Jefferson's War

by Joseph Wheelan

  A husky six-footer with hard, appraising, dark blue eyes, his fair skin bronzed by years at sea, Preble was known as a harsh disciplinarian and, at times, for being a violent man. As recently as 1799, criminal charges had been brought against him in Boston for striking a man in the head with a pistol. He avoided prosecution by paying $45 for medical bills; later, Preble sent the man another $200 when he discovered that he remained laid up months after the attack.

  The Constitution’s crew disliked him at first. He was irritable and remote. He posted a Marine sentry at his cabin door, permitting only quarterdeck officers and a few others in to see him. His junior officers felt the lash of his sharp tongue whenever their performance failed to meet his high standards. Although it would have been of small consolation had his men known it, Preble was well aware that he needed to control his outbursts. In a letter to his close friend, War Secretary Henry Dearborn, he referred to advice Dearborn had given him previously on “the government of temper.”

  Temper was one thing, shipboard discipline another matter altogether. Unlike Morris, Preble ran a tight ship, where even profanity was prohibited and where crewmen were punished often and severely. Two or three Constitution crewmen languished in irons on any given day. Floggings were administered weekly, sometimes more frequently. For example, on October 4, 1803, five seamen each received 12 lashes for negligence and “perfect neglect of duty.” On November 16, 1803, a Marine got 48 lashes for refusing duty, attempting to desert, and insubordination; a seaman was flogged 36 times for neglect of duty, drunkenness, and “insolence”; and another seaman was given 24 lashes for neglect of duty. Two weeks later, four seamen were whipped for drunkenness, with the ringleader getting 36 lashes for stealing the rum that caused their misbehavior. The next week, several more men were punished for drunkenness. Preble kept all the ships in his squadron on the same tight leash, demanding brief ports of call to keep the crewmen away from temptation and his warships at sea as much as possible.

  Preble’s strictness was arguably justified, given the reality of early nineteenth-century shipboard life—months of unremitting isolation and forced confinement with crewmen who often were thieves, murderers, and drunks. If officers did not punish rule breakers swiftly, their floating community of 350 might well erupt in chaos and ignominious mutiny—a commander’s greatest hobgoblin; the mere whiff of insurrection had to be ruthlessly quashed. Thus, when Robert Quinn, a seaman on the President, circulated a letter complaining about the crew’s treatment by officers in June 1804, he was court-martialed for inciting mutiny. For his sentence, his head and eyebrows were shaved, and burned into his forehead with a hot metal brand was the word MUTINEER. He was given 320 lashes, meted out on the various ships of the squadron, as an example to all. “It is to be sure most cruel punishment,” remarked purser John Darby of the John Adams, “but the very existance of the Navy require it.”

  An often oppressive disciplinarian, extremely demanding, abrupt with subordinates, Preble might have been hated and feared by his men had he not awed them with his indomitable fighting spirit, which earned their lasting respect. They were won over during a memorable nighttime encounter with a strange ship off the Spanish coast soon after the Constitution’s arrival in the Mediterranean. The meeting took a decidedly sinister turn when the mystery warship refused to respond to repeated hails by Preble’s flagship.

  “I hail you for the last time,” Preble announced through the trumpet. “If you do not answer I’ll fire a shot into you.”

  A voice from the darkness said: “If you fire I will return a broadside.”

  Preble hotly replied that he would like to see him do it, and asked the ship’s name. The voice said it was the 84-gun HMS Donegal. He ordered Preble to send over his boat.

  This was too much. Preble said he’d “be damned” if he’d send a boat.

  “Blow your matches, boys!” he shouted. A gasp went up from the gun deck, and the crews readied their cannons for firing.

  A tense silence fell over the two ships. Then, the slap of approaching oars could be heard—a boat from the mystery ship. A junior officer offered apologies and said his ship wasn’t the HMS Donegal after all, but the 32-gun HMS Maidstone. The Constitution had caught her napping, and her captain had bluffed to try to buy time to get his crew to quarters. The bluff had very nearly snowballed into a tragedy for the Maidstone—because she had underestimated Preble’s temper and courage.

