It is March 7th. Welcome to Episode 66 of History in a Year. Today, Thomas Jefferson decides he is absolutely done paying bribes to pirates. For years, the Barbary States of North Africa have been capturing American merchant ships and holding sailors hostage for ransom. Instead of paying up, Jefferson sends the young United States Navy across the Atlantic. We witness the disastrous capture of the USS Philadelphia, the most daring commando raid in naval history led by Stephen Decatur, and a brutal 500-mile desert march that gave birth to the legend of the United States Marine Corps.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is March 7th. Welcome to Episode 66. Yesterday, we left the Corps of Discovery wintering on the Pacific coast. But while Lewis and Clark were exploring the American West, President Thomas Jefferson was fighting his first war.
LEAH:
And he was fighting it on the other side of the planet. We are heading to the Mediterranean Sea.
STEPHEN:
To understand this conflict, we have to talk about the Barbary Pirates.
LEAH:
The Barbary Coast was made up of four North African states: Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. These states essentially ran a massive, state-sponsored organized crime syndicate.
STEPHEN:
Their entire economy was based on piracy. They would sail out into the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, attack unarmed merchant ships, steal the cargo, and kidnap the crews. They would hold the sailors in brutal dungeons and demand massive ransoms.
LEAH:
If a country didn’t want its ships attacked, it had to pay “tribute.” It was basically mob protection money. You pay the local bashaw or dey a massive bribe every year, and they promise not to attack you.
STEPHEN:
When the United States was a British colony, American ships were protected by the massive British Royal Navy. But after the Revolution, America was on its own. And the pirates immediately started capturing American ships.
LEAH:
During the Washington and Adams administrations, the United States actually paid the bribes. They didn’t have a navy to fight back, so they just paid the ransom. By 1800, the US government was paying almost 20% of its entire annual budget just in tribute money to pirates!
STEPHEN:
But Thomas Jefferson hated this system. When he became President in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli, a man named Yusuf Karamanli, demanded a massive increase in his tribute money. He wanted $225,000 immediately, plus $25,000 every year.
LEAH:
When Jefferson refused to pay, the Pasha of Tripoli declared war on the United States. He chopped down the flagpole in front of the US Consulate.
STEPHEN:
Jefferson didn’t wait for Congress to officially declare war in return. He used his executive power to immediately dispatch a squadron of the brand-new US Navy frigates to the Mediterranean to blockade Tripoli and protect American shipping.
LEAH:
The First Barbary War had begun.
STEPHEN:
At first, the war was just a boring, ineffective blockade. But in October 1803, the United States Navy suffered an absolute catastrophe.
LEAH:
The USS Philadelphia, a massive 36-gun heavy frigate commanded by Captain William Bainbridge, was chasing a pirate ship near the harbor of Tripoli.
STEPHEN:
Bainbridge was sailing too fast and got too close to the shore. The Philadelphia slammed violently into an uncharted underwater reef. The ship was stuck fast.
LEAH:
Bainbridge tried everything to get the ship off the rocks. They dumped the cannons overboard, they sawed off the mainmast, they threw their anchors into the sea. Nothing worked.
STEPHEN:
As the ship sat helpless on the reef, dozens of Tripolitan gunboats swarmed out of the harbor and surrounded them. Bainbridge had no choice. He surrendered the ship.
LEAH:
The Pasha of Tripoli had just captured one of the finest warships in the world, and he took 307 American sailors hostage. He threw Bainbridge and his crew into a dungeon and demanded a staggering $3 million ransom.
STEPHEN:
Even worse, the pirates managed to float the Philadelphia off the reef and pull it into the harbor. They started refitting it to use against the Americans.
LEAH:
When news of this disaster reached the commander of the American fleet, Commodore Edward Preble, he realized he had to act immediately. He couldn’t let the pirates use an American frigate against him.
STEPHEN:
Since he couldn’t sail his massive warships into the shallow, heavily defended harbor to rescue the Philadelphia, he decided to destroy it. He authorized a suicide mission.
LEAH:
He gave the command to a bold, 25-year-old lieutenant named Stephen Decatur.
