Sailor’s Mess-table.
From the “Kedge Anchor.”
Porter reported the whole matter home, but instead of approval received an order to return home and face a court-martial. After trial he was sentenced to suffer suspension for six months, when he resigned his commission.
It was a most unfortunate affair. It was a shameful thing to allow the hero of the Essex to leave the navy, but what was worse than that was the fact that a precedent was established that rules to this day. An American naval officer protects an American citizen—protects even his own shipmates—from insult at the hands of a foreign official at his peril. When an American naval officer raises his sword between even the most contemptible of foreign officials and one who wears the American uniform the shadow of “the Foxardo affair,” and of a long train of similar affairs, comes upon him to relax his grasp.
Captain Lewis Warrington having succeeded Porter, he found the work almost completed. Following in Porter’s policy of keeping the lighter vessels actively employed, a number of actions similar to those already described occurred, and thereafter, save for an occasional gathering of the members of the old coast brotherhood, there was no outbreak of piratical doings. The steamer Sea-gull did not, so far as appears by the record, accomplish anything of moment; and yet the continued increase in the use of steam at sea did, after Porter broke up the pirate nests in 1823 and 1824, make it impossible for the black flag to float on the sea, even in sporadic cases.
CHAPTER XVI
DECATUR AND THE BARBARY PIRATES
SUPPOSING THE BRITISH WOULD SWEEP THE AMERICAN NAVY FROM THE SEAS DURING THE WAR OF 1812, THE DEY OF ALGIERS WENT CRUISING FOR YANKEE SHIPS, AND GOT ONE, WHILE TUNIS AND TRIPOLI GAVE UP TO THE BRITISH THE PRIZES THAT A YANKEE PRIVATEER HAD MADE—THE ALGERIAN WAS HUMBLED AFTER HE HAD LOST TWO WARSHIPS, AND THE OTHERS MADE PEACE ON THE YANKEES’ TERMS WITHOUT THE FIRING OF A GUN—BRAVERY OF THE PIRATE ADMIRAL AND HIS CREW.
It is a remarkable fact that before the American sloop-of-war Peacock reached home from her cruise to the Straits of Sunda, the United States had waged and concluded with honor another war. This was the second war with the African pirates in the Mediterranean. As the reader will remember, the treaties concluded with these powers by the American naval officers after the war of 1802–1805 were more favorable to the United States than any treaty that had ever been concluded with them by any other power. Nevertheless, there were stipulations by which the United States still agreed to pay a blackmail tribute for the sake of peace.
And the reader will further recall the fact that this condition of affairs was due to the attitude of the British Government toward the pirates. England was entirely able to suppress the pirates, but instead of doing so she encouraged them, for the reason that in so doing she obtained almost a monopoly of the Mediterranean carrying trade for her merchant ships. She paid a small tribute to the pirates herself, and thus recognized the right of the pirates to prey on commerce in general. The tribute protected her ships, and the pirates were careful to see, as far as possible, that the ships of no other nation traded in that sea.