The American Navy

by French Ensor Chadwick

The arrival of the John Adams on August 8th brought the unwelcome word to Preble of the coming of a new and more powerful force under Commodore Samuel Barron, his senior. This, as it was arranged, was an unfortunate necessity, as a new squadron could not be organized without putting in command some of Preble’s seniors, and it was deplored by the Secretary of the Navy in a letter to Preble. It is not, however, readily seen why the crews with Preble, the times of which had expired, could not have been replaced by new crews, and only the two captains junior to him sent. It was an act which showed feeble unaccustomedness to administration. Preble wrote in his private journal: “How much my feelings are lacerated by this supersedure at the moment of victory cannot be described and can be felt only by an officer placed in my mortifying situation.” He kept up his attacks, however, while awaiting his relief, and on the night of August 24th, after being much delayed by heavy weather, a night attack was made by bombardment with little reply. This was renewed on the 28th; one Tripolitan gunboat was sunk, two ran ashore, and the rest retreated. The town was subjected to a heavy bombardment during which a 24-pound shot entered the quarters of the captive Americans, covering Bainbridge in the débris.

On September 3d came Preble’s fifth and last attack by bombardment. The next evening the Intrepid was sent in with the intent of blowing her up in the midst of the Tripolitan fleet. A compartment was built in which was placed 15,000 pounds of powder connected with a slow match expected to take fifteen minutes in burning. Over the powder was placed one hundred 13-inch and fifty 9-inch shells, with a quantity of solid shot and pig-iron ballast. She was commanded by Commander Richard Somers, who volunteered for the work and took with him, as the only other officer, Lieutenant Wadsworth of the Constitution. Ten men were taken. At the last moment, before parting company with the three vessels which accompanied the Intrepid to a point near the entrance and stood by to receive the boats when they should return, Lieutenant Joseph Israel of the Constitution went aboard the Intrepid to carry a message from the commodore and begged so to stay that Somers allowed him to do so.

The night was dark and the Intrepid was soon lost in the gloom, when at 9:47, as marked in the log of the Constitution, there was a terrific explosion, followed by cries of terror and beating of drums in the town and then silence. The boats which were to return never came. The bodies of the three officers and ten men were from time to time recovered by the Tripolitans, but the explosion, which evidently occurred before intended, has ever remained a mystery.

Among the six names which appear on the monument now at the Naval Academy, erected by their brother officers to those killed at Tripoli, are those of the three then lost, the three other names being Caldwell, James Decatur, and Dorsey. The total loss in Preble’s squadron in these eleven months at Tripoli was thirty-two killed and twenty-two wounded.

CHAPTER XIII

Preble left for home without having come to terms with the Pacha of Tripoli. He was not willing to rise above $500 for each of the captives, and would offer nothing for peace or for tribute. Had he remained, it is very possible that he would have forced a peace without a ransom. Peace, however, was to come under his successor largely through one of the extraordinary adventures of our history.

Yusuf Karamanli, the Pacha of Tripoli, was the youngest of three brothers. In 1790 at the age of twenty he murdered the eldest, and when his father died in 1796, and the second brother, Hamet, was absent, he proclaimed himself Pacha. Hamet, rather a weakling, took refuge in Tunis, leaving his family at Tripoli. He had taken up arms against his brother, using Derne, some 500 miles east of Tripoli, as a base, but he was unsuccessful, and in 1804 fled to Egypt. The government in Washington, influenced largely by ex-Consul Eaton, had decided to use Hamet as an asset in the war against Yusuf, and thus placed at the disposition of the commodore a moderate amount of money and military supplies. Eaton was appointed a navy agent under Commodore Barron, with a recommendation from the Secretary of the Navy to use him in connection with an effort to establish Hamet at Tripoli in place of his brother Yusuf. It was a scheme in full accord with Eaton’s adventurous spirit and worthy his real ability.