  From that day forward, Preble’s men thought the “old man” was all right.

  August 7, 1804, 2:30 P.M.

  Four days after the gunboat battle, the squadron returned to Tripoli harbor. With his strike force reinforced by the three captured enemy gunboats, which had been easily converted to U.S. gunboats under the command of Lieutenants Thorn, William M. Crane, and James Caldwell, Preble hoped to lure Tripolitan warships away from the protective batteries and sink them.

  The gunboats and the two bomb vessels took up positions opposite the western part of the city and began shelling the neighborhoods and streets. The six schooners and brigs bombarded a seven-gun battery guarding the area. Crews on fifteen enemy gunboats and galleys anchored beneath the city walls watched the lively duel between the batteries and ships as though it were a sporting event, making no move to engage the Americans.

  And then, without warning, Gunboat 9, Lieutenant Caldwell’s prize, exploded with a roar, spraying a wide area with splintered wood and metal and mangled body parts. A one-in-a-million direct hit on her magazine by an enemy battery had done it. Thousands of eyes watched anxiously as the smoke and debris cleared. When it did, to everyone’s amazement a gun crew could be seen standing on a shard of floating deck, attending to a cannon, pieces of the vessel splashing into the water around them. The crew fired the gun once and reloaded it, but before they could fire again, their tiny platform began to sink. They gave one last cheer as they slipped beneath the waves, yet survived.

  Midshipman Robert T. Spence, who was in charge of the gun, later recalled that he was aiming the loaded cannon when the gunboat blew up, flinging him straight into the air. When he came down, he landed next to the cannon and its dazed gunners, amid horrific carnage. Displaying superb presence of mind, he fired the gun. “Around me lay arms, legs & trunks of Bodies, in the most mutilated state.” Among them was Caldwell, recognizable only by his uniform. His arms and legs were gone, his face mutilated. “He was not dead, although he sank instantly.” Ten men died on Gunboat 9, including Caldwell and Midshipman John S. Dorsey. Six were wounded.

  The American gunboats and bomb vessels kept up a steady fire, damaging buildings throughout the city. The bashaw hunkered down in a bombproof room deep in his castle, but was overcome by curiosity when he heard Gunboat 9 explode. He left his sanctuary only after a Moslem cleric took the precaution of placing a small piece of paper with scriptural quotations written on it atop the bashaw’s head to guard him from danger.

  The enemy gunboats never ventured away from the batteries as Preble had hoped. At 5:30 P.M., with the wind strengthening, Preble recalled the squadron. Besides the casualties on Gunboat 9, two other sailors were killed by enemy cannon fire. It was the costliest day of the war yet for the Americans.

  That night, Captain Isaac Chauncey arrived off Tripoli on the frigate John Adams and handed Preble a letter informing him that he soon would be relieved of command of the squadron by Commodore Samuel Barron.

  Preble gloomily set aside his carefully laid plans for destroying Tripoli’s batteries and wrecking its gunboat fleet to await the arrival of Barron and his four frigates.

  XII

  A DESTRUCTIVE SCHEME

  I am convinced by what I have already seen, that we can reduce Tripoly to a heap of Ruins...

  —Commodore Edward Preble, in a letter to Citizen Beaussier, French charge d‘affaires in Tripoli

  ... a vast stream of fire, which appear’d ascending to heaven.

  —Midshipman Robert T. Spence, in a letter to his mother

  Preble’s fat
e was sealed by the Philadelphia surrender, which had spurred the Jefferson administration to send Commodore Barron and the additional frigates across the Atlantic. Only after the relief force was embarked did Jefferson and his Cabinet learn of the Philadelphia’s destruction. Whenever Barron arrived, Preble would have to give up command of the squadron, for Preble was senior to only two other Navy captains—Isaac Chauncey and James Barron, who was sailing with his older brother. Commodore Barron and the other two captains in his squadron—Hugh Campbell and Preble’s nemesis, John Rodgers—were senior to Preble.

