Decatur’s concern for the success of the mission seemed a bit excessive, even for him. Then I remembered Edward mentioning in his last letter that Somers and our captain were lifelong friends and companions. No wonder he seems worried.
“Let me know if you hear anything, Oliver. Listen for oars dipping, voices, anything at all. They should be coming out from about there.” He pointed, his outstretched hand holding the glass, like an extension of his arm. “And keep silence about the decks!” Without further comments, Decatur disappeared into the darkness, leaving us all peering forward with hands cupped behind our ears.
“Show a light, forward, there. Give them something to row towards.” Apparently the captain had decided that the risk of discovery at this point was outweighed by the need of our colleagues to find us.
“Sir! Listen. Do you hear?” Bradford grabbed my arm, his whisper edged with tension, the tension we all felt.
“Hear what? Do you hear me boats, Bradford?”
“No, sir. Listen! Voices and drums. Don’t you hear it?”
Then I did. But the voices and the beating of the drums came from ashore, not from our fellows making good their escape. I called out to the quarterdeck with the information and received a “Thank you” and “Stand to your stations!” in reply. Perhaps the batteries ashore, now alerted to our presence, were about to fire.
They did fire, ineffectually, and in seemingly random directions. They could no more see us than we them, and their shots did little to dissuade us from waiting for the boats. Eventually the shore batteries ceased their useless firing, and we, all of us on three ships, continued to watch and wait in silence.
The dawn found us still hove to about a half-cannon-shot from the western rocks. I think not a soul in any of the ships slept a moment that night, waiting with failing hope of ever seeing our comrades again. A heavy air of melancholy had settled on all aboard as the realization struck home. Decatur had shown up regularly in the bow armed with his night glass, saying nothing to any of us, as he watched and paced.
With the light of a new day, exhausted men, diminished by the loss of our thirteen brave fellows, saw how the event had ravaged the face of our captain. His brow furrowed in consternation, his shoulders drooped, and the pall of futility hung about him like a great weight. The fire which had lit his eyes from the start was gone; now those demanding yet kindly windows to the captain’s inner being were red-rimmed and withdrawn, underscored by dark shadows, once again giving him the look of a man of greater than five-and-twenty years.
“Show the signal to rejoin, if you please, Mister Lawrence. They will not be coming out. I must report to the commodore.” Decatur stepped off the quarterdeck and took a position amidship, still occasionally turning his glass toward the brightening shoreline and harbor for some sign, anything that might offer some hope. Then, in company with Argus and Nautilus, we set our remaining sails and bore off to the west and our squadron.
EPILOGUE
“Did they ever come out, those men in the fireship, Grandfather? What happened to Mister Wheatley and your captain’s friend, Lieutenant Somers?” The big eyes and concerned faces of my two grandsons made me think briefly I had offered more details of the events than I should have. But they had remained attentive for the entire story and deserved to know the end.
“No, lads. They were lost in what, to this very day, remains a great and melancholy mystery; no one ever discovered what happened. The ketch caused no damage to the gunboat fleet she had been intent on destroying, and the only surmise has been that Somers and his crew were discovered and boarded. Captain Decatur had told us that his friend had vowed not to be taken, and it was his considered opinion that they simply fired the ship and sacrificed their own lives to ensure that those hundred barrels of powder and the shells the ship carried would not fall into the hands of the enemy. We all knew how desperate the pirates were for both powder and ball. Your great-uncle Edward told me that Bainbridge had been taken to the shore to identify a half-dozen bodies that had washed up the next day, but they were so horribly shattered and disfigured as to be unrecognizable. And the ketch itself, or what was left of her, washed up later. No, I am afraid we will never know what happened that night.” I saw brows furrow as the lads considered this, trying to make some sense of the story.
