Gentlemen Rovers

by E. Alexander Powell

It was shortly after this American misfortune that William Eaton, soldier, diplomat, and Indian-fighter, swaggered upon the scene, and things began to happen with a rapidity that made the Bashaw's turbaned head whirl. By birth and upbringing Eaton was a Connecticut Yankee, and he possessed all the shrewdness, hardihood, and perseverance so characteristic of that race. The son of a schoolmaster farmer, before he was sixteen he had run away from home to join the Continental Army, which he left at the close of the Revolution with the chevrons of a sergeant on his coat-sleeve. Far-sighted enough to see the value of a college education, he went from the camp straight to the college classroom. Graduating from Dartmouth in 1790, he re-entered the army as a captain, served against the Indians in Georgia and Ohio, and in 1798 received an appointment as American consul at Tunis. Resolute, energetic, and daring, impatient with any one who did not agree with his views, no better man could have been selected for the place. Thoroughly understanding the Arab character, from the very outset he took a high hand in his dealings with the Tunisian ruler. He alternately quarrelled with and patronized the Bey, bullyragged his ministers, and actually horsewhipped an insolent official of the court in the palace courtyard, for five years keeping up an uninterrupted series of altercations, provocations, and procrastinations over the payment of tribute-money. He acted with such energy and boldness, however, that he secured to the commerce of his country complete immunity from the attacks of Tunisian cruisers, and made the name American respected on that part of the Barbary coast at least. In 1801, as I have already remarked, the American flagstaff in the adjoining kingdom of Tripoli came crashing down at the Bashaw's order, and war promptly began between that country and the United States. Two years later the Bey of Tunis, harried beyond endurance by the half-insolent, half-patronizing fashion in which Eaton treated him, ordered that gentleman to leave the country.

The frigate Philadelphia ran aground in the harbor of Tripoli, the Tripolitans capturing Captain Bainbridge and his entire crew.

Returning to the United States, Eaton went immediately to Washington and laid before President Jefferson and his Cabinet a scheme for bringing the war with Tripoli to a successful conclusion, and exchanging our humiliating position as a contributor to a gang of pirates for one more consistent with American ideals. The plan which he proposed was, briefly, that the United States should assist in restoring to the Tripolitan throne the exiled Bashaw, Ahmet Karamanli, on the understanding that, upon his restoration, the exaction of tribute from the American government and the depredations on American commerce should cease. Eaton was outspoken in urging the desirability of carrying out this plan, arguing that the dethronement of one of the Barbary despots would impress the people of all that region as nothing else could do. I can see him standing there beside the long table in the Cabinet room of the White House, his lean Yankee face aglow with enthusiasm, his every motion bespeaking confidence in himself and his plan, while Jefferson and his sedate, conservative advisers lean far back in their chairs and regard this visionary half curiously, half amusedly, as he outlines his schemes for overturning thrones and reapportioning kingdoms. From the President and his Cabinet he received the sort of treatment which timid governments are apt to bestow on men of spirit and action. He was given to understand that he was at liberty to carry out his plans, but that, if he was successful, the government would take all the credit, and that, if he failed, he would have to take all the blame. The only way to explain the astounding apathy of the American government to events in the Mediterranean is that a bitter political struggle was then in progress in the United States, and that the very remoteness of the theatre of war probably lessened its importance in the eyes of the administration. At any rate, President Jefferson signed the appointment of Eaton as American naval agent in the Mediterranean, and, happy as a schoolboy at the beginning of the long vacation, at the wide latitude of action conferred upon him by this purposely vague commission, he sailed a few days later with the American fleet for Egypt. His great adventure had begun.

Aware that the dethroned Bashaw had fled to Cairo, Eaton landed at Alexandria, and, hastening to the Egyptian capital by camel, succeeded in locating the exiled Ahmet, whom he found in the depths of poverty and despair. Seated cross-legged beside him in a native coffee-house, Eaton outlined his plan and proposition. He told Ahmet that the United States would undertake to restore him to the Tripolitan throne upon his agreeing to repay the expenses of the expedition immediately upon his restoration, and upon the condition that Eaton should be commander-in-chief of the land forces throughout the campaign, Ahmet and his followers to promise him implicit obedience. Ahmet snapped at the chance, slim though it was, to regain his kingdom, as a starving dog snaps at a proffered bone. Eaton's plan of campaign was as simple as it was reckless. He proposed to recruit a force of Greek and Arab mercenaries, officered by Americans, in Alexandria, and, following the North African coast-line westward across the Libyan Desert, to surprise and capture Derna (or, as it was spelled in those days, Derne), the capital of the easternmost and richest province of Tripoli. With Derna as a base of operations, and with the co-operation of the American fleet, he held that it would be a comparatively simple matter to push on along the coast, taking in turn Benghazi, Tobruk, and the city of Tripoli itself. The chief merit of the scheme lay in its sheer audacity, for of all the leaders who have invaded Africa, this unknown American was the only one who had the courage to face the perils of a march across a waterless, trackless, sun-scorched, and uninhabited desert. But there was in Eaton the stuff of which great conquerors are made, and instead of letting his mind dwell on the dangers which the desert had to offer, he dreamed of the triumphs which awaited him beyond it.