  Navy Secretary Smith tried to soften what he knew would be a heavy blow to Preble’s pride: “You have fulfilled our highest expectations,” he said, and his conduct had been honorable “and in all respects perfectly satisfactory to us.” In a sense, this only made matters worse, for if Preble’s conduct were so exemplary, why must he be relieved? Rather than quibble, Preble gave way gracefully. While he regretted that “our naval establishment is so limited as to deprive me of the means and glory of completely subduing the haughty tyrant of Tripoli, while in the chief command,” he would do everything possible to assist his successor.

  Noble words notwithstanding, Preble’s pride was crushed, as his journal entries showed. “... how much my feelings are lacerated by this supercedure at the moment of Vicotry cannot be described and can be felt only by an Officer placed in my mortifying position.” Not wanting others to think that he was being forced out for poor performance, he circulated Smith’s letter among Sir Alexander Ball, the British governor of Malta, and his other Mediterranean contacts.

  Yusuf rejected Cowdery’s request to take some men and bury the twelve American sailors and officers whose bodies had washed ashore after the naval battle on August 7. Weeks later, when Cowdery was returning to the city from the bashaw’s country palace, he came upon the remains “in a state of putrefaction.... They were scattered on the shore for miles, and were torn in pieces by dogs.”

  The days crept by without any sign of Barron. The John Adams, it turned out, had arrived with only eight serviceable guns, and, thus, was of no use to Preble, adding to his irritation over being superseded. Chauncey had stripped his ship so she could carry more provisions. He had transferred all but eight gun carriages to the Congress and Constellation, which were somewhere in the Atlantic with Barron’s President and the Essex.

  While Preble waited, he weighed resuming the attacks on Tripoli, but first decided to try to negotiate a ransom and peace, hoping to end the war one way or the other while still squadron commander. Since the failed parley in June, he had sent Bainbridge an invisible-ink message urging him to make the same $60,000 offer to the foreign secretary, Sidi Mohammed Dghies, and to see where it went. Dghies, however, said the bashaw would not negotiate with prisoners. Preble tried Citizen Beaussier, the French charge d‘affaires in Tripoli, as an intermediary. Preble and the American consuls were dubious about Beaussier’s motives and sympathies, but he was willing to shuttle proposals and counterproposals back and forth, and he had Yusuf’s ear.

  Two days after the bombardment, Preble offered $80,000 to ransom the American captives and make peace, plus a $10,000 gift for the bashaw when the new U.S. consul took his station. Beaussier returned the following day with a counterproposal: $150,000. Impossible, Preble said. He did some saber rattling. “Perhaps after the next attack he [Yusuf] may be willing to acceed to mine.” But Preble evidently had second thoughts, and made a new offer on August 11: $100,000 for ransom and peace, $10,000 in gifts to the bashaw’s officers and a $10,000 consular present. Yet he couldn’t resist adding in an aside to Beaussier. “I am convinced by what I have already seen, that we can reduce Tripoly to a heap of Ruins: the destruction of Derna & Bengaza will follow, and the blockade be constantly continued, unless the present terms are accepted.” The bashaw made no reply.

  Preble reconnoitered the harbor on the 16-gun brig Argus. Every officer in the squadron, Preble included, adored the Argus. She was fast and trimly built, a mariner’s delight. Stephen Decatur, Jr. had exulted in her handling during the Atlantic crossing. Isaac Hull, when he took her over from Decatur, had noted that she easily outsailed the Siren, a virtually identical ship. Preble had declared her to be “so fine a Vessel, and so well calculated and armed for the service” that he wanted to take her into Tripoli harbor. He did just that on his scouting run, but in his enjoyment of her maneuverability, he strayed within range of Tripoli’s batteries. Enemy gunners opened up on the Argus, raking the copper off the bottom and hulling her with a round of heavy shot 3 feet above the water line. It hit right below where Preble was standing on the quarterdeck. He hastily ordered the Argus back to sea, and she limped out of the harbor.