As they pondered, I again felt myself being drawn back to that time, now so long ago, when we saw the flagship’s signal to return to port. It was a dejected and dispirited collection of sailors and officers who sailed into Syracuse Harbor some ten days later. Commodore Preble and Constitution, in company with Argus and Vixen, remained on station to continue the blockade and await the arrival of his successor. As our ammunition stores were very low, each of the departing vessels had off-loaded its powder and shot to the three which remained and towed the gunboats and bombs with us, to be returned to the King of the Two Sicilies. Now some of us, including Enterprise, would return to the United States, a prospect which filled me with conflicting emotions.
On one hand, I was overjoyed to be returning home after being away for over a year. I rejoiced at the prospect of parading my newly-acquired maturity before my parents and friends who had remained safely ashore in Philadelphia, and telling them of my adventures in the war. But rushing in like a wave thrusting up the shoreline, undermining the joy of my long anticipated homecoming, was the realization, the knowledge that we had failed in our mission, not only in causing the Bashaw to treat with us for peace, but more importantly, to secure the release of the Philadelphias. I felt this failure most keenly, knowing that Edward still languished in that heathen dungeon.
“Grandfather . . . Grandfather?” A small voice intruded on my reflection, drawing me back to the parlor in what I still thought of as my parent’s home on Held Street, even though both had been gone for nearly thirty years. I looked down at the expectant faces. Timothy, my son’s ten-year-old boy, wore a puzzled expression.
“When did you rescue Great-Uncle Edward then? Did you go back to Tripoli later?”
“Well, no. Tim. It was not until the summer of 1805, almost a year later, that the Bashaw agreed to a peace and released the officers and men of our late frigate to Commodore Barron, still in Constitution. I was not there, but I learned that the Danish consul, Mister Nissen, came aboard the flagship with a commission from the pasha to negotiate, and a treaty was soon drawn up and accepted by the Tripolitan potentate with certain conditions. One of the conditions was a ransom of sixty thousand dollars, which the commodore and our Consul-General in Algiers, Tobias Lear, approved, along with an exchange of their prisoners, your Great-Uncle Edward among them, for the ones we held.
“It was soon after the treaty was signed that the prisoners were marched to the mole, and Vixen sailed in to receive them. She received a salute of twenty-one guns from the castle which was answered by our flagship. It must have been thrilling for them, after they realized it was only a salute!” I smiled at the boys, hoping they understood the irony. “The Philadelphias were brought home later that summer in the ships of Barron’s squadron, now no longer needed in those waters.”
“Did I ever meet Great-Uncle Edward? I don’t remember him.” Benjamin, the younger child at just seven years, piped up.
“You were quite small, Ben. It’s little wonder you don’t recall my brother. You were not yet four when he passed on. And since he had accepted a position to teach at the new Naval School when it started in 1845, he lived there in Annapolis, down in Maryland. We didn’t get a visit from him all that much.” It was hard to reckon with the passage of ten years since that school began; it seemed only yesterday when Edward told me about it and that he would teach the young men how to be naval officers. And now he’d been gone four years himself.
Until they moved to Annapolis, Edward and his wife had lived here, on Held Street, enjoying the fruits of his thirty-year naval career, his own grandchildren, and a certain celebrity from having been in Philadelphia with Bainbridge, who had gone on to command Constitution during
one of her most famous engagements in the late war with England. Edward, as well, had secured berths for himself in some well-known and successful ships during that war. Our father’s cabinet shop had closed with his death, but still remained where it had stood since he built it, next door.
“Oliver, what drivel are you filling these young heads with?” Ann, my wife of nearly forty years, stepped lightly into the room. Her voice held the same good-natured chiding tone which she had used to correct my errors over most of that time. “Stephen and Sally will not let the children visit if you persist in telling them harrowing tales of your adventures. It’ll likely give ‘em the night terrors!”
It was a grand tradition that our oldest son’s two children came for a visit each Sunday after services, stayed for dinner, and, after their parents joined us all for supper, returned to their home across the river in New Jersey.
“Oh, Grandma, it’s fine. Grandfather has just told us of how Great-Uncle Edward was captured and put in a dungeon in Tripoli and they couldn’t get out for two years and then he started the Naval School in Maryland. We liked it very well!”
