Jefferson's War (25 page)

Jefferson's political enemies blamed the
Philadelphia
's capture on his tightfisted fiscal policies. The Federalist-leaning New York
Evening Post,
founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801, called it “a practical lesson in Jefferson's economy.” The administration's critics claimed that had enough ships been on blockade duty, the
Philadelphia
never would have been lost. Jefferson was willing to capitalize on their outrage to obtain more money for warships. “This accident renders it expedient to increase our force and enlarge our expences in the Mediterranean beyond what the last appropriation for the Naval service contemplated.” Within a week, Congress authorized him to spend up to $1 million in unappropriated money from the Treasury to build two ships with up to 16 guns and to hire gunboats.

Of more far-reaching significance, Congress established a special “Mediterranean Fund,” whose sole purpose was to underwrite the war. Until now, no revenue had been earmarked exclusively to fight Tripoli. Financed with a 2.5 percent tax on all imports, the “Fund” was to remain operational until three months after ratification of a Tripoli peace.

U.S. diplomats in Europe enlisted Napoleon's intercession with the bashaw and Czar Alexander I's with the Turkish Porte to obtain the
Philadelphia
crew's release. The ministers' resourceful actions only irritated Jefferson, touchy about seeking diplomatic favors when he was trying to earn Europe's respect. “I have never been so mortified as to the conduct of our foreign functionaries,”
he raged to Madison. “They appear to have supposed that we were all lost now, without resource: and they have hawked us in
forma pauperis
begging alms at every court in Europe.”

For months, Jefferson had been losing faith in the Navy's ability to chasten Tripoli and had all but abandoned his single-minded quest for a winner's peace. He was impatient to end the war, and willing to settle for less than complete victory if it couldn't be won soon. So while the president hoped Preble would soon appear off Tripoli and beat “their town about their ears,” he was prepared to negotiate a peace with the bashaw if Preble failed.

The disheartening Dale and Morris squadrons had greatly diminished Jefferson's high hopes of winning a peace at no cost. On May 8, 1803, he had convened his Cabinet and asked, “Shall we buy peace with Tripoli?” The Cabinet, whose optimism had similarly been deflated by the squadron's lackadaisical performance, responded unanimously, Yes. Upon learning of the
Philadelphia's
loss, Jefferson had hedged his bets yet again by ordering preparations for a fourth Mediterranean squadron.

Tobias Lear, the former private secretary and close friend of George Washington, was the new Barbary consul general. He had crossed the Atlantic on the
Constitution
with Preble. Besides being instructed to parley with Yusuf if possible, he was loaded with $43,000 cash to buy the biennial and consular presents for Algiers's dey and to satisfy a $15,000 debt with Miciah Bacri, the dey's chief moneylender. And Tunis also would need Lear's attention, for it had no U.S. consul; Cathcart, shunned by the bashaw and dey, also had been rejected by Tunis's bey. He would soon resign. But, unexpectedly, it was Morocco that absorbed Lear and Preble's energies from the instant they touched at Gibraltar.

Two days after reaching the Mediterranean, Bainbridge had stumbled upon Morocco's war plans, possibly averting a full-blown war. Off Cape de Gatt on August 26, 1803, the
Philadelphia
had hailed the
Mirboha,
a 22-gun Moroccan cruiser. Oddly, or so it had struck Bainbridge, an American brig was keeping the
Mirboha
company. The
Celia,
claimed the
Mirboha
's commander, Ibrahim Lubarez, had decided to sail with him to Spain. He claimed that he had boarded, but had not detained her.