  With no sign yet of Barron, and the summer slipping away, Preble decided to resume the attacks on Tripoli and to continue them without letup until Barron arrived. Early on August 24, the squadron towed the gunboats and bomb vessels into position. At 2:00 A.M., they leisurely shelled the batteries and city until daylight. Preble called the effect “uncertain.” Beaussier was blunter, describing the bombardment as “perfectly null—Not a single Bomb was thrown beyond the Forts....”

  Yet the nervous bashaw reinforced the city with 1,000 country militia, motley troops with rusty muskets, who liked to beckon and sing to the Americans to run their vessels aground.

  Storms kept the squadron away from Tripoli, but as soon as the weather cleared, Preble led his warships and gunboats—the mortar boats were being repaired back in Syracuse—into the harbor. Their magazines were full of powder, shot, and shell, their decks cleared for action, and their crews eager to get in some licks at the bashaw’s forces.

  The gunboats anchored within pistol range of the bashaw’s castle, and at 3:00 A.M. on August 28 they began shelling the city, harbor boats, and batteries. This bombardment was livelier than the last. For three hours, the Americans blasted the enemy with hundreds of rounds of shot, grape, and canister, sinking a large ship and badly damaging several others. Four Tripolitan sailors were killed on a gunboat raked by grapeshot. The Tripolitans fired back furiously, shredding sails and rigging and sinking a cutter from the John Adams, killing three sailors.

  Inside the city, shot and shells killed and maimed citizens and soldiers, forced gunners to abandon several batteries, damaged the sailors’ prison, shattered the houses of the Spanish, Swedish, and Dutch consuls, and killed a camel. Bainbridge was nearly killed in his bed when a 36-pound cannonball crashed through the wall of his room, tearing off his bedclothes and burying him in stone and mortar. Fellow officers dug him out, bruised and nursing a wound on his right ankle that caused him to limp for months.

  At daybreak, Preble brought the Constitution and her 50 guns close to the batteries, exposing her to the fire of 80 guns while the stately frigate poured 300 rounds of solid shot and 300 more of grapeshot and canister into the city, the batteries, and the bashaw’s castle. The barrage lasted forty-five minutes, which must have seemed an eternity to the fortress gunners, showered with stone and dust after every salvo. They fired back gamely, but the Constitution was positioned so close to the walls that the Tripolitans could not depress their guns enough to hull it.

  A few days later, blockading American ships stopped a Spanish vessel leaving Tripoli harbor. Her captain, who had been in Tripoli during the shelling, reported the attack had wreaked “great havoc and destruction” and killed “a vast number.”

  Carpenters and gunnery mates made repairs while Preble planned yet another attack. He was determined to smash the bashaw’s forts and destroy his warships before Barron’s squadron arrived. In possession of forty-two Tripolitan prisoners from the gunboat battle of August 3, Preble suggested a prisoner exchange. But Preble found the damage and casualties he had inflicted had only stiffened Yusuf’s resolve. Beaussier reported that the bashaw had defiantly vowed “to encounter all your forces in Order that Europe & Africa may conceive a favorable opinion of his strength & courage.” The bashaw not only rejected Preble’s pris
oner exchange, Beaussier said, but now demanded $400,000 for ransom and peace, plus presents for himself and his officers. Preble answered the best way he knew: with another attack.

  The squadron returned to Tripoli harbor on September 3 with six gunboats and the two repaired mortar boats in tow. At 3:30 P.M., they began throwing shells into the city, while the Siren, Vixen, Argus, Nautilus, and Enterprise poured a withering fire into enemy shipping in the harbor and one of the main fortresses, Fort English. A fusillade of cannon fire roared from the bashaw’s castle, the mole, the crown, and the city’s batteries.

  The American fire smashed two Tripolitan gunboats in the harbor and destroyed the home of the bashaw’s chief naval contractor in the city. The bombardment threw the city’s inhabitants into “the utmost terror and distraction,” observed Jonathan Cowdery, the captive Philadelphia surgeon. Yet for some reason—probably improperly set fuses—few shells landing in the city actually exploded. There were so many unexploded shells that the bashaw offered a bounty for every intact one brought to him.