former flagships, and agreed not to report the accident. (Sailing Master Nathaniel Haraden of the Constitution described the event in his journal.)

  Constitution hove to to lick her wounds, which were considerable. A large section of her cutwater and trailerboards were gone. Her bowsprit was badly sprung and would need to be replaced. Most spectacularly, her original figurehead—a likeness of Hercules dressed in a lion’s skin, standing on “the firm rock of Independence” and grasping a scroll of paper representing the U.S. Constitution—was “cut to pieces and thrown aside as useless.” The Hercules figurehead would be replaced by a modest billethead, a plain length of timber decorated with flying dragons.

  Barron and Preble agreed that the Constitution should return to Malta for recaulking and refitting. Preble also asked the new commodore for permission to return to the United States. The Constitution, once repaired, could be turned over to Stephen Decatur, whose mission to destroy the Philadelphia had since been rewarded with a promotion to captain—a two-rung promotion, bypassing the rank of master commandant. Barron assented. The twenty-five-year-old Decatur was thus transformed, in a little more than six months’ time, from an anonymous lieutenant of midlevel seniority into a national celebrity and commander of one of the country’s three largest ships of war.

  Six weeks later, as the Constitution was still undergoing repairs in Valetta, Captain Rodgers and the Congress arrived. The Marylander soon fell into a bitter feud with Preble. Though dueling was pervasive among the navy’s junior officers, there had not yet been a duel between two captains. Rodgers seemed determined to set the precedent. Preble was strongly opposed to the practice, but he might find it difficult to escape a challenge from a man whose “reputation as a fighting man,” in a contemporary’s view, was based upon “his black looks, his insufferable arrogance, and the frequent and unmerited assaults he has made on poor and inoffensive citizens.”

  The details are murky. Rodgers wrote Preble a note, which he may or may not have sent:

  Sir:

  A respect I owe to my country prevented me yesterday from requiring of you to explain the cause of your observations on the comparative good order of the Constitution and Congress and other incoherent remarks, feeling sensible that any dispute between us (in the situation I am now placed) could not fail to be productive of injury to the service. When we meet in the United States you shall then be explicitly informed of my opinion of your conduct.

  I am, with consideration, your obedient servant,

  John Rodgers

  Rodgers was soon involved in an even more acrimonious rivalry with the Barron brothers—an escalating dispute that would injure the morale and cohesiveness of the Mediterranean Squadron throughout the winter of 1804–05, and that would lead to a series of threats and near challenges. By the time Rodgers returned to the United States, his conflict with Preble was apparently forgiven, or at least forgotten.

  Nine days after Preble’s supercession, two midshipmen—both veterans of the actions off Tripoli—fought a duel in Syracuse. One, William Nicholson, was killed. The source of the quarrel is unknown; a trivial insult apparently passed between them. The dead boy was buried in the Latomia dei Cappuccini, an ancient stone quarry that had been transformed into a flourishing garden. Two centuries later, the headstone is intact. It reads, in part:

  In memory of William R. Nicholson, a Midshipman in the Navy of the United States, who was cut off from society in the bloom of his youth and health, on the eighteenth day of September, A.D. 1804, aged eighteen years.

  His killer was Cornelius DeKrafft, the man whose journal covers the Tripolitan War. DeKrafft was arrested and sent back to the United States in the brig Scourge.

  Based on the way the navy had handled previous cases, DeKrafft had no reason to be concerned. The duel had been fought according to accepted customs and strictures; it had been a fair fight, a fight in which Nicholson might just as easily have killed DeKrafft. Not only could the young officer expect to escape prosecution, but he could expect to be returned to naval service with no adverse repercussions on his career.

  But DeKrafft had not yet heard the news that Alexander Hamilton had been killed by Aaron Burr on July 11 in Weehawken, New Jersey. That duel—the most infamous in American history—took place six days after Barron’s squadron had sailed from Norfolk. It had tipped the balance of public opinion. Dueling was denounced in increasingly strident terms in newspaper editorials and from church pulpits. Reverend Nathaniel Bowen expressed a typical sentiment when he urged his South Carolina congregation to hold dueling in “the contempt to which its origins, its principles, and its effects, so deservedly entitle it.”

  Was DeKrafft to be made the first example in a looming crackdown? When the Scourge arrived in Norfolk, he was handed a curt note from Secretary Smith: “Immediately upon Receipt hereof, you will repair to the City of Washington & report yourself at this office.”

  But there would be no trial. The Nicholson family declined to press charges. Citing the “prevalent Example of old
er, wiser and more exalted men than himself,” Congressman Joseph Nicholson asked the navy to restore William’s killer to the service with his rank intact. Dueling, he explained, was reprehensible, and “yet the wisest Legislatures and the most able Magistrates have for some hundred years in vain endeavored to check it. It is one of those Evils which is consequent upon Society. It most frequently proceeds from the noblest feeling of the Heart. Before it can be stopped, the State of Society itself must change, and till then, human Laws and human Punishments will be vain.”

  PART THREE

  England Again

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ex-Commodore Preble came home with the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth. On his watch, the navy had lost one of its finest frigates and seen a crew of more than three hundred American officers and sailors thrown into the enemy’s hands. At the height of his squadron’s attacks on Tripoli, Preble had learned that he was to suffer the personal humiliation of being superseded by Samuel Barron. The last act of his command had been to send thirteen Americans to their deaths in the premature explosion of the Intrepid. He had assured his superiors that he would force Yusuf to capitulate. He had failed to do so. Edward Preble was forty-three years old, the third oldest captain on the active list. His health was less than perfect, and his future in the U.S. Navy seemed uncertain.

  But to his surprise and gratification, Preble was greeted by his countrymen as a returning hero. “I cannot but be a little flattered with the reception I have met with Here,” he wrote his wife from Manhattan, where he landed in February 1805. “The people are disposed to think that I have rendered some service to my country.” In one important respect, Preble had succeeded where his predecessors had failed: He had not won the war, but he had at least carried the fight to the enemy. To a nation eager for any kind of good news from the Mediterranean, the destruction of the Philadelphia and the August 1804 attacks on Tripoli had been psychologically rewarding, if nothing else. Preble had fought hard, and honorably. In the eyes of his countrymen, who had been conditioned to expect very little, it was enough.