You ought not to let the threats of those, into whose hands you have unfortunately fallen, intimidate you, but obstinately persist in your rights of being treated as prisoners and not as Slaves. I shall write to the Bashaw immediately and acquaint him that all those Americans who suffer themselves to be compelled to work for him, will be considered as having alienated themselves from the United States, and of course our Governm.t will not consider it under any obligations to ransom them. Behave like Americans, be firm and do not despair. The time of your liberation is not far distant.
I am with Sentiments of regard & Consideration
Your friend,
Edw.d Preble
Captain Bainbridge, on the day after receiving it, decided not to deliver Preble’s inflammatory letter to the men. Preble’s bold gambit would have certainly brought misery and perhaps even martyrdom to some, but it could have also set an extraordinary precedent on the coast of Barbary. Bainbridge promised to explain to Preble his reasons for withholding the letter but never did in writing.
That same night, February 16, the prisoners all went to sleep soon after dark. A few hours later, an overwhelming torrent of noise woke them up. Edward Preble had decided to send another message of defiance, one that Captain Bainbridge could not intercept.
“About 11 o’clock at night, we were alarmed by the screeches of women,” recalled Private Ray, “the clattering of footsteps through the prison yard, and harsh loud voices of men, mingled with a thundering of cannon from the castle which made our prison tremble to its base.” The former schoolteacher added: “Tumult, consternation, confusion and dismay reigned in every section of town and castle. . . . In the confusion of voices we could often hear the word ‘American,’ and therefore hoped that some of our countrymen were landing to liberate us; but the true cause of so much clamour we did not learn until morning.” The 270 prisoners in a cramped barracks, with four square feet each to stand in, spent the night in the dark, enveloped in all that noise. They would soon learn that it was Stephen Decatur on a mission to burn the Philadelphia.
***
Just before Christmas, Lieutenant Decatur, commanding the Enterprize and sailing in tandem with Commodore Preble in the Constitution, had stumbled onto an unknown sail off the coast of Tripoli and given chase. Decatur, over a lifetime in the U.S. Navy, would rise to the rank of commodore and would become arguably the greatest living military hero in the nation for more than a decade; he would repeatedly show himself to be daring but would also reveal a bit of a prickly streak that would lead to his involvement—as principal or second—in numerous duels.
Decatur succeeded in driving the other ship, which was flying the colors of the Ottoman Empire, toward the massive 44-gun frigate Constitution. Per earlier agreement, both Preble and Decatur were flying the union Jack of England. The charade continued while a boat carried the other ship’s captain to the Constitution and while a search party examined the other ship’s cargo. Once Preble was convinced the other ship, Mastico, was to some extent sent by the government of Tripoli, he ordered the Stars and Stripes to be raised, which caused “great confusion” on the deck of the other ship.
As so often happens with captures of this sort, especially in the Mediterranean, it was very difficult to determine the exact nationality of the at-mercy ship. She was a ketch-rigged, two-masted vessel of about 70 tons burden, carrying about 70 people: a Turkish captain, seven Greeks, and four Turks as sailors, a Turkish officer, two officers, and ten soldiers of Tripoli as passengers, and thirty young “fine” black female slaves and a dozen black slave boys shipped at Tripoli, most of whom were intended as presents for the Grand Sultan of Constantinople. The ship also carried two cannons and a cache of muskets and pistols, as well as $1,000 in foreign currency.
The captain presented papers in Arabic, which Preble couldn’t read, and one brief sheet that he could decipher. “The Turkish Officer alone had a Passport from the English Vice Consul,” wrote Preble in his diary, “specifying that he was to take passage in a vessel with Turkish colors but neither the name of the Vessel or Master was mentioned in it.” The technicality facilitated capture, as did some eyewitness testimony.
By chance, an Italian doctor on board the Constitution knew several of the prisoners. He said the two Tripoli officers were of the highest rank and that they and their soldiers had participated in the capture of the Philadelphia. The doctor, who had been in Tripoli at the time, said that this ship’s captain, a Turk, had raced out to the beached Philadelphia and grabbed a few souvenirs. (Lieutenant David Porter’s sword and belt would later be found among the captain’s possessions.)