“Well,” my dear wife laughed, “I think you may have missed a few years there. You know that both Edward and your grandfather served in the late war with Britain. Mustn’t forget that. In fact, your grandfather was with Commodore Decatur in the United States frigate when they took HMS Macedonian after a savage battle and sent her in to Newport as a prize.”
“You didn’t tell us that, Grandfather,” Timothy, always eager for a story, said accusingly. “And what happened to Mister . . . I mean Captain Decatur? Have we ever met him?”
“The tale of the capture of Macedonian is for another day, Tim. Your grandma will scold me if I tell you that now. But as to Decatur, he, and I, did go back to Tripoli after the war, 1815, it was, when the pirates abandoned the treaty they had signed. Their brothers in Algiers and Tunis joined them this time. I was third lieutenant in the very ship Commodore Decatur had captured, Macedonian, on that commission. Of course, the ship now belonged to our navy. Decatur was commodore of the largest squadron ever assembled, fifteen ships, I think, and sailed the fleet right into the harbor at Algiers. When the pasha looked out of his castle at those ships there, he quieted right down and there was never a shot fired! The other heathen devils followed suit quick as ever you please. And that was that. We stayed for a few months and came home.
“It was just five years later, March 22, 1820,1 shall take the date to my own grave, that Commodore Decatur was shot and killed by Commodore James Barron, the brother of the very man who had relieved Preble in 1804! A duel, it was, and over something trivial, a misunderstanding. Barron, who had demanded it, was wounded, but it was not mortal. Decatur’s wound was, though, and he succumbed the day following. I attended his funeral in Washington, along with many of those who had served with him both on the Barbary Coast and in the war with England in 1812. All the members of the Senate and the House, the President, the Justices of the Supreme Court, and a multitude of other dignitaries were in attendance as well. A truly melancholy time; such a waste!”
A silence filled the room as I reflected on the event and my feeling of loss at the untimely demise of that great man, the lieutenant who turned a fourteen-year-old boy into a man whose character was tempered in the fires of conflict.
“Here’s a somber looking group, if ever I saw one. Who has died?” Stephen’s booming voice broke the mood, and I smiled as Timothy and Benjamin leaped up to greet their father, resplendent in his newly earned captain’s uniform.
“Stephen, you startled us all. You’re going to be the death of both your father and me, should you persist in sneaking about like that! Hullo, Sally, what a pretty frock. Come now and sit, supper is just ready.”
BLOWING UP of the FIRE SHIP INTREPID commanded by CAPT. SOMERS in the HARBOUR of TRIPOLI on the night of the 4th Sept. 1804. Before the Intrepid had gained her Destined situation she was suddenly boarded by 100 Tripolines, when the Gallant Somers and Heroes of his Party, (Lieuts. Wadsworth and Israel and 10 Men,)
observed themselves surrounded by 3 Gun-boats, and no prospect of Escape, determined at once to prefer Death and the Destruction of the Enemy, the Captivity & a torturing Slavery, put a Match to trains leading directly to the Magazine, which at once blew the whole into the Air. Courtesy of USS Constitution Museum.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
While this story is technically fiction, the historical events are accurate and the ships and most of the people are real. The Baldwin brothers, Oliver’s shipmates in the cockpit, and certain specific officers and sailors in Argus and Enterprise are creations of the author’s imagination. The brothers Decatur, lames Lawrence, William Bainbridge (and his brother), the Barrons, Commodore Edward Preble, and others existed and acted more or less as depicted in the events of 1803-4. They, along with several other officers, young lieutenants at the time, went on to further glory in the War of 1812. These include David Porter, first lieutenant on the ill-fated Philadelphia, Charles Stewart, captain of Syren, and Isaac Hull, who took over command of Argus after she reached Gibraltar. Later, Hull had Constitution during her well-known engagement with HMS Guerriere, the first significant victory for the young republic in the War of 1812. William Bainbridge, as Captain Baldwin mentions to his grandchildren, also had commanded USS Constitution in her epic battle with HMS lava off the coast of Brazil. James Lawrence is best remembered for his famous utterance, “Don’t give up the ship!” which he spoke as his command, USS Chesapeake, was about to be taken by HMS Shannon on June 1, 1813.
