Decatur and Somers

by Molly Elliot Seawell

“Ah, Lawrence, why can not this gallant ship be cut out and carried off, a glorious trophy of this night?”

“She has not a sail bent nor a yard crossed,” answered Lawrence firmly. “The tide will not serve to take so large a ship out now; and remember, it is as dangerous to do too much under Commodore Preble’s orders as to do too little.”

“I care nothing for that——”

“Then, if you value your reputation, give the order at once to hand up the powder!” exclaimed Lawrence. “See! the frigate off the port quarter is lighting up her batteries.”

For a moment or two, as Lawrence watched Decatur’s agitated face, he almost feared that his young captain literally could not give the order to destroy the ship, so intense was his desire to bring her out. But after a moment or two Decatur recovered himself; the opposition of so fearless a man as Lawrence convinced him, against his will, that it was impossible; and by a powerful effort he gave the order, and the men began rapidly hoisting the kegs of gunpowder over the side and carrying them along the decks. In a few moments the gun-room, the magazine scuttle, the cockpit, and the forward storerooms were filled with combustibles, and smoke was already pouring from the ports on the gun deck before those in the lower parts of the ship had time to get up. They ran to the forward ladders, and when the last firing party reached the spar deck the men were jumping into the ketch—all except Decatur and a small party of his own. Two eighteen-pounders, double shotted, had been dragged amidships and pointed down the main hatch, in order to blow the ship’s bottom out; and a port fire, with a train of powder, had been started so as to fire these two guns with certain effect. The sailors then, seeing their glorious work well done, dropped quickly over the side into the ketch, the officers followed, and Decatur, taking one last look at the doomed frigate, now enveloped in curling smoke, was about to leave her deck—his the last foot ever to tread it—when he saw little Jack Creamer trying to drag a wounded Tripolitan across the deck. But the boy was scarcely able to do it, and the man, who was large and heavy, was too badly wounded to help himself, and Decatur stepped forward to assist.

“I found him under the hammock netting,” Jack gasped, “and I took him, sir—I captured him.”

“Bear a hand here!” shouted Decatur, cutting Jack’s magnificent claim short; and the next moment Danny Dixon’s brawny arms were around the wounded man, while Jack Creamer hopped lightly into the ketch. And then—the frigate being quickly enveloped in fire and smoke, with little tongues of flame beginning to touch the rigging—Decatur leaped from the Philadelphia’s deck into the ketch’s rigging, and, the sixteen sweeps being already manned, the order was given to cast off. At that very moment the guns from the Bashaw’s castle, half gunshot off, boomed over the heads of the Americans.

In this instant of triumph, though, they incurred their greatest danger of that perilous night. The headfast having been cast off, the ketch fell astern of the frigate, out of whose ports the flames were now blazing. The Intrepid’s jigger flapped against the blazing quarter gallery, while on her deck, just under it, lay all her ammunition, only covered by a tarpaulin. To increase their danger, the sternfast became jammed, and they were fixed firmly to the blazing frigate, while the ships as well as the shore batteries now opened a tremendous fire upon them.

There was no axe at hand; but Decatur, Lawrence, and the other officers managed, by the most tremendous efforts with their swords, to cut the hawser; and just as they swung clear, the flames rushed up the tar-soaked rigging of the Philadelphia, and the two eighteen-pounders roared out their charges into the bottom of the burning ship.

The Intrepid was now plainly visible, in the light of the blazing Philadelphia to every man on board the aroused fleet and batteries, and of the crowds collected on the shore. Then the thunder of a furious cannonade began. And now, after this unparalleled achievement, the Americans gave one last proof of their contempt of danger. As the Intrepid worked out in the red blaze that illuminated the whole harbor, a target for every gun in the Tripolitan batteries, the men at her sweeps stopped rowing, every officer and man rose to his feet, and with one impulse they gave three thundering American cheers.