Jefferson's War (23 page)

But Davis's report proved false.

 

Before quitting Tripoli, the squadron spotted a 22-gun Tripolitan polacre at anchor in a deep, narrow bay east of Tripoli. The
Enterprise
and
John Adams
moved in, lofting shells at it. The enemy crew abandoned ship. Rodgers was readying a boarding party when a boat was seen returning to the polacre with the captain and some crewmen. Rodgers resumed the shelling, and the polacre crewmen again prepared to abandon ship, firing broadsides to clear their cannons and striking their flag.

And then, without warning, the polacre exploded with an earsplitting roar, shattering into thousands of pieces. Enemy troops on the beach collapsed with shrapnel wounds. Debris rained down on the harbor. The dazzled Americans watched as the polacre's main and mizzen masts rocketed 150 feet straight into the air—yards, shrouds, and stays fluttering. Rodgers's amazement jumps off the pages of his report to Morris: “The destruction of the before mentioned vessel, altho‘ awful, was one of the Grandest Spectacles I ever beheld.—After a Tremendous Explosion there appeared a Huge Column of smoke, with a pyramid of Fire darting Vertically through its Centre interspersed with Masts, Yards, Sails Rigging, different parts of the Hull & etc. and the vessel in an instant dashed to Attoms.”

 

 

After assembling in Malta, the squadron cruised leisurely along the southern European coast. Morris' men were spoiling for a fight even if their commander wasn't. The
New York
pulled over a 6-gun galley, thinking she was Tripolitan. To the crew's disappointment, she was Tunisian. They let her go. Noted Wadsworth: “Had she been a Tripoline she would have been a prize for the Men were all hot for Battle, friends or foes.—The sight of a Turban soon enrages them.” But there were few turbans at Messina, Naples, and Leghorn.

Elba, the island where Bonaparte would be exiled in eleven years, furnished unwelcome excitement. The trigger-happy French garrison fired on the
Adams.
Captain Hugh Campbell unwisely sent Lieutenant John Dent ashore to request an explanation, and the young officer was detained. The French commander arrogantly demanded compensation for each shot he had fired at the
Adams
before he would release Dent. Unlike the Tunisians, who had only wanted free gunpowder when they demanded a barrel for every
cannon salute, the French wanted to slap the Americans in the face. With no other options but leaving Dent or recovering him by force and starting a war with France, Morris paid the bill angrily: 4 crowns, 6 francs. Wrote Wadsworth in his journal, “thro‘ his [Campbell's] damned foolishness our country is insulted & we pay for it too.”

The
John Adams
convoyed merchantmen to Gibraltar, and the
Enterprise
went on a mail run to Malta. The
Adams
transported Cathcart from Leghorn to Tunis to become the new U.S. consul, succeeding Davis, and then joined the
John Adams
at Gibraltar.

Sailing on alone in the
New York,
Morris unexpectedly met the
Adams
again at Malaga. Campbell handed him a letter dated June 21 from the Navy secretary. “You will upon receipt of this consider yourself Suspended in the command of the Squadron on the Mediterranean Station and of the Frigate The
New York.”

Rodgers was given temporary command of the squadron until Preble's arrival.

 

 

 

Jefferson had decided to recall Morris. Two years of inaction following Sterett's bloody defeat of the
Tripoli
had caused the president's initial enthusiasm for the war to congeal into icy frustration. Since 1784, he had longed to show Europe and Barbary that America was different, that it wouldn't bow to the haughty deys, beys, bashaws, and emperors, or tremble before their ragtag corsairs. For twenty years, he had wanted to chastise their insolence. After two years of war, he was no nearer that goal than when Commodore Dale had left the Virginia Capes in June 1801. The Mediterranean squadron convoyed; it did not fight. Jefferson was hearing that the blockade was little more than a fiction. If anything, the caution displayed by his two commodores had reassured the Barbary rulers that they had nothing to fear from
America. And Morris's long silence from the Mediterranean had only confirmed the president's suspicions that his commodore was nothing more than a timeserver.

Dissatisfaction with Morris had first spiked in March, when Eaton and Murray returned to Washington. Jefferson and his Cabinet listened to their complaints about the conduct of the war. Eaton had observed sourly to the U.S. House speaker that Morris “never burned an ounce of powder; except at a royal salute at Gibraltar in celebration of the birthday of his
British Majesty.”
The Cabinet met on April 8 to discuss Mediterranean affairs, but made no decision regarding Morris. Then, in May, Morris's so-called action plan had reached Washington. Its vagueness convinced Jefferson and his officers that Morris had to go. On June 16, the president asked Navy Secretary Robert Smith to bring the commodore home.

 

Morris was court-martialed. The panel of three fellow officers—Captains Samuel Barron and Hugh Campbell and Lieutenant John Cassin, superintendent of the Washington Navy Yard—and Judge Advocate Walter Jones, Jr. found Morris guilty of “inactive and dilatory conduct” in April 1804. Morris was faulted for leaving Tripoli unblockaded for months, for not appearing off Tripoli for an entire year, and for botching the few actions that he did direct. Morris's conduct, the panel concluded, had failed to enhance America's reputation. “This is to be ascribed, not to any deficiency in personal courage on the part of the commodore, but to his indolence and want of capacity.” In his defense, Morris said he was proud that no U.S. property or citizens were captured on his watch. The court martial resulted in his dismissal from the Navy.

