But all was not well with this fleet, so hastily convened. Besides some shoddy supplies and even rotted woodwork, the men were more restless than your average underpaid overworked sailors. Blame the spirit of the times—American Revolution, French Revolution, the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789, the more bloody one on the Hermione in 1797—or blame one man, Robert Quinn. The word mutiny was whispered on the flagship President.
The U.S. Navy prided itself on being more humane, more fair than the British Royal Navy. Quinn disagreed. He secretly wrote a note, which he signed “UNHAPPY SLAVES,” and had it delivered anonymously to Commodore Barron. Quinn stated,
The horrid usage that has been carried on in this Ship of late by the principal officers is enough to turn every Mans heart to wickedness, we are Kept on Deck from 3 O’Clock in the morning till 8 at Night [seventeen hours]. There is no regulations in any one thing, we have been on deck several days without one bit of Victuals, and durst not look for it, we cannot wash a single article for fear of being cut in two. You expect everything done at a word, there is no allowance made for our friging [moving about] day & night, but the time will come, when you will drive all thoughts of fear out of our minds. Tyranny is the beginning of mischief . . . any Commander or Captain that had the least feeling or thought, would not suffer this horrid usage, it is almost impossible for us to live. The President is arrived to such a pitch as to exceed the Hermione, some of our friends in America & other parts shall know of this shortly and in time we hope to get redress. Death is always superior to slavery.
This rousing speech—unfortunately not Patrick Henry to King George III—roused Commodore Barron to action, no small feat. He demanded that John Rodgers find out the identity of the letter writer and then convene a court-martial and ask William Eaton to serve as judge advocate. Four efficient days later, on June 23, the court passed sentence on Quinn: “to have his Head & Eye brows shaved, branded in the forehead with the Word MUTINUS—to receive three hundred & twenty lashes, equally apportioned along side of the different ships of the Squadron, with the label MUTINEY in large capital letters inserted on its front, & to be Drum’d on shore under a Gallows in a Boat tow’d stern foremost by a boat from each ship in the Squadron as unworthy of serving under the Flag of the United States.”
On Monday, June 25, at 8 A.M., a scant week from writing the letter, Quinn received the horrific punishment. In that era, punishment was always performed in public so as to deliver a cautionary spectacle, a deterrence. Sailors neatly dressed in blue and white pulled at the oars of five boats, from the stern of which five ropes extended to the stern of one boat. The tow lines like arrows pointed to Quinn and to the boatswain’s mates, there to swing the cat-o’-nine-tails. A doctor and a chaplain also attended.
Aboard each of the U.S. warships, the men, with black neckerchiefs tied at their necks and long hair neatly pulled back in ponytails, stood rigidly as the whipping boat hove alongside. It is not recorded whether Quinn screamed much or little. Few men could survive such a savage beating without becoming crippled for life. Three hundred and twenty blows would have created puddles of blood when, at the end, to the sound of drums, Quinn’s barely conscious body was towed ashore under the gallows.
This extended loud bloody spectacle delivered perhaps an even sterner warning to the various crews than a simple hanging.
Amid all this drum beating and misery, amid all this spread of canvas and lethalness of exposed cannon, Eaton could not help but dwell on what had happened to his mission. He stood there in civilian clothes in the middle of this sea of epauleted, gold-buttoned naval officers and blue-jacketed marines and sailors. Though allowed to board the ship heading to the Mediterranean, he had received absolutely no commitment of men, weapons, ammunition, supplies, or money. His orders to coordinate with Hamet in the overthrow of the Bashaw of Tripoli were never put into writing. The president and the Department of State had even refused to give Eaton letters of introduction to any allies; they had written nothing to Hamet.
As the flagship President headed out to sea on July 4, 1804, Eaton found himself almost shaking with anger. The administration, he believed, was close to turning his effort for Hamet into a rogue mission, or an afterthought. In a long letter to a Federalist friend, Colonel Thomas Dwight, Eaton characterized Jefferson’s actions as supremely devious. He explained: If Eaton succeeded, Jefferson could draw to himself the praise for this “miracle.” However, if Eaton failed, no documents existed to show the United States ever supported a mission to overthrow a foreign government. “[The president] evades the imputation of having embarked in a speculative, theoretical, chimerical project.” And Eaton added: “This [blame] will fix on me.”