The Pirate Coast(55)
“The plan you have formed of taking Derne, I think rather a Hazardous one, unless the Bashaw can bring into the field from Eight Hundred to one Thousand Men, particularly as we are destitute of every article necessary for an expedition of this kind.” He states that “the most we can do” is transport the Bashaw to Syracuse, try to get supplies and troops, and then set off anew for Derne or Bengazi. “You must be satisfied that it is my wish to do everything in my power before we return, but when I look at the situation we are sent here in, I lose all patience.—With a little Vessel, without friends, without authority to act . . . in short without everything that is absolutely necessary to insure success to an Enterprize.”
Hull repeats that it would be best to find Hamet, bring him out of Egypt, then look for a new plan with proper backing. “I say as I have said before that I do not see that anything more than getting the man can be done.”
Eaton would receive this dismal Christmas present within a week. A less stubborn man might have been deterred.
CHAPTER 10
White Christmas in Tripoli
THE AMERICAN PRISONERS, hungry and overworked, were expecting an extraordinary treat for Christmas: a dinner of meat and vegetables, two loaves of bread per man, all to be washed down by a quart of wine each. The men hadn’t tasted a morsel of meat in two months, and a grain shortage had pinched their diet further. “The American sailors, it is a pity to see them,” wrote Dutch consul Zuchet. “They sometimes go two to three days without even the miserable barley bread that the Regency gives them and no one thinks to exempt them from the hard work they are forced to endure.”
But for Christmas, the unpredictable Bashaw had agreed to let them take the day off, even though it fell on a Wednesday. After more than a year in captivity, the prisoners welcomed the feast with an intensity difficult to imagine. Then Christmas morning, a routine inspection revealed dozens of ropes and other supplies missing from the Bashaw’s naval stores. The guards entered the American prison and announced: No food at all would be brought until someone confessed to the crime. Christmas—like the rest of their lives—was on hold.
Ever since Preble’s bombardments in late summer, conditions had worsened for the American prisoners. Since their own captain had delivered scant aid, they had smuggled a poignant letter out of Tripoli in early November to the commodore, asking for help. “They send us to work rain or shine like horses in the cart, some carrying large large stones, some plastering and repairing the fort and castle, others transporting guns that came out of the frigate . . . seven or eight savages to every 20 or 30 Men with large sticks to beat us along and very often no bread nor oil for 2, 3 & 4 days.”
The anonymous letter writer—no doubt funneling hollered suggestions—especially noted that the five U.S. servicemen who had renounced Christianity were “worse to us than the Turks.” He added: “I hope when we get released we will have the pleasure of stretching their Necks a little longer.”
By mid-November, the food shortages had grown so brutal that many of the men, despite winter’s onset, sold their clothes to Jewish rag merchants to get a few coins to purchase nourishment.
On December 7, Dr. Cowdery, the physician to the ruling family, overheard the Bashaw ordering his taskmasters to abuse the American prisoners to spur complaints and speed up a hefty ransom from Jefferson.
After suffering through three consecutive days of beatings and no food, the prisoners went on a hunger strike, that is, a strike against hunger. On the morning of December 10, the guards unlocked the prison and, banging their sticks, shouted the usual: “Tota Fora” (“Everybody Out” in Lingua Franca). None of the 275 Americans moved. The guards grabbed the men who slept on the floor and began thrashing them with sticks. The men refused to work without food. The guards threatened to bring soldiers to shoot them. “The wardens whipped them until they were tired,” wrote Dr. Cowdery, “and then went to inform the Bashaw.” A compromise was reached. Work till noon, then be fed a loaf of black bread with a half gill of oil.
The Bashaw’s own soldiers were also mulling rebellion, angry that they hadn’t received their Ramadan bonus of extra rations and money. Cornered by adversity, the Bashaw grew more defiant. He told the Dutch consul that the Americans could bring twenty frigates and that he wouldn’t surrender, and he vowed he’d convert to Judaism before accepting $1,000 a man as ransom.
The starving American prisoners decided that it was time to take their fate into their own hands. Four officers, who had been allowed to live with the crewmen, devised a plan for taking over the castle. The idea was that at the moment the prison gates were opened at dawn, the 275 American slaves would overwhelm their guards, rush to capture the castle armory, and hold the Bashaw and his family as hostages. They’d then free the other American officers and point the castle cannons toward the city. Marine Private Ray called the plan “preposterous” without naval support. He said that they’d soon run out of food and be forced to surrender. In any case, before they could try it, someone ratted them out, probably one of the turn-Turks.