Jefferson's War (20 page)

Firing cannon salutes, the corsairs brazenly paraded the
Franklin
through the blockade, manned by the
Constellation
and a Swedish frigate, and into Tripoli harbor, as Morris fumed over his countrymen's inaction. The Tripolitans marched the crew through the city streets past shouting Moslem crowds, jubilant at the sight of captive Christians—a raucous scene that might have been reprised from 1793, 1785, or even 1635. English and French consuls swung into action and quickly gained the release of three crewmen who were British nationals and the two passengers who were French. But Captain Morris and three American crewmen remained captives.

The absence of a U.S. consul in Tripoli hampered efforts to gain their release, although William Eaton did what he could from
Tunis. Eaton tried to open a parley with Murad Reis when he appeared in Tunis, but Murad wouldn't negotiate or permit Eaton to visit the captives.

Algiers intervened unexpectedly. Bobba Mustapha reminded Yusuf that in 1801 he had promised one day to release six Americans when Dale had freed the forty-one prisoners from the captured Greek ship. If any proof was needed of Algiers's continued preeminence among the Barbary regencies, Bobba's intercession and Yusuf's response supplied it. On October 11, the freed American captives suddenly showed up in Algiers. Yusuf, however, couldn't resist levying a small ransom, agreement or no; after all, these were American Christians, and Tripoli was at war with their country. Richard O‘Brien, the U.S. consul general in Algiers, paid the bashaw the $6,500 he demanded.

 

 

Richard Morris might have wrung an honorable peace from the bashaw had he sailed swiftly to Tripoli with Cathcart and negotiated at cannon's mouth—in other words, followed orders. He did not, even with Navy Secretary Robert Smith prodding him to act in a letter reaching him while he lingered at Gibraltar in the summer of 1802. “Let me at this time urge you to use every exertion to terminate the affair with Tripoli and to prevent a rupture with any of the other Barbary Powers.”

Instead, the commodore began to display the indolence that would become the signature of his command. Two and a half months passed before he managed to pry himself away from Gibraltar and the balls and banquets, and the many opportunities to rub elbows with admirals, aristocrats, and diplomats. On August 18, 1802, Morris and the
Chesapeake
finally sailed from Gibraltar. He did not make for Tripoli, but leisurely escorted U.S.
merchantmen in a happy ramble along the southern European coast, touching at many pleasant ports—Malaga, Toulon, and Marseilles—and arriving on October 12 in Leghorn, where he met Richard Cathcart.

With winter approaching, Morris was loath to forsake Italy's amenities to cross to Tripoli. It was so late in the season, he wrote to Smith on October 15 in his first report since reaching the Mediterranean, “to render it impossible to appear off Tripoli before January.” Morris confided to Cathcart that he wouldn't undertake a major operation against Tripoli until May or June.

 

It was a missed opportunity for securing favorable peace terms. Reports from Tripoli suggested the bashaw was open to negotiations. O‘Brien had learned the bashaw would settle for $60,000 in cash and $10,000 in presents. For another $30,000, Algiers would mediate. When all the other bribes were paid, the treaty would cost $120,000. O'Brien was confident that it could be signed for less. Yusuf's openness to a negotiated peace was by no means a testament to the effectiveness of Morris's blockade. “This year has proved a great deal richer in grains than ever could be expected, so that the Blockade from that Side neither seems to be of much Service... ,” Nicholas Nissen, the Danish consul in Tripoli, had reported to Eaton in July. The bashaw's amenability to talks more likely was due to concern over the U.S. military buildup.

But the propitious moment passed without Morris's acting. Sweden made peace with Tripoli for $150,000, plus an $8,000 consular present and $8,000 in annual tribute. The new treaty removed any pressure on Tripoli to negotiate with the United States, now its only enemy. With the rich harvest, Sweden's cash, and gifts of $40,000 and an 18-gun cruiser from France, the
bashaw was confident he could fight a war, endure a blockade, or thwart any coup attempt.

 

The commodore and the “commodoress,” as Mrs. Morris was now known among the
Chesapeake
's crew, dallied in Leghorn nearly a month. In his journals and letters, Henry Wadsworth, a midshipman on the
Chesapeake,
displayed the family gift for composition that would reach its zenith in his nephew and namesake, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Young Wadsworth thought highly of Mrs. Morris, describing her as an avid reader who was particularly knowledgeable about geography and history. Yet he couldn't resist a wry dig at her looks, noting that “her person is not beautiful, or even handsome, but she looks very well in a veil.” She was not the only woman aboard the
Chesapeake;
the boatswain, carpenter, corporal, and the captain of the forecastle all brought their wives, too. The forecastle captain's wife, Mrs. James Low, gave birth to a boy in the boatswain's storeroom.

 

Morris's lethargic cruise left the squadron's officers and men with plenty of time to get into trouble—chiefly, by drinking and dueling. During the long layover in Leghorn, Marine Captain James McKnight was killed by Navy Lieutenant Richard H. L. Lawson after a simmering feud between the two
Constellation
officers culminated in McKnight, a seasoned duelist, challenging Lawson. Dueling among American officers was a lethal byproduct of Europe's Romantic Age, when a gentleman's honor was more important than life itself. It was so widespread during the early nineteenth century that two-thirds as many U.S. naval officers died on the “field of honor” as were killed in battle. Lawson, who had never dueled, proposed three paces, counting on the brief
distance to negate McKnight's experience. McKnight's second denounced Lawson as “an assassin” for suggesting such a ridiculously short distance, Lawson called McKnight a coward, and they finally agreed on two pistol shots each at six paces. If both remained standing and their honor still craved satisfaction, they would fight on with cutlasses until it was.

