MEDAL PRESENTED BY CONGRESS TO CAPTAIN WILLIAM BAINBRIDGE
William Bainbridge, commodore, was one of those commanders who were graduated from the merchant service to take high place in the navy of our country.
Owing to his own personal qualifications and character, he became renowned. Bainbridge was born at Princeton, New Jersey, May 7th, 1774. He was descended from ancestors of high standing, who had for several generations been residents of the State in which he was born, his father being a prominent physician, who, shortly after the birth of William, his fourth son, removed to New York. As a boy Bainbridge conceived a great love for the sea; and although under the care of his grandfather, John Taylor, he had been educated carefully for a mercantile pursuit, his desires and importunities were gratified, and at the age of fifteen he was placed on board a merchantman about to sail from the port of Philadelphia.
In order to test him, he was given the berth of a common sailor before the mast. Strong and agile, with his natural aptitude and born courage, it was not long before he began to show what he was made of. After his fourth voyage he was promoted to the rank of first mate on board a vessel trading between this country and Holland. During this voyage a mutiny arose which Bainbridge and the captain put down, although there were seven men against them. For this act, and in recognition of his skill as a navigator and practical seaman, he was given command of this same vessel at the early age of nineteen.
Bainbridge as a young man was not foolhardy, but he was of that stamp that brooked no interference with his rights, and allowed no insult to pass by unnoticed. While in command of the Hope, a little vessel of about one hundred and forty tons’ burden, mounting four guns and having a crew of eleven men, he refused to stop at the hail of an English schooner; whereat the latter fired at him, and Bainbridge, probably to the Englishman’s great astonishment, replied so briskly with his little broadside that the commander of the schooner actually surrendered, although his force consisted of eight guns and thirty men. Several were killed and wounded, and his vessel so much injured in the rigging and hull that he hailed Bainbridge, asking what the latter proposed doing with him. This was in the year 1796. There was no war between this country and England, and Bainbridge contented himself by calling the following message through his trumpet: “I have no use for you. Go about your business, and report to your masters if they want my ship they must either send a greater force or a more skillful commander.”
A few days after this event, while on the homeward voyage, the Hope was stopped by a heavily armed British frigate, and one of her crew, an American, was taken out of her on the pretence of his being a Scotchman. Bainbridge offered to make oath to the contrary, but nevertheless the man was impressed. Within the same week Bainbridge fell in with an English brig much larger than his own ship, and, surprising her by rowing alongside with an armed boat’s crew, he took from her one of the English sailors, leaving this message: “Captain—may report that Captain William Bainbridge has taken one of His Majesty’s subjects in retaliation for a seaman taken from the American ship Hope by Lieutenant Norton of the Indefatigable razee commanded by Sir Edward Pellew.”
A contemporary adds: “The captured seaman received good wages and was discharged just as soon as he reached an American port, in no way dissatisfied with the service into which he had thus been forced.”
Bainbridge’s action in these small affairs attracted the notice of the Secretary of the Navy, and early in 1798 he was given the command of the Retaliation, a small vessel lately taken from the French by the elder Decatur. In the fall of the year the Retaliation, in company with the Norfolk and the Montezuma, two little vessels of about the same size, sailed for the West Indies, the squadron being under the command of Commodore Murray. Off the island of Guadeloupe, in the month of November, three sail were discovered to the eastward that were supposed to be English. At the same moment two other vessels were sighted to the westward. Commodore Murray sailed for the latter in company with the Norfolk, while Bainbridge was ordered to reconnoitre the three sails first sighted. Unfortunately they proved to be French, and, having the weather-gage, they closed with the Retaliation and ordered her to strike. As both of them were frigates, one being L’Insurgent and the other the Volontier, there was nothing for the young captain to do but to comply. The French commander, St. Laurent, declined to take Bainbridge’s sword, gallantly observing that, as he had no opportunity to fight, he should prefer that he would retain it. At once both frigates set out in chase of the Montezuma and Norfolk; and L’Insurgent, out sailing the other Frenchman, was almost within firing distance of the two American ships when St. Laurent asked their force. The deception that Bainbridge practised, under the circumstances, was entirely pardonable; but in his reply he gave full swing to his imagination, and overstated the American armament by exactly doubling it, stating that the Americans were armed with 28-pounders and full of men. At once L’Insurgent was recalled from the chase, much to the chagrin of her captain, who stated that les Américains did not carry a gun heavier than six pounds, for he had been close enough to see them. St. Laurent forgave Bainbridge the ruse, and treated him with great consideration.
After being in prison for some time, owing to negotiations, Bainbridge was sent to the United States in his own vessel, which was filled with liberated American prisoners.
Upon his return to his country he was promoted to the rank of master-commander, and put in command of the Norfolk, the ship he had saved. For over a year he cruised in the West Indies, meeting with many adventures, of which there is not space here to tell, and in 1800, at the age of twenty-six, he was given the highest rank then in our navy, that of captain, and appointed to the command of the George Washington, with the duty, much against his grain, before him, of carrying tribute to the Bey of Algiers. He fulfilled this mission; but there was not an end of it, as he was forced by circumstances to place his vessel at the disposal of the barbaric potentate, and to conduct a mission for him—no less than carrying an ambassador and his suite, numbering some two hundred persons, to Constantinople, the Bey wishing to conciliate the government of the Sublime Porte.