The government of the United States expected a military victory.
As Eaton and Barron were finally heading to the scene of combat, Commodore Preble was making a last-ditch effort at Tripoli to end the war. Preble’s final risky gambit would sear a horrific image on the minds of some of the enslaved Philadelphia crew. They would see American corpses gnawed at by stray dogs.
CHAPTER 7
Yussef
BY LATE SUMMER, Commodore Preble’s patience had run out. For months he had been expecting Barron and reinforcements to arrive for a final attack. Hard autumn winds would soon whip the southern Mediterranean and make close-to-shore activities too dangerous. Where was Barron?
Now, on September 2, Preble decided to attempt the death blow on his own; he ordered the men to fit out a bomb-ship, an “Infernal” in sailor slang, to be loaded with 100 barrels of gunpowder and 150 bombs. The American sailors would try to slip this volcanic intruder into the harbor at night, nestle it among the Bashaw’s fleet, light a fifteen-minute fuse, then row away, their lives depending on each oar stroke.
Over the course of the previous month Preble, with a handful of navy ships, had tried (but failed) to torment the Bashaw into agreeing to a bargain-price ransom and a tribute-free peace. He had orchestrated a naval bombardment from the long guns of his frigates; he had daringly sent smaller vessels into Tripoli to board the Bashaw’s gunboats. Nothing had worked well enough for victory.
Preble himself, parading on the deck of the Constitution, once spent 54 minutes within musket shot of the shore batteries, venturing that close to unleash broadsides on the town and the corsair fleet. This was Eaton-style attack: reckless and righteous. The shore batteries hit the Constitution with nineteen shots, including drilling a perfectly round hole through the mainmast, which miraculously did not topple.
On August 2, Stephen Decatur’s brother James had led a gunboat into the harbor and furiously attacked a Tripolitan vessel, forcing it to surrender. In the moment of victory, James was treacherously shot. Brother Stephen became so enraged that, with only ten men, he attacked a gunboat with twenty-four scimitar-wielding defenders. While Decatur was fighting hand to hand against the Tripolitan vessel’s gargantuan captain, an enemy sailor sneaked up behind him and raised his sliver-moon blade to slash Decatur. According to lore, sailor Reuben James intercepted the blow with his head, sacrificing his life to save Decatur’s.
Bashaw Yussef Karamanli of Tripoli had a ringside seat for watching these battles: the terrace of his castle, which overlooked the harbor. He could hear the percussive thunder of his cannons, followed by the whoosh of cannonballs hurtling through the air. No daredevil, the Bashaw didn’t take any risks with his own personal safety; he always made sure to have his marabout holy man slip a scrap of paper under his turban, a script from the Koran, which would protect him from harm. “If a Turk gets wounded or killed, it is supposed the blessed paper is too old or not placed in a proper manner,” noted a Christian traveler.
At 4 A.M. on Tuesday, August 28, Preble and the other captains had begun bombarding the town, raining down eight hundred balls and shells in two hours. Constitution purser John Darby thrilled to the courage and rigid discipline of the American Navy. “The Commodore’s ship when standing in and during the engagement was the most elegant sight that I ever saw; she had her tompions [cannon plugs] out, matches lit and batteries lighted up, all hands at quarters standing right in under the fort & recei.g a heavy cannonading from their Battery. . . . As soon as [Preble] got within pistol shot, he commenced firing his bow guns and immediately laid his starboard side parallel to the castle and gave them a broadside.”
The cannonballs fell willy-nilly in the town, inflicting little damage on the stone buildings, but one of them almost killed the most candid diarist.
“The moment . . . the Americans started firing, I leapt from my bed in my nightshirt,” wrote Dutch consul Zuchet, “by what presentiment, I don’t know, and without stopping grabbed my clothes under my arm and left my bedroom. I was halfway down the stairs when a cannon hit the wall in my bedroom and skimmed along my bed to the pillow and then embedded itself in the wall opposite causing more damage . . . I would have been cut in half.”
Although Preble had failed in August to coax the white flag from Tripoli, he had left the enemy a bit perplexed. Prisoner Ray wrote that the surrender of the Philadelphia “to one gunboat without bloodshed” had led the people of Tripoli to believe that Americans were all cowards. They were then surprised by this summer onslaught. “The Turks told us,” Ray wrote, “that the Americans were all drunk, or they would not have ventured as they did, and fought so furiously.”