Before they could recover and train their guns, Somers managed to bring his craft out in safety. In a later action, as Somers stood leaning against a flag-staff on his little vessel, a shot came directly for him. The officer saw it in time, and jumped aside to see the spar carried away at just the spot where his head had been. He was spared for more deadly work.
While these many attacks were being made upon the gunboats and batteries, the “Intrepid,” in which Decatur had recaptured and destroyed the “Philadelphia,” was being rapidly prepared as a fire-ship. Their plan was to load her with a hundred barrels of powder in bulk, with bags of grape and solid shot, and under cover of the night explode her in the midst of the Tripolitan war-vessels. Somers, who had been frequently in the harbor of Tripoli and knew its reefs and rocks so that he could readily thread his way through the narrow channels, asked for the opportunity to command this expedition. But Decatur’s success in boarding the “Philadelphia” had raised the chivalry of every officer and man in the fleet to a point rarely equalled in our own history, and Somers, while he did not begrudge Decatur his two epaulettes, was filled with the passion to do a deed as great, if not greater. They had been rivals since youth, and he felt that now was the opportunity to attempt a great deed for his country, though he and every man in the fleet knew that the chances of coming out alive were but one in a hundred. Somers went to Commodore Preble and urged his knowledge of the harbor as his chief claim to the service. It was an honor that a half-dozen other men sought, and not until the old commodore had weighed the chances fully did he at last agree to let Somers go. But, before consenting, Preble repeatedly warned the young officer of the desperate character of the work, and told him that on account of the Napoleonic wars the Tripolitans were short of ammunition, and that so much powder must not fall into the hands of the enemy. But Somers needed no warning. A day or two afterwards, when the preparations were nearly completed, Preble and some other officers were trying a fuse in the cabin of the “Constitution.” One of the officers, watch in hand, ventured the opinion that it burned too long and might enable the enemy to put it out before it exploded the magazine. Hearing this, Somers said, quietly,—
“I ask for no fuse at all.”
He was more gentle than ever in those last few days, and as he and Decatur leaned over the hammock-nettings of “Old Ironsides,” looking towards the line of white where the sea was breaking over the outer roofs, the melancholy look seemed to deepen and the far-away expression in his eyes was of another world. Decatur knew that rather than give up his ship and his powder, Somers would blow the ship and himself to eternity.
When volunteers were called for, the desperateness of the enterprise was fully explained; but the crew of the “Nautilus,” Somers’s own vessel stepped forward to a man. He selected four,—James Simms, Thomas Tompline, James Harris, and William Keith. From the “Constitution” he took William Harrison, Robert Clark, Hugh McCormick, Jacob Williams, Peter Penner, and Isaac Downes. Midshipman Henry Wadsworth (an uncle of the poet Longfellow) was chosen as second in command. Midshipman Joseph Israel, having vainly pleaded with Somers to be allowed to go, at the last moment smuggled himself aboard the “Intrepid,” and when discovered Somers had not the heart to send him back.
Decatur and Stewart went aboard the “Nautilus” on the evening that the attempt had been planned. The three had been so closely united all their lives that Stewart and Decatur felt the seriousness of the moment. Even professionally the attempt seemed almost foolhardy, for several Tripolitan vessels had come to anchor just within the entrance, and to pass them even at night seemed an impossibility. Somers felt a premonition of his impending catastrophe, for just as they were about to return to their own vessels he took a ring from his finger and, breaking it into three pieces, gave each of them a part, retaining the third for himself.
As soon as the night fell the “Intrepid” cast off her lines and went slowly up towards the harbor. The “Argus,” the “Vixen,” and the “Nautilus” followed her, while shortly afterwards Stewart on the “Siren” became so anxious that he followed, too. A haze that had come up when the sun went down hung heavily over the water, and soon the lines of the fire-ship became a mere gray blur against the dark coast-line beyond. The excitement upon the guard-ships now became intense, and both officers and men climbed the rigging and leaned out in the chains in the hope of being able to follow the movements of the ketch. Midshipman Ridgley, on the “Nautilus,” by the aid of a powerful night-glass aloft, managed to follow her until she got well within the harbor, and then she vanished. The suspense soon became almost unbearable, for not a shot had been fired and not a sound came from the direction in which she had gone. At about nine o’clock a half-dozen cannon-shots could be plainly heard, and even the knowledge that she had been discovered and was being fired on was a relief from the awful silence.
At about ten o’clock Stewart was standing at the gangway of the “Siren,” with Lieutenant Carrol, when the latter, craning his neck out into the night, suddenly exclaimed,—
“Look! See the light!”
Stewart saw away up the harbor a speck of light, as if from a lantern, which moved rapidly, as though it were being carried by some one running along a deck. Then it paused and disappeared from view. In a second a tremendous flame shot up hundreds of feet into the air, and the glare of it was so intense that it seemed close aboard. The flash and shock were so stupendous that the guard-ships, though far out to sea, trembled and shivered like the men who watched and were blinded. The sound of the explosion which followed seemed to shake sea and sky. It was like a hundred thunder-claps, and they could hear the echoes of it go rolling down across the water until it was swallowed up in the silence of the night.