Part 6

The blowing up of the _Philadelphia_ was one of the most daring acts ever attempted by the United States Navy, and won Decatur great credit. It weakened the Pasha's strength, and kept his pirate crews in check. Instead of making terms with the Moorish ruler, the United States decided to attack his capital, and in the summer of 1804, Commodore Preble collected his squadron before Tripoli. On August 3d the fleet approached the land batteries, and in the afternoon began to throw shells into the town. The Moors immediately opened fire, both from the forts and from their fleet of nineteen gunboats and two galleys that lay in the harbor. Preble divided his ships, and ordered them to close in on the enemy's vessels, although the latter outnumbered them three to one. Again Decatur was the hero of the fight. He and his men boarded a Moorish gunboat and fought her crew hand-to-hand across the decks. He captured the first vessel, and then boarded a second. Decatur singled out the captain, a gigantic Moor, and made for him. The Moor thrust at him with a pike, and Decatur's cutlass was broken off at the hilt. Another thrust of the pike cut his arm, but the American seized the weapon, tore it away, and threw himself on the Moor. The crews were fighting all around their leaders, and a Moorish sailor aimed a blow at Decatur's head with a scimitar. An American seaman struck the blow aside, and the scimitar gashed his own scalp. The Moorish captain, stronger than Decatur, got him underneath, and drawing a knife, was about to kill him, when Decatur caught the Moor's arm with one hand, thrust his other hand into his pocket, and fired his revolver. The Moor was killed, and Decatur sprang to his feet. Soon after the enemy's crew surrendered. The other United States ships had been almost as successful, and the battle taught the Americans that the Barbary pirates could be beaten in hand-to-hand fighting as well as at long range.

The Pasha was not ready to come to terms even after that day's defeat, however, and on August 7th Commodore Preble ordered another attack. Again the harbor shook under the guns of the fleet and the forts, and at sunset Preble had to withdraw. To avoid further bloodshed the commodore sent a flag of truce to the Pasha, and offered to pay eighty thousand dollars for the ransom of the American prisoners, and to make him a present of ten thousand dollars more. The Pasha, however, demanded one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and Preble was not willing to pay that amount. So later in August he attacked Tripoli again. Each of these bombardments did great damage to the city, but the forts were too strong to be captured. The blockading fleet, however, held its position, and on September 3d opened fire again in the last of its assaults. In spite of the heavy firing the Pasha refused to pull down his flag.

On the night of September 4th a volunteer crew took the little _Intrepid_ into the harbor. She was filled with combustibles, and when she was close to the Moorish ships the powder was to be fired by a fuse that would give time for the crew to escape in a small boat. The night was dark, and the fleet soon lost sight of this fire-ship. She took the right course through the channel, but before she was near the Moors she was seen and they opened fire on her. Then came a loud explosion, and the _Intrepid_, with her crew, was blown into the air. No one knows whether one of the enemy's shots or her own crew fired the powder. This was the greatest disaster that befell the United States Navy during all its warfare with the Barbary pirates. Soon after Commodore Preble sailed for home, though most of his fleet were kept in the Mediterranean to protect American sailing vessels.

The government at Washington, tired with the long warfare in the Mediterranean, soon afterward ordered the consul at Algiers, Tobias Lear, to treat for peace with the Pasha. A bargain was finally struck. One hundred Moors were exchanged for as many of the American captives, and sixty thousand dollars were paid as ransom for the rest. June 4, 1805, the American sailors, who had been slaves for more than nineteen months, were released from their chains and sent on board the war-ship _Constitution_. The Pasha declared himself a friend of the United States, and saluted its flag with twenty-one guns from his castle and forts.

In the Barbary States rulers followed one another in rapid succession. He who was Dey or Pasha one week might be murdered by an enemy the next, and that enemy on mounting the throne was always eager to get as much plunder as he could. Treaties meant little to any of them, and so other countries kept on paying them tribute for the sake of peace.

The United States fell into the habit of buying peace with Algiers, Tripoli, Morocco, and Tunis by gifts of merchandise or gold or costly vessels. But the more that was given to them the more greedy these Moorish rulers grew, and so it happened that from time to time they sent out their pirates to board American ships in order to frighten the young Republic into paying heavier tribute. Seven years later the second chapter of our history with the Barbary pirates opened.

II

The brig _Edwin_ of Salem, Massachusetts, was sailing under full canvas through the Mediterranean Sea, bound out from Malta to Gibraltar, on August 25, 1812. At her masthead she flew the Stars and Stripes. The weather was favoring, the little brig making good speed, and the Mediterranean offered no dangers to the skipper. Yet Captain George Smith, and his crew of ten Yankee sailors, kept constantly looking toward the south at some distant sails that had been steadily gaining on them since dawn. Every stitch of sail on the _Edwin_ had been set, but she was being overhauled, and at this rate would be caught long before she could reach Gibraltar.

Captain Smith and his men knew who manned those long, low, rakish-looking frigates. But the _Edwin_ carried no cannon, and if they could not out-sail the three ships to the south they must yield peaceably, or be shot down on their deck. Hour after hour they watched, and by sunset they could see the dark, swarthy faces of the leading frigate's crew. Before night the _Edwin_ had been overhauled, boarded, and the Yankee captain and sailors were in irons, prisoners about to be sold into slavery.

They had been captured by one of the pirate crews of the Dey of Algiers, and when they were taken ashore by these buccaneers they were stood up in the slave market and sold to Moors, or put to work in the shipyards. Other Yankee crews had met with the same treatment.

Now the United States had been paying its tribute regularly to the pirates, but in the spring of 1812 the Dey of Algiers suddenly woke up to the fact that the Americans had been measuring time by the sun while the Moors figured it by the moon, and found that in consequence he had been defrauded of almost a half-year's tribute money, or twenty-seven thousand dollars. He sent an indignant message to Tobias Lear, the American consul at Algiers, threatening all sorts of punishments, and Mr. Lear, taking all things into account, decided it was best to pay the sum claimed by the Dey. The United States sent the extra tribute in the shape of merchandise by the sailing vessel _Alleghany_; but the Dey was now in a very bad temper, and declared that the stores were of poor quality, and ordered the consul to leave at once in the _Alleghany_, as he would have no further dealings with a country that tried to cheat him. At almost the same time he received a present from England of two large ships filled with stores of war,--powder, shot, anchors, and cables. He immediately sent out word to the buccaneers to capture all the American ships they could, and sell the sailors in the slave-markets. The Dey of Algiers appeared to have no fear of the United States.

The truth of the matter was that his Highness the Dey, and also the Bey of Tunis, had been spoiled by England, who at this time told them confidently that the United States Navy was about to be wiped from the seas. English merchants assured them that they could treat Captain Smith and other Yankee skippers exactly as they pleased, since Great Britain had declared war on the United States, and the latter country would find herself quite busy at home. Algiers and Tripoli and Tunis, remembering their old grudge against the Americans, assured their English friends that nothing would delight them so much as to rid the Mediterranean of the Stars and Stripes.

The pirates swept down on the brig _Edwin_, and laid hands on every American they could find in the neighborhood. They stopped and boarded a ship flying the Spanish flag, and took prisoner a Mr. Pollard, of Virginia. Tripoli and Tunis permitted English cruisers to enter their harbors, contrary to the rules of war, and recapture four English prizes that had been sent to them by the American privateer _Abellino_. When the United States offered to pay a ransom of three thousand dollars for every American who was held as a prisoner the Dey replied that he meant to capture a large number of them before he would consider any terms of sale.

Our country was young and poor, and our navy consisted of only seventeen seaworthy ships, carrying less than four hundred and fifty cannon. England was indeed "Mistress of the Seas," with a great war-fleet of a thousand vessels, armed with almost twenty-eight thousand guns. No wonder that the British consul at Algiers had told the Dey "the American flag would be swept from the seas, the contemptible navy of the United States annihilated, and its maritime arsenals reduced to a heap of ruins." No wonder the Dey believed him. But as a matter of fact the little David outfought the giant Goliath; on the Great Lakes and on the high seas the Stars and Stripes waved triumphant after many a long and desperate encounter, and the small navy came out of the War of 1812 with a glorious record of victories, with splendid officers and crews, and with sixty-four ships. The English friends of the Barbary States had been mistaken, and Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli began to wish they had not been so scornful of the Yankees.

It was time to show the pirates that Americans had as much right to trade in the Mediterranean as other people. On February 23, 1815, a few days after the treaty of peace with England was published, President Madison advised that we should send a fleet to Algiers. Two squadrons were ordered on this service, under command of Commodore William Bainbridge. One collected at Boston, and the other at New York. Commodore Stephen Decatur was in charge of the latter division.

Decatur's squadron was the first to sail, leaving New York on May 20, 1815. He had ten vessels in all, his flag-ship being the forty-four-gun frigate _Guerrière_, and his officers and crew being all seasoned veterans of the war with England. The fleet of the Dey of Algiers, however, was no mean foe. It consisted of twelve vessels, well armed and manned, six sloops, five frigates, and one schooner. Its admiral was a very remarkable man, one of the fierce tribe of Kabyles from the mountains, Reis Hammida by name, who had made himself the scourge of the Mediterranean. He had plenty of reckless courage; once he had boarded and captured in broad daylight a Portuguese frigate under the very cliffs of Gibraltar, and at another time, being in command of three Algerine frigates, had dared to attack a Portuguese ship of the line and three frigates, in face of the guns leveled at him from the Rock of Lisbon, directly opposite.

The city of Algiers itself was one of the best fortified ports on the Mediterranean. It lay in the form of a triangle, one side extending along the sea, while the other two rose against a hill, meeting at the top at the Casbah, the historic fortress of the Deys. The city was guarded by very thick walls, mounted with many guns, and the harbor, made by a long mole, was commanded by heavy batteries, so that at least five hundred pieces of cannon could be brought to bear on any hostile ships trying to enter.

Decatur's fleet was only a few days out of New York when it ran into a heavy gale, and the wooden ships were badly tossed about. The _Firefly_, a twelve-gun brig, sprung her masts, and had to put back to port. The other ships rode out the storm, and kept on their course to the Azores, keeping a sharp watch for any suspicious-looking craft. As they neared the coast of Portugal the vigilance was redoubled, for here was a favorite hunting-ground of Reis Hammida, and Decatur knew what the Algerine admiral had done before the Rock of Lisbon. They found no trace of the enemy here, however. At Cadiz Decatur sent a messenger to the American consul, who informed him that three Algerine frigates and some smaller ships had been spoken in the Atlantic Ocean, but were thought to have returned to the Mediterranean.

Decatur wanted to take the enemy by surprise, and so sailed cautiously to Tangier, where he learned that two days earlier Reis Hammida had gone through the Straits of Gibraltar in the forty-six-gun frigate _Mashuda_. The American captain at once set sail for Gibraltar, and found out there that the wily Algerine was lying off Cape Gata, having demanded that Spain should pay him half a million dollars of tribute money to protect her coast-towns from attack by his fleet.

Lookouts on the _Guerrière_ reported to Decatur that a despatch-boat had left Gibraltar as soon as the American ships appeared, and inquiry led the captain to believe the boat was bearing messages to Reis Hammida. Other boats were sailing for Algiers, and Decatur, realizing the ease with which his wily opponent, thoroughly familiar with the inland sea, would be able to elude him, decided to give chase at once.

The fleet headed up the Mediterranean June 15th, under full sail. The next evening ships were seen near shore, and Decatur ordered the frigate _Macedonian_ and two brigs to overhaul them. Early the following morning, when the fleet was about twenty miles out from Cape Gata, Captain Gordon, of the frigate _Constellation_, sighted a big vessel flying the flag of Algiers, and signaled "An enemy to the southeast."