After this brief interview over open water, conducted in the typical fashion with speaking trumpets, Bainbridge was even more suspicious. He sent a lieutenant to the
Mirboha
to check for prisoners. Lubarez wouldn't allow him to come aboard. Now certain that Lubarez was lying, Bainbridge dispatched a boatload of armed men, and the
Mirboha
captain permitted them to board his ship. Belowdeck, they found the
Celia's
captain, Richard Bowen, and several crewmen—held as prisoners. Bowen's Boston ship had been captured nine days earlier 25 miles east of Malaga. When Bainbridge demanded to know by whose authority Lubarez had seized the American brig, the Moslem captain showed him unsigned orders that he said were issued by Tangier Governor Hashash Alcayde. The orders listed the nations whose ships Lubarez was authorized to capture. Leading off the enemies' list was “the Americans.” After liberating the
Celia
and her crew, Bainbridge made the
Mirboha
a prize and Lubarez and his men prisoners.

The emperor deeply resented Rodgers's seizure of the
Meshuda
and America's refusal to return the ship and crew. James Simpson, the U.S. consul in Morocco, had predicted that Soliman Ben Mahomet would abandon diplomacy for aggression and warned
on August 15 that two Moroccan frigates had sailed with sealed orders, most likely instructing them to hunt U.S. merchantmen. Bainbridge had spoiled Morocco's plan to force the
Meshuda's
release by retaking an American ship and its captor. The United States now possessed two Moroccan vessels instead of one.

 

Morocco was only one of a host of problems that beset Preble upon his arrival in Barbary. Algiers's dey was demanding brass cannons, Tunis was still clamoring for a frigate, and both were petulantly threatening war in so many words if their wishes were thwarted. And then there was waspish relationship with Rodgers, the interim commodore whom Preble was supposed to relieve. Enmity sprang up right away between the two strong-willed men over a petty issue: Preble flying the commodore's pennant on the
Constitution.
Rodgers objected to it. Preble informed Rodgers icily that the pennant's purpose was not to give offense to Rodgers, but to identify the ship as the squadron commander's vessel. He quoted pedantically from his orders naming him squadron commander. Rodgers shot back that while he wasn't offended personally by the pennant, “my feelings as an
officer
has been most sensibly injured.” Then he came to the nub of the matter—that since Rodgers's commission as a naval officer preceded Preble's, he was senior to him, and not even the government could sanction Preble's showing disrespect for Rodgers. After their tempers cooled, the captains managed to conduct a proper, but chilly, professional relationship that carried them through until Rodgers's departure a few months later.

 

Alerted by Bainbridge to Morocco's hostile intentions, Preble sent the
Argus
and
Enterprise
to cruise off Morocco and warn away U.S.
merchantmen. Preble hovered off Tangier, awaiting Emperor Soliman Ben Mahomet's return from a tour of the countryside. It took weeks. The large imperial entourage traveled slowly, and river flooding slowed them further. Meanwhile, the almost-war with Morocco simmered, threatening to burst into a shooting war any day. The American merchantman
Hannah
and her crew were captured at Mogadore. Officers from the
Constitution
boarded the 30-gun Moroccan cruiser
Maimona
off the Spanish coast. Preble and Lear suspected she was hunting American merchantmen, although her captain presented a valid passport and claimed he was only sailing to Lisbon from Sallee, Morocco. Preble let him go.

Finally, the emperor arrived in the capital on October 4 with 2,500 cavalry, attendants, one of his lives, and his brother. Preble and the
Constitution
sailed into Tangier harbor the next day with the
New York, John Adams,
and
Nautilus,
and anchored in front of Tangier's fortress in a display of naval prowess. Preble made a show of clearing his ships for action. The squadron's guns were primed, and the crews kept at quarters all night. The emperor's troops reciprocated with their own martial show. More than 10,000 Moorish cavalry lined the beach for two and a half miles, turned toward the Americans in the harbor, then performed a facing maneuver and marched into Tangier, firing volleys as the emperor's band played a march. Tangier's fortress and the
Constitution
thundered cannon salutes at one another. The delighted emperor, taking in the dazzling panorama through his telescope, ordered ten bullocks, twenty sheep, four dozen fowl, and other provisions sent aboard the U.S. ships as a goodwill gesture. Preble, Lear, and two midshipmen went ashore to parley. Midshipman Ralph Izard was struck by the unpretentiousness of the emperor and his suite. He was “a small man, wrapped up in a woollen haik
or cloak sitting upon the stone steps of an old castle in the middle of the streets, surrounded by a guard of very ill looking blacks with their [fire]arms covered with cloth to prevent rusting.”

