He sent Lieutenant David Porter, a daring young officer who was yet to make his mark, on the prize, telling him to make a wreck of her.
Porter was glad to obey those orders. He made the captive Tripolitans cut down their masts, throw all their cannon and small arms into the sea, cut their sails to pieces, and fling all their powder overboard. He left them only a jury-mast and a small sail.
"See here," said Porter to the Moorish captain, "we have not lost a man, while fifty of your men are killed or wounded. You may go home now and tell this to your Bashaw, and say to him that in the time to come the only tribute he will get from the United States will be a tribute of powder and balls."
Away drifted the wrecked hulk, followed by the jeers of the American sailors, who were only sorry that the treacherous pirate had not been scuttled and sent to the bottom of the sea.
When it reached Tripoli the Bashaw was mad with rage. Instead of the plunder and the white slaves he had looked for, he had only a dismantled hulk.
The old captain showed him his wounds and told him how hard he had fought. But his fury was not to be appeased. He had the white-bearded commander led through the streets tied to a jackass—the greatest disgrace he could have inflicted on any Moor. This was followed by five hundred blows with a stick.
The Moorish sailors declared that the Americans had fired enchanted shot. This, and the severe punishment of the captain of the Tripoli, so scared the sailors of the city that for a year after the fierce Bashaw found it next to impossible to muster a ship's crew. They did not care to be treated as the men on the Tripoli had been.
Such was the first lesson which the sailors of the new nation gave to the pirates of the Mediterranean. It was the beginning of a policy which was to put an end to the piracy which had prevailed for centuries on those waters.