The Argus, Captain Hull, thus left Malta in September, 1804, for Alexandria, nominally to convoy thence any vessels desiring protection, but really to carry Eaton to find Hamet and convey him to whatever should be decided as the most convenient point from which to act against Tripoli. Hamet was up the Nile. Eaton explained frankly his intentions to the Viceroy and passports were obtained for himself and Hamet out of Egypt. Hamet was finally reached, but such obstacles to leaving by sea were raised through the influence of the French consul that it was decided to go by land, it being feared that the few Arabs whom Hamet had raised might otherwise disappear. The Argus sailed for Malta with a letter from Eaton to the commodore requesting “that the expedition be met at Bomba Bay sixty miles east of Derne, with two more small vessels, a bomb-ketch, two field pieces, a hundred muskets, a hundred marines, and ten thousand dollars.” A convention was made with Hamet, the United States promising to do all that was proper and right to reinstate him, reimbursement of expenses to come from tribute paid by other nations. Eaton was to be recognized as commander-in-chief of the land forces operating against the usurping brother.

The army was a motley array of some four hundred, though Eaton says many thousands could have been had had there been money and subsistence. There were besides Eaton nine Americans: Lieutenant O’Bannon, Midshipman Peck, and seven marines; an English volunteer; forty Greeks; some Arab horsemen, etc., and a caravan of 107 camels and a few asses. These began on March 8th a march across 500 and more miles to Derne. Bomba was reached after immense difficulties on April 15th. Signal-fires were built on a high hill which were sighted by the Argus. She brought a cheering letter from the commodore announcing aid. Two days later the Hornet arrived with an abundance of provisions, and on the 23d, after a rest of a week, the march of sixty miles to Derne was resumed. This was made in two days. Derne was attacked on the 27th from land and from sea by the Hornet and Nautilus (which had also arrived). The town was occupied after a strong resistance and some loss. A Tripolitan force now appeared, and there were unsuccessful efforts to dislodge Eaton’s forces. After May 18th the attacks ceased. Dispatches were sent to the commodore, and only the Argus remained at Derne. On May 19th there came dispatches from the commodore announcing peace negotiations, and on June 11th came the Constellation announcing peace and with orders to evacuate Derne. There was nothing for the Americans to do but to embark, taking with them Hamet and his suite, twenty-five foreign cannoniers with their artillery, and the small party of Greeks. It was a pitiful abandonment of men who were our allies, brought about through the influence of Consul-General Lear, who, as previously mentioned, had been invested with full authority to negotiate a peace.

Lear had spent the winter of 1804-1805 with Commodore Barron at Malta, over whom he acquired, in Barron’s weakened condition of mind and health, a great influence. He was strongly opposed to Eaton’s expedition, and was the main factor in causing it to collapse; the aim of the expedition, which was the capture of Tripoli and dethronement of the Pacha, was not in accord with his views. On May 26th Lear arrived off Tripoli from Malta in the Essex, which delivered to Captain Rodgers of the Constitution a letter from Barron announcing the necessity of the relinquishment by the latter of the command. Lear had already been informed by a letter written by the Danish consul at Tripoli of the probability of the Pacha’s willingness to treat, and at once on his arrival began negotiations. The preliminaries, after parleys of more than a week, were signed on June 3d. Prisoners were to be exchanged, the United States paying a balance of $60,000. A year was allowed to settle disputes before action; prisoners were no longer to be enslaved, and were at the conclusion of peace to be restored without ransom. No tribute was to be paid in future. Hamet was to be “persuaded” to withdraw from Derne, and his family was to be restored to him. There was, however, a secret article which allowed the Pacha four years in which to make this restoration. The unwisdom of placing the negotiations wholly in the hands of Lear had resulted in an unsatisfactory peace, and attacks ensued which must have caused him much bitterness; for General Eaton, as he was now called, pursued him violently in the press and before Congress to the end, in 1811, of Eaton’s life. Lear was strongly criticised in Congress itself, Senator Timothy Pickering declaring his conduct inexcusable. Madison’s instructions as Secretary of State anticipated that peace would be made “without any price or pecuniary compensation whatever”; and so undoubtedly it would have been had negotiations been put in the hands of the commodore of the now powerful force before Tripoli. Nor would Eaton’s wonderful action have gone for nought, nor would Hamet, whom we had made our ally, been thrown overboard with so little consideration. Commodore Rodgers allowed him two hundred dollars monthly to support himself and some fifteen dependents at Syracuse (the winter headquarters of the fleet) until twenty-four hundred dollars was voted him by Congress in 1806. His family, through pressure of our consul, was restored to him in October, 1807, and though his brother gave him residence in Morocco and a pension, and later the governorship of Derne, he had, two years later, to flee with his family to Egypt, where he died.