The negotiations proceeded smoothly. The emperor suspended hostilities immediately, and Preble and Lear agreed to release the
Mirboha
and
Meshuda.
Soliman then reratified the 1797 treaty made by his father, Maulay Sulaiman. He blamed the “misunderstanding” on his Tangier governor. As the two nations formalized the agreement on October 11, the emperor reminded Preble and Lear that he had not yet received the 100 gun carriages that Simpson had promised him a year earlier. They assured him they were on the way. The emperor had heard that before, but, in fact, the carriages really were en route to Morocco this time, although their arrival occasioned some disappointment. Many were built for 12-pound ordnance while Morocco's was nearly all 18- and 24-pound. All were designed for sea service, when they were wanted for fortress use. And each carriage came with just one wooden handspike for maneuvering the gun, instead of the usual two. When Simpson purchased additional handspikes, the gift was pronounced satisfactory.

 

Back in Tripoli's crumbling, verminous dungeons, the
Philadelphia
crewmen suffered the indignities of their first days of captivity in quiet misery. The morning after the surrender, a “frightful hag” appeared in the crew's quarters. Revered by the Tripolitans as a prophetess and sorceress, the old woman supposedly had predicted the
Philadelphia's
shoaling and capture, then had made it happen with her incantations. The Americans shifted uneasily under her hard, appraising gaze, fearing the worst. She pointed to a black crewman, and he was led away—not to be punished or
executed, but to become a cook for the castle's Mamelukes, although his mates didn't know that then. The captives were left to their hunger pangs and vain attempts to ward off the castle's chilly dampness. Exploitative Neapolitan vendors visited them next, peddling lagby—a whiskeylike liquor made from dates—at exorbitant prices, cheating them a second time when he made change.

Murad Reis made the trip to the dungeon to gloat over the Americans he hated so much. Was Bainbridge a coward, or was he a traitor? Tripoli's grand admiral wanted to know. When the crewmen replied that he was neither, Murad sneered, “Who with a frigate of 44 guns, and 300 men, would strike his colours to one solitary gunboat, must surely be one or the other.” He said his men would never have tried to board the
Philadelphia,
and the wind eventually would have carried her off the sandbar.

While the crewmen received only subsistence rations from their captors—each day, two 12-ounce loaves of black barley bread, coarse and full of straw and chaff, and three-quarters of a gill (about 4 ounces) of oil; and every two weeks, a little beef or pork—they learned to sell the bread on the streets, at least during the more liberal periods of their captivity when they were permitted to leave the castle in groups. With the money they received for the bread, they bought enough vegetables at the market to feed three men. Organizing small mess teams, they made vegetable soup and ate it with the bread and oil they didn't sell. They improved their sleeping arrangements by making hammocklike rope beds that they hung from hooks they had anchored in the prison walls.

Tripolitan foremen called “drivers” abused the weary, undernourished men with whips and sticks to make them work hard
every day. The fortunate few with skills valued by their captors built gunboats and bored cannon. But the rest carried pig iron, powder, and mortar for repairing the castle walls, toiled in the inhumane rock quarries, and were set to work at even more impossible tasks. Three days before Christmas 1803, the drivers marched 150 prisoners to the harbor to raise an old wreck buried to her scuppers in sand. From sunup until early afternoon they labored in frigid water up to their armpits. “The chilling waves almost congealed our blood, to flow no more,” William Ray wrote. “The Turks seemed more than ordinarily cruel, exulting in our sufferings. We were kept in the water from sunrise until about two o‘clock, before we had a mouthful to eat, or were permitted to sun ourselves.” That night, they were forced to sleep on the ground in their wet clothes. Many of the captives became ill. Ray privately despaired over the ceaseless misery. “With such usage life became insupportable, and every night when I laid my head on the earth to sleep, I most sincerely prayed that I might never experience the horrors of another morning.”