DECATUR'S BRILLIANT EXPLOIT
Seventy volunteers were required to help Lieutenant Decatur blow up the Philadelphia. Seventy volunteers—that meant that I had a chance to go. Fortunately, I was one of the first to hear the orders read, and thus had an opportunity to apply before others. Captain Eaton was on board the Siren, returning from sitting at the court of inquiry, when Lieutenant Stewart, commander of the Siren, read to him orders he had just received from Commodore Preble. I, as orderly to Captain Eaton, was present at the reading. Plain and direct was the message, but thrilling enough without flourishes.
I stepped forward.
"Pardon me, Sir," I said, "but I want to be one of the seventy volunteers. I speak also for Reuben James. Reuben has served under Lieutenant Decatur at other times, and he'd be heartbroken to be left behind."
I realized as I waited for a reply that I had done a bold thing. I was not supposed to be hearing the letter read, much less acting upon it. However, Lieutenant Stewart was not strict about discipline and he took no offence at my act.
"Your name goes down!" he said, "also Reuben James, though he'll be given a chance to speak for himself. You show the right spirit, young man, but don't feel lofty about it, for I expect any other man of our navy would have said the same thing if he were standing in your place."
Properly humbled, I went off to tell Reuben James that he had me to thank for gaining him an adventure.
Lieutenant Stewart's prediction came true. The crews of the squadron actually fought with each other for a chance to go. Decatur's name to them spelt romance. His exploits had been on every man's lips.
The crew of the ketch Intrepid having been chosen, off we started. It was sundown when we drifted into the harbor of Tripoli. We approached the city knowing that a sudden fear of attack had swept over Tripoli; that the forts were manned; the guns loaded, and a sharp watch kept.
We learned later that the Moslem guards congratulated themselves when they saw the ketch entering the harbor, thinking that it was manned by good Mohammedans who had had the shrewdness to escape blockading ships.
The gates of the city were shut. The Captain of the Port would not inspect the ship until morning. The call of the muezzin sounded over the still waters of the bay. Night fell on the city.
On board the Intrepid all of the crew, except six men disguised as Moors, were concealed below deck or behind bulwarks. Our ketch drifted towards the Philadelphia. A sentinel on the frigate hailed us, but the answer came back from our Maltese pilot in the sentry's own language to the effect that the ketch had lost her anchors during a recent gale and wished to make fast to the anchors of the Philadelphia until new ones could be purchased the next morning. As if taking permission for granted, Lieutenant Decatur directed Blake, a sailor who spoke Maltese, and Reuben and myself to set out from the ketch in a small boat for the purpose of fastening a line to a ring-bolt on the frigate's bow. When this was done, the sailors on the ketch were to haul on the line, to bring our boat nearer to the frigate. The men hidden behind the bulwarks caught the rope as it came through the hands of their disguised comrades, and helped in the hauling.
Suspecting nothing, the Moslems on the Philadelphia sent in turn a small boat with a line to aid in mooring the Intrepid, but Blake met them and took the line from their hands, saying, in broken Maltese:
"We will save the gentlemen the trouble."
So far so good. But now, as the ketch was being hauled in by the bow line, the pull of the stern line swung her broadside towards the Tripolitans, and the guards on the Philadelphia saw the men who, under the screen of the bulwarks, were hauling in the line.
"Americanos! Americanos!" we heard them shriek.
Swift action followed on the part of Decatur. The hidden sailors sprang into the open and gave the line a pull that sent the ketch close to the Philadelphia. An Arab cut the rope, but the Americans were now near enough to throw grapnels.
"Boarders away!" Decatur shouted. We in the boat clambered up the sides of the Philadelphia. The rest of the seventy climbed like cats over the vessel's rail with Midshipman Morris in the lead and Decatur at his heels. The Philadelphia's deck was home ground to many of us, and in a moment we had cleared the quarterdecks of the enemy. Then, in a cutlass charge, we drove the panic-stricken crew before us. Some of the infidels leaped overboard. Others sought refuge below, but died at the hands of sailors who had climbed through the ports. In ten minutes' time a rocket went up from the Americans to signal to the Siren that the Philadelphia had been taken.
Combustibles had been rushed on board. Firing gangs were distributed through the ship. So swift was the work and so fierce was the blaze that Midshipman Morris and his gang, who were setting fire to the cockpit, were almost cut off by flames started elsewhere. From the portholes on both sides the flames leaped out, enveloping the upper deck. I saw that Decatur was the last to leave the ship.
The ketch, when all of the boarding party had returned to it in safety, had its period of danger too, for while it was still fastened at the frigate's stern, flames poured from the cabin of the Philadelphia into the cabin of the ketch where the ammunition was stored. The line was instantly severed. The crew laboring desperately with the big sweeps, eight to a side, pushed the Intrepid clear of the burning vessel and headed for the sea.
At last the flames reached the magazine of the vessel, which burst with a tremendous roar. Great sheets of flames arose and sparks flew like a storm of stars over the waters of the harbor. This was the end of the good ship Philadelphia.
Every man on the Intrepid returned without injury. Lord Nelson later declared this exploit to be "the most bold and daring act of the age." Decatur was made a captain. He received a letter from the Secretary of the Navy, and noted with joy that it was addressed to "Stephen Decatur, Esq., Captain in the Navy of the United States." His pride increased when he read:
"The achievement of this brilliant enterprise reflects the highest honor on all the officers and men concerned. You have acquitted yourself in a manner which justifies the high confidence we have reposed in your valor and your skill. The President has desired me to convey to you his thanks for your gallant conduct on this occasion, and he likewise requests that you will in his name thank each individual of your gallant band for their honorable and valorous support, rendered the more honorable from its having been volunteered. As a testimonial of the President's high opinion of your gallant conduct in this instance, he sends you the enclosed commission."
Some people asked if the Philadelphia could not have been saved, though Commodore Preble's orders were to destroy her. We heard one of the captive officers of the frigate say later:
"I know of nothing which could have rendered it impracticable to the captors to have taken the Philadelphia out of the harbor of Tripoli." The pilot on board the ketch, Catalona, was of the same opinion. Decatur himself told his wife that he believed that he could have towed the ship out, even if he could not have sailed her.
But Commodore Preble, in setting down explicit orders to destroy her, had written: "I was well informed that her situation was such as to render it impossible to bring her out."
He wrote thus because Captain Bainbridge himself had written:
"By chartering a merchant vessel and sending her into the harbor with men secreted, and steering directly on board the frigate, it might be effected without any or a trifling loss. It would not be possible to carry the frigate out, owing to the difficulty of the channel."
The main object was to get the Philadelphia out of the possession of Tripoli. This Decatur did without risking the success of his enterprise.