Decatur saw that the strange ship had a good start of his fleet, and was within thirty hours' run of Algiers. He suspected that her captain might not have detected the fleet as American, and ordered the _Constellation_ back to her position abeam of his flag-ship, gave directions to try to conceal the identity of his squadron, and stole up on the stranger. The latter was seen to be a frigate, lying to under small sail, as if waiting for some message from the African shore near at hand. One of the commanders asked permission to give chase, but Decatur signaled back "Do nothing to excite suspicion."

The Moorish frigate held her position near shore while the American ships drew closer. When they were about a mile distant a quartermaster on the _Constellation_, by mistake, hoisted a United States flag. To cover this blunder the other ships were immediately ordered to fly English flags. But the crew of the Moorish frigate had seen the flag on the _Constellation_, and instantly swarmed out on the yard-arms, and had the sails set for flight. They were splendid seamen, and almost immediately the frigate was leaping under all her canvas for Algiers. The Americans were busy too. The rigging of each ship was filled with sailors, working out on the yards, the decks rang with commands, and messages were signaled from the flag-ship to the captains. Decatur crowded on all sail, fearing that the Algerine frigate might escape him in the night or seek refuge in some friendly harbor, and the American squadron raced along at top speed, just as the Barbary pirates had earlier chased after the little brig _Edwin_, of Salem.

Soon the _Constellation_, which was to the south of the fleet and so nearest to the Moorish frigate, opened fire and sent several shots on board the enemy. The latter immediately came about, and headed northeast, as if making for the port of Carthagena. The Americans also tacked, and gained by this manoeuvre, the sloop _Ontario_ cutting across the Moor's course, and the _Guerrière_ being brought close enough for musketry fire.

As the flag-ship came to close quarters the Moors opened fire, wounding several men, but Decatur waited until his ship cleared the enemy's yard-arms, when he ordered a broadside. The crew of the Algerine frigate, which was the _Mashuda_, were mowed down by this heavy fire. Reis Hammida himself had already been wounded by one of the first shots from the _Constellation_. He had, however, insisted on continuing to give orders from a couch on the quarter-deck, but a shot from the first broadside killed him. The _Guerrière's_ gun crews loaded and fired again before the first smoke had cleared; at this second broadside one of her largest guns exploded, killing three men, wounding seventeen, and splintering the spar-deck.

The Moors made no sign of surrender, but Decatur, seeing that there were too few left to fight, and not wishing to pour another broadside into them, sailed past, and took a position just out of range. The Algerines immediately tried to run before him. In doing this the big _Mashuda_ was brought directly against the little eighteen-gun American brig _Epervier_, commanded by John Downes. Instead of sailing away Downes placed his brig under the Moor's cabin ports, and by backing and filling escaped colliding with the frigate while he fired his small broadsides at her. This running fire, lasting for twenty-five minutes, finished the Moor's resistance, and the frigate surrendered.

The flag-ship, the _Guerrière_, now took charge of the Algerine prize, and Decatur sent an officer, two midshipmen, and a crew on board her. The _Mashuda_ was a sorry sight, many of her men killed or wounded, and her decks splintered by the American broadsides. The prisoners were transferred to the other ships, and orders were given to the prize-crew to take the captured frigate to the port of Carthagena, under escort of the _Macedonian_.

Before this was done, however, Decatur signaled all the officers to meet on his flag-ship. In the cabin they found a table covered with captured Moorish weapons,--daggers, pistols, scimitars, and yataghans. Decatur turned to Commandant Downes, who had handled the small _Epervier_ so skilfully. "As you were fortunate in obtaining a favorable position and maintained it so handsomely, you shall have the first choice of these weapons," he said. Downes chose, and then each of the other officers selected a trophy of the victory. That evening the squadron, leaving the _Mashuda_ in charge of the _Macedonian_, resumed its hunt for other ships belonging to the navy of the piratical Dey.