To raise the men for so hazardous an expedition, Eaton had need of all the energy and magnetism at his command, alternately employing the specious promises of a recruiting sergeant and the persuasive arguments of a campaign orator. On March 3, 1805, Eaton and the man to whom he had promised a kingdom reviewed their forlorn hope—and it was very forlorn indeed—at a spot called the Arab's Tower, some forty miles southwest of Alexandria. I doubt if so strangely assorted a force ever marched and fought under the shadow of our flag. The army, if army it could be called, consisted of eight Americans besides Eaton: Lieutenant O'Barron, Sergeant Peck, and six marines borrowed from the American fleet; thirty-four Greeks, who went along professedly because they wanted to fight the Moslem, but really because they needed the money; twenty-five Egyptian Copts, Christians at least in name, who claimed to be trained artillerymen, and to lend color to their assertion brought with them a small brass field-gun; those of Ahmet's personal adherents who had fled with him into exile, numbering about ninety men; and a squadron of Arab mercenaries, whose services had been obtained by the promise of unlimited opportunities for loot—these with the drivers of the baggage-camels bringing the total strength of the "Army of North Africa" to less than four hundred men. With this motley and ill-disciplined force behind him, and six hundred miles of yellow sand in front, Eaton turned his horse's nose Tripoliward, so that at about the time President Jefferson was delivering his second inaugural address the adventurous American was leading his little army across the desert, with the courage of an Alexander the Great, to conquer an African kingdom.

The task which lay before him was one which great military leaders, all down the ages, had declared impossible. For a distance equal to that from Philadelphia to Chicago stretched an unbroken expanse of pitiless, sun-scorched desert, boasting no single living thing save an occasional band of nomad Arabs or a herd of gazelles. Midway between Alexandria and Derna was the insignificant port of Bomba, where, according to a prearranged plan, the Argus, under Captain Isaac Hull—the same who became famous a few years later for his victories over the British in the War of 1812—was to meet the expedition with supplies. Unless you have seen the desert it will be difficult for you to appreciate how hazardous this adventure really was. Imagine a sea of yellow sand with billow after billow stretching in every direction as far as the eye can see; without a tree, a shrub, a plant, a blade of grass; without a river, a brook, a drop of water except, at long intervals, a stagnant, green-scummed pool; the air like a blast from an open furnace-door and overhead a sky pitiless as molten brass! During the seven weeks of the march the thermometer never dropped during the day below 120 degrees.

The arrangements for the transport had been left to Ahmet Pasha, and it was not until the expedition was two hundred miles into the desert, and the camel-drivers abruptly halted and announced that they were going back to Egypt, that Eaton learned that they had been engaged only to that point. As the desertion of the camel-drivers and the consequent inability to transport the tents, ammunition, and supplies would wreck the expedition, Eaton pleaded with the men to stick by him two or three days longer, until he could reach an encampment of Arabs with whom he could make another contract. This they consented to do on condition that they were paid in advance. By borrowing every piaster which his Americans and Greeks had to lend, Eaton succeeded in raising six hundred and seventy-three dollars, and with this the camel-drivers were apparently content. Nothing shows more strikingly the shoe-string on which the enterprise was being run than the fact that this unexpected disbursement reduced Eaton's war-chest to three Venetian sequins—equivalent to six dollars and fifty-four cents! Despite this payment, all but four of the camel-drivers deserted the very next night, and the four that remained sullenly refused to go any farther. In the darkness of the following night they, too, quietly untethered their camels and slipped silently away. Here, then, were three hundred and fifty men, with a rapidly diminishing supply of food and water and absolutely no means of transport, as completely marooned as though they were on a desert island.

To make matters worse, if such a thing were possible, Eaton learned that Ahmet had induced his Tripolitans and the Arabs to refuse to advance until they had news of the arrival of the Argus at Bomba. Eaton, striding across to Ahmet's tent, shook his fist menacingly in the face of the cringing Tripolitan. "I know you're a coward," said he, "and I suspect that you're a traitor and I've a damned good mind to have you shot." The Pasha, now thoroughly frightened, replied that his men were too tired to march any farther. "You can take your choice between marching and starving," Eaton retorted, turning on his heel, and placing a guard of American marines around the tent containing the provisions, he ordered them to shoot the first Arab who approached it. This resolute action had an immediate effect, for the Pasha and his men lost their tired feeling with amazing quickness, fifty of the camel-drivers returned, and the desperate march was resumed. It was but a day or two, however, before the Arabs became as turbulent and unruly as ever. Then another mutiny broke out, Ahmet and his people announcing that they preferred to be well-fed cowards rather than starved heroes, and that they were going back to the flesh-pots of Egypt forthwith. Just as they were on the point of departure, however, a messenger who had been despatched to Bomba reached camp with the news that the Argus was awaiting them in the harbor. These unexpected delays had wholly exhausted the supplies, which were slim enough, goodness knows, in the beginning, so that during the remainder of the march to Bomba they were compelled to kill some of the camels for food, living upon them and upon such roots as they could gather on the way.

It was a half-starved and utterly exhausted expedition that plodded up the sand dunes which overlook the little port of Bomba, so what must their despair have been when they found no vessel awaiting them in the harbor, and that the town itself had been deserted. Captain Hull, apparently having given them up as lost, had departed. This time a more serious mutiny occurred, the Arabs, desperate with hunger and furious from disappointment, preparing to attack Eaton and his handful of Europeans. Appreciating the peril of his position, Eaton hastily formed his men into a hollow square. Just as the Arabs were preparing to charge down upon them the musket of one of the marines was prematurely discharged, the bullet whistling in uncomfortable proximity to the Pasha's ear. So terror-stricken was that worthy that he called off his men and attempted to parley with Eaton, who, standing alone well in front of his command, relieved his mind by telling Ahmet his opinion of him in what, according to the accounts of those who heard it, must have been an epic in objurgation. While the two factions were growling at each other like angry bull-dogs one of the Americans, happening to glance seaward, suddenly broke the dangerous tension by shouting: "A sail! A sail!" Hull, true to his promise, was returning, and the expedition was saved. Supplies were quickly landed from the Argus for the starving men; with full stomachs the courage of the Arabs returned, and Eaton and his little band once more turned their faces toward the setting sun.