STEPHEN:
Decatur and a crew of 70 volunteers disguised a captured pirate ketch—which they ironically renamed the USS Intrepid—to look like a local merchant ship.
LEAH:
On the night of February 16, 1804, under the cover of darkness, Decatur sailed the Intrepid directly into the heavily fortified harbor of Tripoli, right under the massive guns of the pirate fort.
STEPHEN:
They drifted right up to the captured USS Philadelphia. A pirate guard on the deck yelled out, asking who they were. Decatur’s Sicilian pilot yelled back in Arabic, claiming they had lost their anchors in a storm and needed to tie up alongside the frigate for the night.
LEAH:
The pirates threw them a rope. The Americans pulled their small boat flush against the hull of the massive frigate.
STEPHEN:
And then, Stephen Decatur yelled, “Board!”
LEAH:
Seventy heavily armed American sailors swarmed over the rails with cutlasses and boarding pikes. They completely caught the pirate crew by surprise. In a brutal, silent, close-quarters melee, they cleared the deck without firing a single gunshot, so they wouldn’t wake up the forts on the shore.
STEPHEN:
Once the deck was clear, the Americans rushed below decks with combustible materials. They set massive fires in the powder magazines and the hold.
LEAH:
As the flames began to consume the Philadelphia, Decatur and his men scrambled back onto the Intrepid and pushed off. They rowed frantically for the harbor exit as the pirate forts finally woke up and started blasting cannons at them.
STEPHEN:
They watched as the Philadelphia burned to the waterline and exploded in a massive fireball.
LEAH:
Decatur managed to sail his tiny boat out of the harbor without losing a single man. It was an incredible success. The legendary British Admiral Horatio Nelson heard about it and called it “the most bold and daring act of the Age.”
STEPHEN:
Stephen Decatur became the first massive national war hero of the United States. He was promoted to Captain at just 25 years old.
LEAH:
But destroying the ship didn’t win the war. The Pasha of Tripoli still held over 300 American hostages in his dungeon.
STEPHEN:
To break the stalemate, an American diplomat named William Eaton came up with an insane plan. He decided to overthrow the government of Tripoli.
LEAH:
Eaton found the Pasha’s exiled older brother, Hamet Karamanli, living in Egypt. Eaton told Hamet, “If you help us march on Tripoli, we will put you back on the throne.”
STEPHEN:
Eaton assembled a ragtag mercenary army in Egypt. He hired about 400 Greek, Arab, and Turkish mercenaries. And to lead them, he brought exactly eight United States Marines, commanded by First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon.
LEAH:
This tiny, bizarre army marched over 500 miles across the blistering Libyan desert. They nearly mutinied several times, they ran out of water, and they were constantly attacked by raiders.
STEPHEN:
But in April 1805, they finally reached the Tripolitan port city of Derna.
LEAH:
Supported by the guns of three American naval ships offshore, Eaton and his eight Marines led a desperate, frontal assault on the city’s fortifications.
STEPHEN:
Lieutenant O’Bannon and his Marines charged through heavy musket fire, took the fort, and raised the American flag over foreign soil for the very first time in history.
LEAH:
This battle was so legendary that it was permanently enshrined in the official hymn of the United States Marine Corps: “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.”
STEPHEN:
The capture of Derna terrified the Pasha of Tripoli. He realized the Americans were crazy enough to actually march on his capital and replace him with his brother.
LEAH:
So, the Pasha finally folded. In June 1805, he signed a peace treaty. He released the American hostages, and the United States agreed to pay a final $60,000 ransom—which was significantly less than the $3 million he originally wanted.
STEPHEN:
The First Barbary War proved that the young United States could project power across the globe. It established the US Navy as a legitimate fighting force and showed the world that America would fight to protect its commerce.
LEAH:
But while Thomas Jefferson was winning a war overseas, his former Vice President was plotting a treasonous war right here at home.
STEPHEN:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 67. The Burr Conspiracy. Aaron Burr’s political career is dead, and he is wanted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton. So, what does a disgraced Vice President do? He tries to conquer his own country. We watch Burr attempt to steal a piece of the Louisiana Purchase and crown himself an emperor in the West.
LEAH:
I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.