The attack was so spirited, and so much damage was done, that on the next day came an offer from the Bashaw to surrender the officers and crew of the Philadelphia for five hundred dollars each.
“Tell your master,” said Commodore Preble to the envoy, “that I will yet have every officer and man belonging to the Philadelphia, but without paying one dollar of ransom for them.”
This was supplemented by a night attack on the 18th of August, which Somers and Decatur both urged upon the commodore. But finding that it was more risky and not so effective as the day attacks, Commodore Preble told his two young captains that thereafter the attacks would be by daylight.
The Tripolitans now began to be very much alarmed, and made several offers to treat; but Commodore Preble would listen to nothing but the unconditional surrender of the officers and crew of the Philadelphia.
On the 24th and 28th of August two more attacks were made, which as usual were led by Somers and Decatur. After every attack came renewed offers from the Bashaw; but Commodore Preble meant to destroy, at once and forever, the power of this barbarous nation of pirates and corsairs.
In the first days of September another attack in force was determined upon. It was the third in which the Constitution had taken an active part, and the magnificent way that the stout and beautiful frigate withstood the bombardment of all the guns of the forts and vessels, gained for her the name of “Old Ironsides”—a name she has now borne gloriously for nearly a hundred years. At daylight on the 4th of September the Tripolitans were awakened by the roar of a cannonade, and the eyes of the captive officers and men of the Philadelphia were gladdened by seeing the gunboats advancing boldly in the first flush of dawn, supported by the brigs and schooners, while Old Ironsides was standing in, her men on the yards shortening sail as deliberately as if she were working into a friendly port. Arrived at a point opposite the mole, she backed her topsails and then let fly her thirty great guns in broadside. In vain the forts pounded her. Moving slowly, and occasionally throwing her topsail aback, she skillfully avoided being raked, and, except for some slight damage aloft, she came out of the action without injury and without losing a man.
Meanwhile the Tripolitan gunboats had advanced to the reefs, and just as the sun rose the divisions under Somers and Decatur went at them fiercely. The brigs and schooners also directing their fire toward the Tripolitan flotilla, Commodore Preble was sanguine that it would be utterly destroyed. The Tripolitans, though, whose vessels drew less water than the Americans’, and who knew the intricate maze of reefs and shoals perfectly well, ran into shoal water, where they could not be followed. Somers sank two boats, while Decatur managed to bring off three. As soon as the frigate hauled off and made for the offing, the gun-vessels were towed off, and when they were well out of gunshot the whole squadron came to anchor, about three o’clock in the day.
Somers was the first captain to report on board the flagship. As soon as he caught sight of “Old Pepper” on the Constitution’s quarter-deck he knew that something had gone wrong. The commodore, while fighting his own ship, could give but little attention to the boat divisions, but seeing the Tripolitans almost surrounded by the American boats, with the brigs and schooners closing up, he had expected the whole flotilla to be captured. When, therefore, he saw it making back into the harbor with the loss of only five boats, and not knowing the shoalness of the water at that point, he could not understand the conduct of the American boats, and was deeply disappointed for the first time in his “boy captains.” As Somers approached and made his report in a few words, he was received in angry silence, and the only words the commodore said were, “I shall have something to say on this matter when Captain Decatur reports.”
Somers, although annoyed, yet knew that, when the circumstances were explained, the commodore would do both Decatur and himself justice—for Commodore Preble’s heart was as just as his temper was fiery. But knowing Decatur’s high spirit, he could not but be fearful of a meeting between the two in “Old Pepper’s” state of mind. He had but little time to think, though, for at that instant Decatur stepped over the side. He had on a short jacket, in which he had been through the fight, and he was grimed with powder, besides being stained with blood from a slight wound he had received. Advancing with his usual alert step to the commodore, he raised his cap and said quietly, “Well, commodore, I have brought you out three of the gunboats.”
At that, “Old Pepper” suddenly seized him with both hands by the collar, and, shaking him violently as if he were a refractory boy, cried out: