CHAPTER 11

The Philadelphia Disaster

After giving up the chase in pursuit of the cruiser, striking on the rocks was as unexpected to me as if it had happened in the middle of the Mediterranean sea.

—Captain William Bainbridge, November 12, 1803¹

Cruising off Tripoli according to Preble’s orders, Captain William Bainbridge met up with no pirate ships for nearly the entire month of October. The few suspicious ships sighted remained out of reach, staying within the protection of the gun batteries that lined the city walls overlooking the harbor.

At nine o’clock on the morning of October 31, some fifteen miles east of Tripoli, a suspicious sail was sighted near the coast, headed for Tripoli. The Philadelphia gave chase. As if to taunt the much larger warship, the unidentified vessel hoisted the Tripolitan colors; it was a Barbary ship trying to slip the blockade, and now the race was on.

The Philadelphia was soon at full sail. Though well offshore, Bainbridge aimed to cut off the smaller vessel before she reached port. Increasing speed, the Philadelphia gained on the corsair and, as eleven o’clock neared, Bainbridge judged the little ship might be within range. He ordered the firing of the cannon mounted at the front of the ship. Wary of the unfamiliar waters off Tripoli—other American captains had reported uncharted obstacles and unpredictable winds near shore—three sailors took repeated depth soundings. They reported a depth of forty feet and more, roughly twice the draft of the Philadelphia. The ship was in no danger.

The American gunners kept a constant fire as they chased the ship. By eleven-thirty, the city grew closer and the fortress walls could be plainly seen. Rather than put his ship at risk of coming within range of the shore guns, Bainbridge reluctantly ordered the helmsman to change course. To his frustration, he had to accept that he could not overtake the Tripolitan pirates, and the Philadelphia began a long, slow turn into the wind, away from the city. The chase was over, and the pirates would go unpunished.

Moments later, the USS Philadelphia lurched with the impact. The ship’s great frame shuddered as her bow rose a full six feet out of the water. One moment she was coursing through the sea at the land equivalent of roughly ten miles an hour; the next, she was fixed, immobile, a man-made wooden island halted less than two miles from shore.

The Philadelphia had run aground.

The captain stood stunned on the bridge. The charts indicated no reefs, and the last sounding had measured a more than sufficient thirty-five feet. But there was no time to wonder. The men aboard the Philadelphia needed to act to save their ship stranded so close to the enemy stronghold.

Bainbridge remained calm and deliberate. He soon learned that the ship’s bow rested on rocks just twelve feet below the surface. Consulting his officers, Bainbridge determined to try to back the ship into the deeper water off her stern in order to float her free. He ordered the sails laid aback in hopes the press of sail could drive her clear. Three bow anchors were cast into the sea, their lines cut, to lighten the ship. The guns were shifted back. But as the bow began almost perceptibly to rise, a strong wind and rising waves drove the ship further aground.

Even at two miles out, the distress of the great ship was glaringly apparent. Her bow elevated, the vessel now leaned sharply to one side. To the Tripolitans, the Philadelphia looked like an easy target for their guns—and for capture. Nine Barbary gunboats were soon spotted making sail from the inner harbor, bound for the stranded ship.

Aboard the Philadelphia, the next hours were a blur. The officers concluded that most of the guns should be sunk to lighten the ship; soon, the seamen aboard sent most of the great iron cannons tumbling into the sea. Barrels of water were cast overboard, and any and all heavy articles dumped. As a last resort, the foremast was cut away. But the ship refused to float free.

A few gunners manned the remaining guns, firing as best they could at the attacking gunboats that circled the stern of the American frigate. But the angle of the ship meant that the guns on one side pointed toward the water while those on the other pointed to the sky. The well-drilled U.S. Navy gunners could do little, and the enemy quickly recognized their advantage. Establishing positions where the Americans were unable to return fire, the enemy gunners aimed high at the masts of the Philadelphia, shattering spars and rigging as they attempted to disable the ship and prevent any chance of escape.

By mid-afternoon, Bainbridge and his officers recognized their situation was hopeless. As Bainbridge later put it to Tobias Lear, “a just comparison of our situation, is one man tied to a stake attacked by another with arms.”² For the third time in his life, the hapless young captain would surrender his ship.

Bainbridge ordered the gunpowder dampened and the ship’s pumps clogged with shot. He sent carpenters below with their augers to drill holes in the bottom to make the ship unsailable once she was in Tripolitan hands. Recognizing the extreme damage done to the British fleet when the Americans got hold of their naval codebook ahead of the Battle of Yorktown some twenty-two years before, Bainbridge tore his copies of the American signaling codes into shreds and ordered the sheets set afire and thrown overboard. Pistols, muskets, cutlasses, pikes, and other weapons were tossed into the sea. If he had to hand over his ship to the bashaw, Bainbridge was going to make sure it was as worthless a prize as possible.

At four o’clock, the USS Philadelphia struck her colors.

The unlucky William Bainbridge almost wished he were dead. This was worse even than his humiliation as captain of the USS George Washington. The day after surrendering the Philadelphia, he wrote to his wife, “It would have been a merciful dispensation of Providence if my head had been shot off by the enemy, while our vessel lay rolling on the rock.”³

With the flag lowered to the deck of the Philadelphia, the enemy gunboats ceased their fire. Strangely, however, the Tripolitan gunboats didn’t surge toward the American ship. The corsairs seemed either to disbelieve their dumb luck or else to fear an ambush if they attempted to board. Finally, in exasperation, Bainbridge dispatched an officer and one of his ship’s boats to assure the enemy of his intention to hand over the ship peacefully. Only then, at six o’clock on October 31, did the Tripolitans board the frigate, clambering over the gunwales.

