On 16 February 1804, American naval lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a covert mission to burn the USS Philadelphia, an American ship that had fallen into Tripolitan hands during the First Barbary War. At the time, the Barbary states— Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli— made money through state-sponsored piracy in the Mediterranean, raiding merchant ships unless their governments paid huge sums to their leaders. In 1801, Tripoli had declared war on the United States, and President Thomas Jefferson sent the Navy as a show of force against Tripoli, located in present-day Libya. Unfortunately, one of the two big American frigates, the USS Philadelphia, ran aground on a reef off the shore of Tripoli in October of 1803. The captain of the Philadelphia tried to dislodge the ship, but was unable to do so before Tripolitan sailors arrived and captured the ship’s officers and crew, taking them prisoner. Despite the Americans’ attempts to scuttle their ship, the Tripolitans were able to refloat it during a storm and move the Philadelphia to their harbor. When the commodore of the American forces heard about the Philadelphia, a plan was formed where a group of Americans would sneak into the harbor and burn the Philadelphia so it couldn’t be used against them. Chosen to lead the mission was Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, a well-liked and respected officer. Together with a crew of 84 men, Decatur sailed into the harbor aboard a previously-captured Tripolitan boat, pretending to be a Maltese vessel that had lost its anchor. The Tripolitans aboard the Philadelphia agreed to let the “Maltese” boat tie up next to them for the night, but when the boat drew close enough, Decatur and his men stormed the Philadelphia and quickly dispatched the Tripolitan crew, then set the ship ablaze and returned to their own boat and fled, barely escaping being caught in the flames themselves. Decatur’s exploits made him an instant hero, and he was promoted to captain at the young age of 25. He would later go on to become one of America’s great naval heroes during the War of 1812 and the Second Barbary War. After the storming of the Philadelphia, Decatur and his small ship, the Intrepid, sailed to Syracuse, but the Intrepid was brought back to Tripoli harbor in August and put under the command of. He and his thirteen-man crew were to convert the Intrepid into a fireship and sail it into the midst of gathered Tripolitan warships to set them ablaze. The Intrepid was lost in the venture, however, and the bodies of all its crew eventually washed up on the beaches of Tripoli. All fourteen are named, and they are still buried in known and speculated upon burial places in Tripoli. In the twenty-first century, the people of Somers Point, New Jersey are still trying to effect the return of the body of Richard Somers to a burial and memorial place that awaits him there.
Rico says his act ended up in the Marine Corps' Hymn:
No comments:
Post a Comment