During Morris's last days in the Mediterranean, Algerian corsairs attacked a Royal Navy frigate off Malta. The British ship managed to escape into Valletta Harbor, where two British men-of-war and a frigate immediately put to sea, chased down the corsairs, and sank several of them.

Bobba Mustapha retaliated by ordering every English subject in Algiers imprisoned. When Lord Horatio Nelson, admiral of the Mediterranean fleet, learned of this, he sailed to Algiers harbor with seven frigates. Without preamble, the British warships opened fire on the city with shells and “hot shot” that ignited fires everywhere. With flames blossoming throughout his city and buildings crashing down, Bobba offered to negotiate. Nelson ignored the offer. The heavy bombardment continued, and damage began to mount exponentially. The panicked dey sent a second embassy urging a parley. Nelson responded this time—with demands of his own. The dey must free all the British prisoners, pay a fine, promise never to insult British honor again, and compensate British citizens for any losses. Bobba agreed to everything.

For anyone paying attention, it was a textbook demonstration of how to deal with a belligerent Barbary regency.

Eaton, for one, certainly would have appreciated Nelson's forceful action. In February 1803, he had written that it was “absolutely necessary that the United States should once, and at once, show themselves on the
Barbary,
and not European coast; and in a manner to make themselves known.”

Heading the third U.S. squadron that would soon arrive in the western Mediterranean, Commodore Edward Preble likewise would have applauded Nelson's swift reprisal, as well as Eaton's prophetic words.

IX

THE
PHILADELPHIA
DISASTER

A just comparison of our situation, is one man tied to a stake attacked by another with arms.
—
believe me that it cannot be fully concieved but by those who may sadly experience.

—Captain William Bainbridge of the
Philadelphia,
in a letter to U.S. Consul General Tobias Lear

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he
Philadelphia's
lookouts sounded the alarm: An unidentified xebec, a Mediterranean ship the size of a small frigate, was cruising near the shore east of Tripoli. The mystery ship's sentinels spotted the Americans about the same time. The xebec raised a Tripolitan ensign as it hastened westward for Tripoli's harbor, staying close to shore.

At that moment, Captain William Bainbridge undoubtedly regretted having sent the smaller, shallower-draft
Vixen
to Cape Bon ten days earlier to chase a corsair that had slipped out of Tripoli harbor and past the blockade. The schooner's departure left Bainbridge and his 44-gun frigate cruising alone near the capital city.

Unwilling to let the xebec go, Bainbridge ordered the
Philadelphia
to give chase. The frigate's 307 men edged toward their rendezvous with destiny.

After commanding the
Essex
under Dale in 1801—2, Bainbridge had returned to the United States to supervise construction of light warships and had missed Morris's incompetent tenure. The
Vixen
was one of the new ships. So were two others with Preble off Morocco—the
Siren
and
Nautilus.
A fourth, the
Argus,
commanded by Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Jr., was due to arrive soon in the western Mediterranean.

Preble had dispatched the
Philadelphia,
under Bainbridge, and the
Vixen,
commanded by Lieutenant John Smith, to Tripoli while he dealt with a new Moroccan crisis. The emperor was upset over the loss of
Meshuda
and her cargo of weapons and powder, captured by Rodgers while its captain tried to sneak through the Tripoli blockade. Soliman Ben Mahomet had bombarded Consul James Simpson with demands that the
Meshuda
be returned to him. The Moroccans had grown tired of Simpson's inaction, and when Preble reached Gibraltar, he discovered that Morocco was at war with the United States for the second time in as many years.

The commodore had teamed the
Philadelphia
with the
Vixen,
liking the pairing of muscle and mobility. Preble knew it was important to continue to project U.S. power at Tripoli despite the Morocco emergency. In mid-September, Nicholas Nissen, the Danish consul, had reported that he hadn't seen a U.S. warship in three months, and that all of Tripoli's cruisers were in the harbor: four ships of 8—14 guns and thirteen smaller craft, including six gunboats. It was an excellent time to blockade the enemy's port and trap his best ships inside the picket.

 

The
Philadelphia
and
Vixen
reached Tripoli on October 7 and cruised for nearly two weeks before parting company. Now, with the
Vixen
a day's sail away, Bainbridge and his officers studied the
ship's charts, confident they could pick their way through Tripoli harbor's tricky shoals and reefs as they pursued the xebec.

Unfortunately for Bainbridge, Kaliusa Reef, a long, narrow sandbar four and half miles east of the city and a mile and a half from shore, didn't appear on any of the
Philadelphia's
charts.

 

Born a year before the Revolutionary War and the fourth son of Dr. Absalom Bainbridge, president of the New Jersey Medical Society, William Bainbridge never was interested in medicine. At an early age, he found another calling: the sea. Brawny and bold, young Bainbridge was a natural leader. He quelled a mutiny on a Hollandbound merchantman at eighteen, and four years later put down another shipboard insurrection in Bordeaux. While captain of the 4-gun merchantman
Hope,
he repelled an attack by an English schooner off St. John's, Newfoundland, and forced it to strike its flag. But later, when the
Hope
was boarded by officers from an English warship, Bainbridge could only watch helplessly as one of his seamen was impressed into the Royal Navy. He vowed to the English captain that he would impress an English sailor the first chance he got—and did so, announcing to the captain of the merchantman that he boarded who he was and why he was taking the sailor.