They trooped ashore. McKnight and Lawson stepped off their six paces, turned and fired simultaneously. McKnight missed, but Lawson's bullet struck McKnight in the chest, piercing his heart and killing him instantly. Marine Captain Daniel Carmick and other witnesses carried the body to the American Hotel, where they were staying. The staff, anxious to spare the other guests a grisly spectacle, turned the officers away, telling them Leghorn's coroner needed to conduct a postmortem to determine the cause of death, but they wouldn't permit it at the hotel. The Americans lugged McKnight to the cemetery, laid him on a raised grave marker, and sent for the coroner.

The coroner was a by-the-book bureaucrat. Carmick watched in horror as he cut out McKnight's heart. He asked Carmick to vouch that the ball indeed had passed through it, then began the grotesque hunt for the pistol ball. Carmick protested the dismemberment of his friend, but the coroner and other city officials were not to be dissuaded. Carmick stalked off in disgust. “I left them up to their Armpitts in blood,” he reported to Marine Commandant William Burrows.

Murray, the
Constellation's
aged, nearly deaf commander, had been unaware of the feud that had gone on right under his nose until McKnight's death came to his attention. He displayed his violent disapproval of dueling by arresting Lawson for murder and forbidding military honors at McKnight's burial. Murray and
Morris also both boycotted the service. Carmick wrote to Burrows, “I thought he [Murray] was rather unreasonable in desiring that there be inscribed on his Tombstone; ‘That he had fallen victim to a false idea of Honor.”' McKnight was buried near the gravesite of the British satirist Tobias Smollett, who died in Leghorn in 1771 after finishing his epistolary novel,
The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker.

Before the squadron left Leghorn, there was another tragedy. Carmick was returning to his ship with Lieutenant Sterett when some crewmen tried to catch the boat as it was pulling out. Sterett refused to wait for them, deciding to teach the sailors a lesson on promptness. They appropriated a barge. It overturned in the harbor's chop, and four sailors drowned.

The squadron idled in Livonine for a pleasant spell. At length it weighed anchor for Naples, with Wadsworth writing contentedly, “Yesterday we left Livonine with as much pleasure as we enter'd it, for 20, or 30 days will generally satiate us with any place.”

Another duel caused an international incident. At Malta, where the
New York
had put in to wait out a storm, Midshipman Joseph Bainbridge, the younger brother of Captain William Bainbridge, was on liberty in Valletta when he had a run-in with a Mr. Cochran, secretary to Malta's governor, Sir Alexander Ball. Cochran tried to pick a fight with the American to impress his British officer companions. After being taunted and jostled repeatedly, Bainbridge finally flattened Cochran. The governor's secretary threw down a challenge. Concerned about Bainbridge's inexperience, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Jr., Bainbridge's shipmate and an experienced duelist—he would die in a duel in 1820 with the
New York's
current commander, Captain James Barron—volunteered as Bainbridge's second. Decatur demanded that the
duel be fought at four paces. The men exchanged first shots. Cochran missed his, and Bainbridge blew off Cochran's hat. The men reloaded and fired again. This time Bainbridge was dead accurate: Cochran “reciev'd the ball in his head and instantly died,” wrote Wadsworth. Alexander Ball, furious over losing his secretary, ordered Barron to turn over Bainbridge and Decatur to Maltese authorities for prosecution. Barron ignored the demand. The
New York
sailed with Bainbridge and Decatur. A Navy investigation exonerated the two, but they were sent home.

 

While Morris rambled among the western Mediterranean's friendly ports, support for the war was growing back home. Congress empowered the president to prosecute the war without declaring it formally. This was at Madison's urging; he believed the Tripoli war was too distant for effective congressional oversight. Congress also authorized armed vessels to make prizes of Tripolitan ships and, if needed, the commissioning of privateers. Navy enlistments were extended from one year to two.

Early in 1803, Navy Secretary Smith asked Congress for $96,000 for four warships of 14 to 16 guns, and $12,000 for eight gunboats. Naval officers and consuls had complained for a year and a half that the super frigates' deeper drafts hamstrung them as blockaders; they could not pursue shore-hugging small craft into the shallow harbors divoting the Tripolitan coast. Schooners, sloops, and gunboats were needed to chase blockade runners right into their hideouts. Eager to show its support, Congress gave Smith $50,000 to build up to fifteen gunboats, and granted his $96,000 request for the small ships. Construction of the four warships began immediately.

The Navy Department also began standardizing the operation of
its ships, officers, and men, issuing new rules covering everything from uniforms to discipline, shipboard duties to shipboard menus. The fleet's diet left much to be desired when measured against later standards. Smith recommended a ration heavy on protein, carbohydrates, and liquor, with occasional vegetables to ward off scurvy:

Eaton was bitterly disappointed that Commodore Morris was rapidly proving himself no improvement over Dale. He chafed over the squadron's inactivity, grumbling to Madison, “Government may as well send quaker meeting-houses to float this sea....” He also was angry with Murray of the
Constellation
for having refused to reprovision the
Gloria
at Gibraltar, stripping her of the privateer
commission Eaton had awarded her, and even impressing some of her seamen into service on the
Constellation.
“I beleive you will find you were unauthorized in employing the Ship Gloria on Public account,” Murray had written Eaton. Eaton happened to own the
Gloria
and had armed her at his own expense with the profits from a trading business he and Cathcart operated on the side. It was accepted practice for American consuls to operate private businesses while representing U.S. interests. Certain consulships, such as those in the West Indies, were particularly coveted because of their opportunities for accumulating great personal wealth. Eaton had some justification for making his own ship a privateer: He used the
Gloria
to deliver and pick up consular mail at Gibraltar, because the squadron's warships so rarely stopped in Tunis—over the previous six months, only McNeill had called, and just once. Murray's high-handedness angered Eaton and revealed his unhappy tendency never to forget a slight.