The Pirate Coast(5)

Porter advised Bainbridge to consult all the officers. They quickly suggested lowering a boat to sound the depth all around the ship. The bow lead drew only twelve feet as far back along the ship as the foremast—at least six feet less depth than required—but the stern still floated free with plenty of deep water there. Clearly, the ship needed to back up. The Philadelphia was pointing to the northeast; the winds flowed briskly to the northwest directly across the beam of the ship, a decidedly unhelpful direction. The officers recommended putting the sails aback, that is, facing them into the wind by tying off the yardarms to move the ship backward. That amounted to the exact opposite tack from Bainbridge’s original command.

The American sailors noticed a flurry of activity taking place on the ships in harbor; the men of Tripoli were racing to ready their vessels; speed was vital for both sides. “I could not but notice the striking alteration in our officers,” wrote Private Ray. “It was no time to act the haughty tyrant—no time to punish men for snoring—no time to tell men they had ‘no right to think’ . . . It was not ‘go you dam’d rascal’ but ‘come, my good fellow, my brave lads.’ ”

The men tied the sails, prepared the canvas. The blustery winds pushed against backed sails, but instead of inching the Philadelphia backward, the strong breezes tipped the ship far over onto its left side till the gunports hovered just above the waterline. A few more inches of tip and water would rush in. This unexpected result caused the deck not only to slope downhill (from the elevated reef) but also to lean left. Carved Hercules looked drunk and falling sideways at the masthead. Worse, this careening caused one bank of eighteen cannons to point into the water, and the cannons on the other side to aim high into the sky.

The one enemy gunboat—downwind—kept up a fitful fire from a respectful distance, but so far almost all balls splashed harmlessly in the water.

The American officers, to lighten the bow quickly, ordered the men to cut the ship’s three heavy bow anchors; no one wanted to part with valuable equipment, but this was an emergency; the sailors chopped with axes at the fat cables. The ship still stuck firm. Then the officers ordered the crew to shift the heavy cannons to the stern. The gun carriages must be unchained and the men must lash ropes to the cannon barrels and wooden gun carriages to ease them down the tilted gun deck. The men, who could barely outstretch their arms in the cramped areas belowdeck, now tried to haul 2,000-pound cast-iron long-barreled cannons in a hurry.

The gun crews—trained to load, fire, swab, reload in battle rush—strained to pile the humongous weapons in the stern. That hard maneuver failed to free the bow, so the officers told the men to hoist and toss many of the 2,000-pound cannons overboard. They jettisoned most of the twenty-eight beautiful long guns capable of shooting eighteen-pound balls and the sixteen stubby carronades that plunked thirty-two-pound balls . . . except for a handful on the quarterdeck and in the stern cabin. Sailors shot-put cannonballs into the harbor water. The men sought out heavy articles everywhere—from barrels to ballast—and cast them overboard. Even David Burling, the marine imprisoned for sleeping, was freed from the coal hold to lend a hand.

With massive effort, the crew lightened the vessel by sixty tons, but the Philadelphia still stuck fast. Meanwhile, the blockade runner continued to line up a broadside of its guns and to fire. The balls, surprisingly, either whizzed through the rigging or fell harmlessly in the water. Not a single shot caused a direct hit. No splinters flew. The Philadelphia, with most of its remaining guns underwater or aimed askew, couldn’t fire back. Bainbridge later compared himself to a chained helpless animal.

While the crew worked hard over the ensuing hours, several more gunboats, finally readied, stirred out of Tripoli harbor. (A gunboat might carry 50 to 75 men and sport a half dozen or so cannons.) The number of enemy gunboats sailing to attack the Philadelphia is up for debate. According to Private Ray, only one gunboat risked passing by the Philadelphia’s stern to get upwind while two others remained almost out of gunshot downwind. Captain Bainbridge, however, pegged the ultimate number at nine.

As an occasional cannonball whizzed overhead, the men labored and the officers remained calm. The Americans were sitting ducks in an arcade where the customers couldn’t hit the side of a barn. The carpenter and his men tried to chop away enough of a cabin wall to allow at least one cannon to bear on the Tripoli gunboat upwind. The gun crew fired several shots, but the cannon failed to roll out far enough, and the blast caused a small fire. The men doused the flames quickly and abandoned using the cannon.