Bainbridge delivered to Istanbul: 4 horses, 150 sheep, 25 horned cattle, 4 lions, 4 tigers, 4 antelopes, 12 parrots, as well as 100 African slaves, many of them females bound for the harems.
When William Eaton, then consul in Tunis, heard of Bainbridge’s mission, he was appalled. “History shall tell that the United States first volunteered a ship of war, equipt, a carrier for a pirate. It is written. Nothing but blood can blot the impression out. I frankly own, I would have lost the peace, and been myself impaled rather than yielded this concession. Will nothing rouse my country?”
Aboard the Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor, at 3 P.M., Captain Bainbridge consulted with his officers, asking their opinion on surrender. “We all answer’d that all was done,” wrote William Knight, sailing master. “Nothing remain’d but to give the ship up.”
Although not a single cannonball had hit the ship, causing any leaks, Bainbridge apparently perceived a danger of being sunk; he regarded further defense as fruitless and further delay as a possible death sentence for everyone aboard.
Bainbridge now faced a rather unusual problem . . . one that most captains rarely face in the course of a long career. Obviously he didn’t want to hand the Bashaw of Tripoli an immaculate 1,200-ton frigate. He needed to scuttle and sink his own ship but do so at a stage-managed pace that would allow all his crew to exit safely. Timing would be crucial. (Many sailors couldn’t swim, including Bainbridge.)
Bainbridge ordered the gunner to drown the gunpowder magazine. In case of fire, a supply of water stood at the ready to soak the explosives. The gunner, Richard Stephenson, used a key to gain access to a stopcock, which he turned to send water into the magazine. Bainbridge also ordered the carpenter to bore holes in the ship’s oak-and-copper-sheathed bottom. Carpenter William Godby and his two assistants, turning T-shaped augers and pounding sharpened chisels, pierced an unspecified number of holes in the bow below the waterline. Seawater sprayed in. First it spritzed onto puddles in the hold, then it began to rise. More water. Within an hour, one eyewitness said it reached four feet in the hold. Bainbridge decided it was time for him to surrender once again.
The USS Philadelphia carried four American flags: The largest was twenty-two feet by thirty-eight feet; the Stars and Stripes announced the ship’s nationality at a great distance; they proclaimed that nationality to the men serving on board.
“About four o’clock, the Eagle of America, fell a prey to the vultures of Barbary—the flag was struck!!” wrote Ray.
“Many of our seamen were much surprised at seeing the colours down, before we had received any injury from the fire of our enemy, and begged of the captain and officers to raise it again, preferring even death to slavery. The man who was at the ensign halyards positively refused to obey the captain’s orders . . . to lower the flag. He was threatened to be run through and a midshipman seized the halyards and executed the command, amidst the general murmuring of the crew.”
The captain tore up the signal books; a midshipman tossed them overboard; the men rushed to destroy and fling seaward: battle-axes, pikes, cutlasses, pistols, muskets, anything that might be useful to the enemy. They took axes to the captain’s furniture and generally rampaged throughout the ship.
The rules of war are complicated; many are observed more in the breach than the observance. The Congress of the United States had clearly stated in the Navy Act of 1800 (Article IX) that when capturing another ship as a prize, the American sailors should not “strip of their clothes, or pillage or in any manner maltreat” the enemy on board the prize vessel.
Somehow, word spread among the hundreds of crewmen of the Philadelphia that the enemy sailors of Tripoli might honor more humane rules of surrender, and that they would not be stripped or harassed. William Ray observed that the crewmen, from the marines to foretopmen, started to put on layer upon layer of clothing. The most common outfit was for each man to put on four pairs of blue trousers, and four white shirts and four black neckerchiefs. In their pockets they stuffed their prized possessions: money, knives, jewelry, food, keepsakes. Former schoolteacher William Ray said the overstuffed men resembled Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV.
The captain ordered the entire crew to assemble on the sloping deck. And they did, in their ballooning outfits. As they stood there, Captain Bainbridge solemnly read the articles of war and informed them that their wages would continue in captivity, that they should hope and pray for ransom, and told them “to behave with circumspection and propriety among our barbarous captors.”
The puffed men swayed on the deck as Bainbridge talked. Ray said that a dying saint would have had trouble not laughing.