The fleet was arriving off Cape Palos on June 19th when a brig was seen, looking suspiciously like an Algerine craft. When the Americans set sail toward her, the stranger ran away. Soon she came to shoal water, and the frigates had to leave the chase to the light-draught _Epervier_, _Spark_, _Torch_, and _Spitfire_. These followed and opened fire. The strange brig returned several shots, and was then run aground by her crew on the coast between the watch-towers of Estacio and Albufera, which had been built long before for the purpose of protecting fishermen and peasants from the raids of pirates. The strangers took to their small boats. One of these was sunk by a shot. The Americans then boarded the ship, which was the Algerine twenty-two-gun brig _Estedio_, and captured eighty-three prisoners. The brig was floated off the shoals and sent with a prize-crew into the Spanish port of Carthagena.

Decatur, being unable to sight any more ships that looked like Moorish craft, and supposing that the rest of the pirate fleet would probably be making for Algiers, gave commands to his squadron to sail for that port. He was determined to bring the Dey to terms as quickly as possible, and to destroy his fleet, or bombard the city, if that was necessary. When he arrived off the Moorish town, however, he found none of the fleet there, and no apparent preparation for war in the harbor. The next morning he ran up the Swedish flag at the mainmast, and a white flag at the foremast, a signal asking the Swedish consul to come on board the flag-ship. Mr. Norderling, the consul, came out to the _Guerrière_, accompanied by the Algerine captain of the port. After some conversation Decatur asked the latter for news of the Dey's fleet. "By this time it is safe in some neutral port," was the assured answer.

"Not all of it," said Decatur, "for we have captured the _Mashuda_ and the _Estedio_."

The Algerine could not believe this, and told the American so. Then Decatur sent for a wounded lieutenant of the _Mashuda_, who was on his ship, and bade him confirm the statement. The Moorish officer of the port immediately changed his tactics, dropped his haughty attitude, and gave Decatur to understand that he thought the Dey would be willing to make a new treaty of peace with the United States.

Decatur handed the Moor a letter from the President to the Dey, which stated that the Republic would only agree to peace provided Algiers would give up her claim to tribute and would cease molesting American merchantmen.

The Moor wanted to gain as much time as possible, hoping his fleet would arrive, and said that it was the custom to discuss all treaties in the palace on shore. Decatur understood the slow and crafty methods of these people, and answered that the treaty should be drawn up and signed on board the _Guerrière_ or not at all. Seeing that there was no use in arguing with the American the Moorish officer went ashore to consult with the Dey.

Next day, June 30th, the captain of the port returned, with power to act for his Highness Omar Pasha. Decatur told him that he meant to put an end to these piratical attacks on Americans, and insisted that all his countrymen who were being held as slaves in Algiers should be given up, that the value of goods taken from them should be paid them, that the Dey should give the owners of the brig _Edwin_ of Salem ten thousand dollars, that all Christians who escaped from Algiers to American ships should be free, and that the two nations should act toward each other exactly as other civilized countries did. Then the Moorish officer began to explain and argue. He said that it was not the present ruling Dey, Omar Pasha, called "Omar the Terrible" because of his great courage, who had attacked American ships; it was Hadji Ali, who was called the "Tiger" because of his cruelty, but he had been assassinated in March, and his prime minister, who succeeded him, had been killed the following month, and Omar Pasha was a friend of the United States. Decatur replied that his terms for peace could not be altered.

The Moor then asked for a truce while he should go ashore and confer with the Dey. Decatur said he would grant no truce. The Algerine besought him to make no attack for three hours. "Not a minute!" answered Decatur. "If your squadron appears before the treaty is actually signed by the Dey, and before the American prisoners are sent aboard, I will capture it!"

The Moorish captain said he would hurry at once to the Dey, and added that if the Americans should see his boat heading out to the _Guerrière_ with a white flag in the bow they would know that Omar Pasha had agreed to Decatur's terms.