Stephen Decatur, as a young lieutenant, did second William Bainbridge’s brother, loseph, in a duel in Malta in 1803 against the secretary to Sir Alexander Ball, the Governor of that island. Interestingly, the duel was fought at four paces, since Decatur felt that Bainbridge was such a miserable marksman as to be unable to hit a target at the more usual ten paces. It ended after each participant had missed with their first shot, reloaded, and fired again; the Englishman was killed and Decatur and Bainbridge shortly sailed for home as passengers in the frigate Chesapeake.
Decatur did die as a result of a duel with James Barron fought in Washington, DC, in 1820, the result of a long-standing feud between the two. Decatur had participated in Barron’s court martial after the Chesapeake-Leopard affair in 1807 and had recommended Barron’s dismissal from the Naval Service. Barron was, of course, not dismissed, and held that Decatur had insulted him during several later conversations. The two corresponded for several years about the incident, during which time the tone of each letter became more acerbic, more particularly those of Commodore Barron, and ultimately resulted in Barron’s challenge, which Decatur reluctantly accepted. He named Commodore William Bainbridge as his second! The duel was fought at a distance of eight paces on March 22, 1820, at Bladensburg, Maryland. Decatur died from his wounds the following day and was buried in Washington several days thereafter with full ceremony and with every politician from the President to the most junior representative in attendance, along with many senior Navy and Army officers and countless civilians who had come to honor their hero.
Dueling was a common practice then, more particularly in the Navy, as by 1804 the Army had established laws against it. Later, so did the civilian world, but duels still took place and were considered an acceptable method of solving differences. The duel in the story between the two midshipmen, while fictitious, was representative of the several which actually took place during that conflict, including one involving two mids.
The raid to burn the frigate Philadelphia was carried out on February 16, 1804, just as described by Oliver; there were, in fact, fifty sailors, eight Marines, five officers including the surgeon, seven midshipmen, and one civilian, the pilot Salvatore Catalano, who sailed Intrepid into Tripoli Harbor that night. The notables among the officers and midshipmen included, of course, Stephen Decatur, James Lawrence, Joseph Bainbridge (brother of William, captain of the frigate) and Midshipman Thomas Macdonough, who found
his own glory on Lake Champlain against the British in September 1814 (Battle of Plattsburgh). It has recently come to light that no evidence exists supporting the letter from Admiral Lord Nelson to the Americans describing their raid as “the most bold and daring act of the age.” This legend apparently began in the 1840s with A.S. Mackenzie’s biography of Stephen Decatur.
James Decatur, Stephen’s brother, was mortally wounded during the August 3, 1804, gunboat attack; shot in the head, he died on board Constitution in the company of his brother. When told about the treachery that had led to his brother’s fatal wounding, Stephen immediately attacked and carried the Tripolitan polacca. His hand-to-hand combat with the pirate commanding it and the way Decatur triumphed were properly described by Oliver. It is interesting to note that, for years, people ascribed the heroism of the wounded sailor who threw himself across his captain’s body, and thus received the cutlass stroke, to Ruben James. Songs were written attesting to his act and at least two ships were named after him; it was not he, however. From contemporary medical records, Daniel Frazier has been proven to be the selfless sailor who saved Decatur’s life and lived despite his grievous wounds. His act is generally credited to the devotion Decatur’s men felt for him.
Decatur was promoted to captain by Congress subsequent to his action on Philadelphia. He was the youngest man, at just twenty-five, to hold that rank, before or since. Congress also voted him a sword and his all-volunteer crew received promotions as well as cash awards. The prize money he sought for his crew never materialized, a great injustice to the participants.
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