So Preble decided to keep the prisoners and send the Mastico into Syracuse in Sicily, where her papers could be translated, and then eventually an admiralty court could judge whether she was a legitimate prize. (Thomas Jefferson was not at all pleased when he learned months later of Preble’s aggressive action seizing a cargo intended for the Ottoman Empire, a country that had been generally friendly to U.S. interests. “I am not without hope,” wrote Jefferson in that barely concealed tone of oh-god-why-do-you-surround-me-with-fools, “that Preble will have the good sense [to send off] . . . at our expense the presents destined by Tripoli for the Grand Seigneur, and intercepted by us.”) International politics were muddying Preble’s simple resolve.
The commodore, whose main source of information about the Philadelphia loss had been letters from Bainbridge, grew deeply disgusted when the Italian doctor gave him new details. He told him “it was 4 hours after the Philadelphia struck the ground before the gunboats came out to attack her, that for several hours they continued firing without one shot hitting the Philadelphia—that she struck her colors & the enemy were afraid then to come alongside until Captain B. & officers left the ship & landed; when they boarded her finding every man on board drunk & laying about the decks like dead men. The moment the officers landed they were stripped to the buff. Thus (if this information be true & we have no reason to doubt it) one of our finest frigates was deserted, without even making a defense to be expected from an American cockboat.”
Ever since Preble had learned of the Philadelphia fiasco, he had yearned to make certain the Bashaw would never turn the frigate’s three dozen guns on American targets or sell the vessel for an immense profit. It was now on Preble’s storm-battered ship in the southern Mediterranean that the commodore began to refine his plan for revenge, but as a key first step, he needed to legitimize his taking of the prize ship Mastico.
Unable to find a trustworthy Arabic translator in Syracuse, he sailed ninety miles to Malta. After three annoying days waiting for an English rendition, the American commodore on January 20 did not receive the results he craved. He learned that the basic story of the Turkish captain and officers was true. An officer of the Bashaw of Tripoli was commissioned to pick up goods in Bengazi and then deliver those items along with twenty slaves to Constantinople; the other twenty-three slaves were to be auctioned there. The ship was registered in Crete, part of the Ottoman Empire.
This failure to discover lawful grounds for keeping the ship would severely hinder Preble’s secret plans . . . since at that moment he needed a Tripolitan Trojan horse, that is, a Moslem vessel capable of sauntering into Tripoli harbor and not arousing suspicion.
Then Preble caught a break.
In Syracuse a week later, he made the acquaintance of an Italian captain, a veteran pilot, one Salvatore Catalano of Palermo, who said that he had been in Tripoli when the Philadelphia was captured. Catalano, under oath in the Royal Vice Admiralty, swore that this captured ship, Mastico, had been in Tripoli harbor and had dropped its Ottoman colors, hoisted the Tripoli flag, then loaded aboard dozens of armed men and sailed out to subdue and plunder the Philadelphia. This version of events amounted to far more than a few curious officers sightseeing at a capture.
Preble decided that this testimony made her an enemy vessel and a legitimate prize. “The Captain and Crew having acted hostile towards our Flag, under enemies colours, I cannot release either the vessel or them,” he wrote.
Then, in an inspired moment, Commodore Preble chose the new name Intrepid for the Mastico prize, and he ordered her fitted out for a cruise. In a transaction typical of seamen’s lives in the 1800s, the seven Greeks in the crew, technically slaves of the Bashaw of Tripoli, were allowed to join the crew of the USS Constitution. Also typical of the era, the forty-three blacks were landed at Saragosa and locked up as slaves.
On January 31, 1804, Preble gave the most memorable orders of his career to Lieutenant Decatur, who would command the Intrepid, and to Lieutenant Charles Stewart, who would command the 16-gun brig Siren. Lord Admiral Nelson, no mean judge of nautical talent, would call their mission “the most bold and daring act of the age.”
Preble ordered Decatur to take the Mastico/Intrepid and sail directly to Tripoli, enter the harbor at night, board the Philadelphia, burn her, and then retreat. “On boarding the Frigate, it is probable you will meet with Resistance, it will be well in order to prevent alarm to carry all by the Sword.” Obviously, silent throat-slitting would delay detection. Not wanting to take any chances that Philadelphia might survive again, he ordered that once the ship was on fire, the men should lug two eighteen-pounder cannons over to the main hatch, point them straight down, “and blow her bottom out.” Hoping to inflict even more harm, Preble added that, if feasible, Decatur, instead of retreating aboard Mastico/Intrepid, should ignite that vessel as well and send her in among the Bashaw’s fleet as a “fire ship” to burn as many Tripoli vessels as possible. They should then make their retreat by oar in small boats to the Siren.