In spring of 1803 when the Philadelphia had needed a crew, most potential recruits knew nothing about Bainbridge’s reputation as a rough commander. They also didn’t know Bainbridge’s service record included two of the blackest incidents in the history of the young navy.
William Ray, native of Salisbury, Connecticut, certainly didn’t. It’s unusual in this era for an articulate “grunt,” a private, to record his impressions in a memoir, but Ray did just that. (His Horrors of Slavery, an extremely rare book, provides a counterpoint to the usual self-aggrandizing officers’ letters and memoirs.)
William Ray, 5' 4 ½", thirty-four years old, had failed at many professions. His general store . . . long shuttered; his schoolroom . . . now vacant, and in the latest mishap, he had fallen sick en route from New England and had lost a newspaper editing job in Philadelphia. So Ray, penniless, exasperated, discouraged, and inebriated, headed down to the Delaware River to call it a day and a life and to drown himself.
There, through the haze, he saw flying from a ship in the river the massive flag of the United States, fifteen stars and fifteen stripes. A drummer was beating the skin trying to encourage enlistment. Ray weighed his options: death or the marines. He weighed them again. At the birth of the Republic, the marines ranked as the lowliest military service, paying $6 a month, one-third of the wages of an experienced sailor. The entire marine corps totaled fewer than 500 men, and though it’s true marines wore fancy uniforms and carried arms, they basically came onboard ship to police the sailors and prevent mutiny or desertion. The major glory the U.S. Marines could then claim was its Washington City marching band, which the local citizens of that swampy outpost loved and President Thomas Jefferson despised.
Ray enlisted. Rarely was a man less suited for the marines than diminutive William Ray. As a former colonist who had lived through the War of Independence, he detested tyranny, whether it be that of King George III or his new captain, William Bainbridge. Onshore he saw “liberty, equality, peace and plenty” and on board ship, he said he found “oppression, arrogance, clamour and indigence.”
Ray, still smarting that he couldn’t find a job onshore in “prosperous” America, was appalled to discover his new maritime career required addressing thirteen-year-olds as “Sir” and treating them like “gentlemen.” The Philadelphia’s officer list included eleven midshipmen, all in their teens. “How preposterous does it appear, to have brats of boys, twelve or fifteen years old, who six months before, had not even seen salt water, strutting in livery, about a ship’s decks, damning and flashing old experienced sailors,” complained one veteran sailor, who called the job of midshipmen a “happy asylum” for the offspring of the wealthy too vicious, lazy, or ignorant to support themselves.
Ray once saw a midshipman toss a bucket of water on a sleeping sailor who, as he woke, spluttered some curses. When the sailor recognized it was a midshipman, he tried to apologize, saying he didn’t expect “one of the gentlemen” to be tossing water. Captain Bainbridge had the sailor thrown in irons and flogged. “You tell an officer he is no gentleman?” shouted Bainbridge at the man’s punishment. “I’ll cut you in ounce pieces, you scoundrel.”
In that era of sail, navy ships were so crowded that sailors slept in shifts: Half the crew rocked in the foul-smelling dark while the other half performed the watch. Some captains allowed the men six consecutive hours of sleep; Bainbridge allowed four.
A marine comrade of Ray’s, David Burling, fell asleep on watch . . . twice. The second time, he was chained in the coal hold until three captains could be gathered for a court-martial. “It will give me infinite pleasure to see him hanging at the yardarm,” Bainbridge was overheard saying.
Despite Ray’s shock at seaboard life under Bainbridge, the Philadelphia for its few months at sea had performed well enough. Then Commodore Edward Preble in mid-September had sent the vessel, along with the schooner Vixen, on the important mission to blockade Tripoli. Preble represented the third commodore (i.e., ranking squadron captain) in three years to command the small U.S. fleet in the region; the last two men—Commodore Richard Dale and Commodore Richard Morris—were both accused of spending more time showing their epaulets at dances and balls at various European ports than in the choppy waters off Tripoli. Preble, a no-nonsense New Englander, was eager to blockade and to capture hostile ships even in the stormy fall weather. He hoped to choke the enemy’s economy.
Now, on October 31, 1803, in the half light of dawn around 6 A.M., the lookout on the Philadelphia, hovering high above the deck, spotted a sail far off on the port bow. Standing orders required alerting the captain. A distant ship, a mere swatch of white at first, usually remains a complete unknown for quite a while. Thanks to elaborate rules of warfare in the early nineteenth century, deception was viewed as an acceptable strategy in the early stages of encountering another ship. (For instance, the Philadelphia carried half a dozen foreign flags, including the union Jack, a Portuguese pennant, a Danish ensign; Bainbridge a month earlier had used the British colors to trick a Moroccan ship into furling canvas and laying by.)