The Pirate Coast(47)

Circa 1804, lookouts had to make do with Pompey’s Pillar, which stands 70 feet tall and 8 feet thick, a solid piece of polished red granite. (This column, despite its snappy nickname, was built in the fourth century A.D. and has nothing to do with the Roman general Pompey.)

At 4:30 P.M., Hull ordered a salute gun fired and flags hoisted to call for a pilot to sail out to help navigate the Argus into the harbor. No one ashore noticed, or no one cared. The sun set, and the Argus, taking no chances, tacked offshore, at times hauling up the mainsail. William Eaton waited.

At dawn Hull eased shoreward; this time he hoisted an English flag after firing his salute. An Arab pilot, at the bidding of the English consul, sailed out. That afternoon the man guided the Argus westward through the tricky opening of the Old Harbor of Alexandria. Sea-savvy travelers routinely complained that the casual dumping of ballast by lazy crews threatened to choke off access. The challenging entry, in any case, allowed harbor pilots to increase their fees. A Turkish man-of-war and six frigates were anchored there, dwarfing the brig Argus.

The pilot, at the bidding of the British consul, informed Captain Hull that the Turks, then nominal masters of Egypt, would answer any salute, gun for gun. So the Americans reeled off the steady, very respectful seventeen-gun salute, which was reciprocated by the Ottoman admiral. (Eaton, ever ready to perceive a slight, counted thirteen in response; Captain Hull counted seventeen.) The sailors of the Argus dropped anchors fore and aft in six and a half fathoms of water. Soon after, the English consul, Samuel Briggs, and a handful of Turkish port officials were rowed out and they climbed aboard.

Pleasantries completed, Eaton presented his letter of introduction from British governor Ball of Malta to Mr. Briggs. This single piece of paper pried open entrée into Egypt, a country then wracked by civil war and paralyzed in many locales by conflicting factions. Before leaving the ship, Briggs, an energetic merchant in addition to being British consul, promised to provide any assistance within his power.

All the foreign consulates raised a polite flag of welcome to greet the Americans, except for the houses of France and Spain, then at war with England. (In fact, the French consul, a Piedmontese named Signore Drovetti, would soon start spreading rumors about Eaton that would endanger Eaton’s life . . . and then later Drovetti’s, once Eaton learned about it.)

That night, Consul Briggs sent a letter to the Americans, informing Eaton and Captain Hull that at 9:30 A.M. the following morning both the governor of Alexandria and the Turkish admiral would receive visits from them. Briggs and his interpreter would meet them at Admiral’s Wharf and accompany them.

The standard means of ground transportation in Alexandria in 1805 was by short ass. “They make use of asses to go from one part of town to another, of so small a size, that the legs of the rider nearly touch the ground,” noted Ali Bey, a seasoned traveler. Ali Bey measured several at thirty-nine inches tall to the crown of head, and he suggested this beast, which ate one quarter as much as a horse, might revolutionize the daily commute to work in Europe. He added that the animals stepped very lively and that bystanders enjoyed the pratfall comedy of the slipper-wearing overseers, skiddering around trying to keep up with their asses.

William Eaton did not want to be a tourist; he wanted to pursue his mission, but even he couldn’t help but notice the decline of one of the greatest countries in the history of mankind.

Egypt lay in ruins. Egypt’s ruins lay in ruins. The latest conquerors—French, British, Turkish, Albanian, Mameluke—cherry-picked the antiquities; their unpaid troops vandalized and pillaged; the local elite still borrowed Roman columns for their summer homes. The magnificent baths of Cleopatra have disappeared under the rubble. Caliph Omar burned the Library long ago. The desert sands encroach the remaining gardens. A gorgeous metropolis that once housed one million people and dictated fashion and literature to the world has disappeared. Now, a mongrel town of 5,000 Arabs, Copts, Italians, Turks, Albanians, Jews remains on the same geographical spot; the inhabitants bark out a bastardized version of Arabic and Lingua Franca. It is said most Alexandrines speak four languages—badly. And to think that Cleopatra once defined a “barbarian” as an uncouth person who could not speak a neat version of Greek.

Alexandria was no longer a Grande Dame.

The governor and admiral, the two most powerful Turks in Alexandria, welcomed the Americans—Hull in a naval uniform and Eaton in civilian clothes. Slaves sprinkled them with rose water and served them coffee. The elaborate ceremony dragged on. The instant that Eaton was able to corner Briggs for a moment of privacy, he asked him about the location of Hamet, the exiled prince of Tripoli. Briggs replied that he had heard vague reports that Hamet was somewhere far to the south, hundreds of miles below Cairo, and that to see him, Eaton would need to pass through battlefields filled with fierce Mamelukes and other armies waging war there.