The Americans looked very odd to the pirates. Spooked by stories of exposed skin that blistered in the noonday sun and freezing desert nights, many sailors had put on three or four pairs of trousers and crammed their several shirts with provisions. The well-clad men made inviting targets, and the pirates tore at the layers of clothing, ripped open the sailors’ pockets, and stole watches, money, rings, and any object of value. The officers’ swords were snatched and their coats removed; these items were quickly donned by the pirates, who paraded around the ship in their new costumes. Bainbridge had to fight off one pirate who wanted a locket strung from his neck that held a miniature portrait of his wife.⁴ The Philadelphia’s surgeon lost his surgical instruments. No one was safe from harm when the pillaging boarders began to fight among themselves over the Americans’ belongings.

Ordered into the gunboats, the captives were forced to row toward land, their captors “standing with drawn sabres over our heads.”⁵ Some men were thrown from the overcrowded boats into the sea, left to swim for shore—or drown.

When they landed at the base of the bashaw’s palace, the captives were marched through the streets to jeers from the elated Tripolitans. They were prodded past the bashaw’s elite guards, armed with glittering sabers, muskets, pistols, and tomahawks. Some of the guards spat on the prisoners as they passed.

Once they were in the bashaw’s castle, a series of darkened halls and stairs opened onto a richly decorated room with a variegated marble floor, elegant carpets, and walls decorated with elaborate enamel work. The men were arranged in a semicircle around a raised velvet-covered throne, fringed with cloth of gold and jewels. Seated on it was the bashaw himself. He wore a gold-embroidered silk robe and a large white turban decorated with ribbons. From his broad, diamond-studded belt hung two gold pistols and a saber.

His bearing impressed the Americans. A man of about thirty-five years, he was tall, his beard long and dark. He said nothing to his audience of enlisted seamen, but dismissed the prisoners after “he had satiated his pride and curiosity by gazing on us with complacent triumph.”⁶ He then had the officers paraded before him.

The officers were fed at the bashaw’s castle, then taken to what had been the American consulate prior to Consul Cathcart’s departure. There they slept on the floor on mats and blankets. At Bainbridge’s request, the man Cathcart had left in charge of American affairs, the Danish consul, Nicholas C. Nissen, was summoned. He promised to do what he could to provide basic comforts and, the following day, he returned with mattresses, blankets, and baskets of fruit. In the months to come, he would be the conduit for money and goods sent to the prisoners.

The officers had the run of the abandoned house and received adequate food, but the members of the crew faced real hardships. Many had arrived dripping wet and gratefully accepted the dry clothing other slaves brought in exchange for their waterlogged uniforms, not suspecting they were never to see their uniforms again. That first night the crewmen were fed nothing and slept in an outdoor courtyard.

The following morning, the men of the Philadelphia were questioned by High Admiral Murat Rais, the renegade Scotsman who had commanded the Meshuda. Peter Lisle ridiculed Bainbridge. “Who with a frigate of forty-four guns, and three hundred men, would strike his colours to solitary gun-boats, must surely be . . . a coward, or traitor.”⁷ Finally, the crew was fed coarse bread and confined to a dark and dreary prison, a single large room with too little floor space for all the men to stretch out. Many were obliged to sit or even stand all night, with nothing but tattered sailcloth for covers.

Many were put to work on the city walls. Teams of forty to fifty men transported great stones, ranging from two to four tons, some sixteen feet in length, loaded on crude carts with wheels ten feet in diameter. Like yoked oxen, the men were forced to pull the awkward vehicles, guarded by soldiers with muskets and whips. “We worked bare-headed and bare-footed,” reported ship’s carpenter Elijah Shaw. “Our necks were burnt to a perfect blister.” They were frequently whipped and “the famished condition of our bodies” spoke for the quality of the food.⁸

The officers, on the other hand, were spared such labor. From the terrace at the top of the house where they were quartered, they enjoyed a broad vista of the town, the bashaw’s palace, the harbor, and the Mediterranean beyond. On arrival they also took in the melancholy sight of thePhiladelphia, angled and astride the reef where she’d run aground. On their first day of incarceration, harbor boats shuttled back and forth, returning with plunder from the American ship. Trunks of clothes and other salvaged goods were offered to the captives but at such exorbitant prices that few of the officers could afford to buy back their own belongings.

Afforded pen and paper at the consulate, Captain Bainbridge wrote of the events, not only to his wife but also in a formal letter for dispatch to the secretary of the navy. “Misfortune necessitates me to make a communication, the most distressing of my life,” he lamented. “It is with the deepest regret that I inform you of the loss of the United States Frigate Philadelphia.”⁹

Bainbridge regarded the ship as beyond salvage, subject now to rot and ruin in the waves of the sea. Yet had he been atop the consulate a few hours later, he might have seen one of his fellow prisoners, the carpenter’s mate, together with a crew of fifty men, being taken aboard thePhiladelphia, supervised by their armed jailers. The pirates sensed that a storm was brewing and hoped that, with the wind rising, the morning would bring a storm surge that would lift the Philadelphia off the reef. If that happened, the carpenter was to supervise rapid repairs, and the men were to sail her in.

The pirates had read the weather correctly. A violent gale powered by westerly winds raised the Philadelphia. The once-stranded ship, lifted off the reef by the rising tide, floated free. Despite the holes drilled in her hull by her carpenters at Bainbridge’s orders—or perhaps because of the repairs her men were forced to make by their captors—the sturdy USS Philadelphia remained seaworthy.

Bainbridge had bungled again. Had he held on a few hours longer, he might have been able to sail his ship off the reef. Instead, he had once again been part of an unnecessary surrender. Now in the full possession of the Tripolitans, the Philadelphia had become a prize of which the bashaw could be well and truly proud. The second prong of Preble’s strategy—the attack on Tripoli—had gone terribly wrong.