The Christian nations of Europe deliberately granted immunity to these nests of sea-robbers in Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli in order that they might prey upon the ships and sailors of weaker countries and destroy their commerce. This ignoble spirit was reflected in a speech of Lord Sheffield in Parliament in 1784.
“It is not now probable that the American States will have a very free trade in the Mediterranean. It will not be to the interest of any of the great maritime powers to protect them from the Barbary States. If they know their interests, they will not encourage the Americans to be ocean carriers. That the Barbary States are advantageous to maritime powers is certain.”
It was not until 1803 that the United States, a feeble nation with a little navy, resolved that these shameful indignities could no longer be endured. While Europe cynically looked on and forbore to lend a hand, Commodore Preble steered the Constitution and the other ships of his squadron into the harbor of Tripoli, smashed its defenses, and compelled an honorable treaty of peace. Of all the wars in which the American Navy had won high distinction, there is none whose episodes are more brilliant than those of the bold adventure on the coast of Barbary.
The spirit of it was typical of Preble, the fighting Yankee commodore, who fell in with a strange ship one black night in the Straits of Gibraltar. From the quarterdeck of the Constitution he trumpeted a hail, but the response was evasive, and both ships promptly manœuvered for the weather gage.
“I hail you for the last time. If you don’t answer, I’ll fire into you,” roared Preble. “What ship is that?”
“His Britannic Majesty’s eighty-four gun ship-of-the-line Donegal,” came back the reply. “Send a boat on board.”
Without an instant’s hesitation the commodore thundered from his Yankee frigate:
“This is the United States forty-four-gun ship Constitution, Captain Edward Preble, and I’ll be damned if I send a boat aboard any ship. Blow your matches, boys!”
Until the hordes of Moorish and Arab cutthroats and slavers were taught by force to respect the flag flown by American merchantmen, there was no fate so dreaded by mariners as shipwreck on the desert coast of northern Africa. For a hundred and fifty years they risked the dreadful peril of enslavement under taskmasters incredibly inhuman, who lashed and starved and slew them. In the seventeenth century it was no uncommon sight in the ports of Salem and Boston to see an honest sailor trudging from house to house to beg money enough to ransom or buy his shipmates held in Barbary.
The old records note many such incidents, as that in 1700: