CHAPTER 3

The Humiliation of the USS George Washington

I hope I shall never again be sent to Algiers with tribute, unless I am authorized to deliver it from the mouth of our cannon.

—Captain William Bainbridge, USS George Washington

William Bainbridge shaded his eyes against the September sun glinting off the Mediterranean Sea. Standing on the deck of the USS George Washington, the six-foot-tall Bainbridge felt honored to command one of the first ships in America’s navy—even if he was carrying tribute to a foreign power.

The new century had opened with treaties in place that mandated peace. But Bainbridge remained very much on the lookout. The secretary of the navy himself had ordered his young captain to be alert for any signs of “hostilities against the Vessels of the U: States” that might be committed by “the Barbary powers.” Thus captain and crew stood ready, as instructed, to offer a fight in case O’Brien, Cathcart, and Eaton’s peace was broken.

His broad features framed by his thick sideburns, the twenty-six-year-old Bainbridge understood his voyage was a historic one. No other American military vessel had ever passed through the Strait of Gibraltar flying the Stars and Stripes. Now, in 1800, he had the honor of advancing the reach of the young United States. Dwarfed by massive, rocky outcroppings jutting up from the sea, the George Washington had made history only days before by sailing through the famous strait. A stretch of sea less than nine miles wide between Europe and North Africa, the strait had figured in maritime lore since ancient times—the boundary between the Mediterranean and the wild, mysterious open ocean of the Atlantic to the west.

On approaching the North African coast, Bainbridge saw a blazing, burning desert that appeared to extend for days and weeks, reaching far into the largely unmapped African continent. This region, the Maghreb, as the natives called it, was ruled by the Barbary nations. Despite the proximity to the pirates’ homeland, Bainbridge had seen no evidence of American shipping in trouble. So far his ship’s log recorded only the sighting of two English frigates peaceably at anchor in the British port of Gibraltar and of a Danish brig on which all hands were “employed in scraping Decks.”¹ The Barbary pirates seemed to be honoring the treaty that would be further secured once the George Washington delivered its cargo.

Captain Bainbridge was carrying a tribute payment to the Algerians, fulfilling the deal made by Barlow and O’Brien, but there was something different about this delivery. It was no accident that he commanded not a commercial vessel but an armed warship from the new U.S. Navy. As it sailed toward Algiers, the ship’s presence served as a potent symbol. The USS George Washington was meant to convey that the United States was no longer a powerless, ragtag bunch of backwater settlements clinging to survival on the edge of the western Atlantic; they were growing, prospering states, independent in their industries, united under a central government—and possessed of a navy ready to act for the sake of the nation’s interests and its self-defense.

If Bainbridge’s ship wasn’t intended as a direct threat, the USS George Washington was, at the very least, an implied promise that Americans would not bow to extortion forever.

• • •

Bainbridge was no run-of-the-mill ship’s captain. He constantly found himself in the middle of controversy. After the teenaged Bainbridge signed on as an ordinary seaman aboard a merchant vessel, he helped put down a mutiny, suffering life-threatening injuries in the fight. When he recovered, the brave young man received command of his own merchant ship, from which he fired upon a much larger British vessel, causing enough damage for the enemy to surrender. At twenty-four he had joined the newly established U.S. Navy in 1798, rising rapidly from lieutenant to master commandant, despite a misadventure in which he was forced to surrender the schooner he commanded, having mistaken a powerful forty-gun French ship for a British frigate.

Now, Bainbridge’s primary mission was to deliver tribute to Algiers—an uncomfortable task for a proud young sailor. He and his crew had watched carefully for pirate activity, but all was calm on the afternoon of September 17 as Algiers came into view. Bainbridge relaxed his guard, as the dey of Algiers was reportedly still friendly to the United States.

When the George Washington approached the harbor, the captain of the port of Algiers came aboard and, as was the custom, Bainbridge entrusted him with the piloting of the ship through shoals and into the harbor. By evening, the USS George Washington was moored in the inner harbor, and the log noted that the crew had “got every thing Snug.”²

Captain Bainbridge held his head high. He felt confident that he was operating from a position of strength, that he had executed his mission faithfully and unapologetically. He was prepared to salute Bobba Mustapha, dey of Algiers, and his city, and he expected that mutual respect would prevail in the soon-to-be-completed transaction.

He could hardly have been more wrong.

• • •

Boarding the ship along with the Algerian port pilot, Richard O’Brien had been the first American to greet Bainbridge and his men. As the U.S. consul general to Algiers, O’Brien had eagerly awaited the arrival of the George Washington for nearly four months. In a May 16 letter to the State Department, he had urgently requested that the government rush the overdue tribute to Algiers. Without the promised goods, he warned, “we cannot expect to preserve our affairs long.”³ If he was honest, he wasn’t even sure that he would be able to keep the peace even if the tribute did arrive.

O’Brien’s long experience in captivity gave him a deep understanding of how the Barbary bandits operated. Since at least the sixteenth century, the pirates had been turning over their booty to the nations’ leaders to line their coffers. A portion of the profits were sent to Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) as tribute to the Ottoman rulers, the recognized overlords of the Mohammedan world; a smaller portion went to the parties who made the capture; and the remainder became the property of the local ruler.

Captives were treated as if they, too, were goods. Men such as O’Brien and his crew were enslaved to local rulers or sold on the auction block to caravan owners, caliphs, and slave traders. Some of the more fortunate captives would be ransomed, usually for huge sums of money; a few would escape. But the only other option was to become a “renegade”—that is, to convert to Islam, because the Qur’an forbade the enslavement of Muslims by other Muslims. However, if a renegade was caught returning to his or her original faith upon emancipation, the penalty was death. Conversion was an option chosen by few—leaving most in captivity indefinitely.

European sailors were not the only slaves in the North African markets. There were women kidnapped from Russia and Syria to be bought and sold for harems or given as gifts to political leaders. There were other Africans, dark-skinned men and women from beyond the Sahara, transported across the desert by slave-trading caravans. Children as young as six, from Africa and Eastern Europe alike, were traded to work as serving boys or sexual slaves in bathhouses. Young men were forcibly converted to Islam and trained to guard the sultan.

Punishments for slaves were gruesome. Some captives reported witnessing castration, impaling, and the throwing of the offender off the city walls onto a series of hooks. Any Christian who insulted Islam could be subjected to severe punishment, including being burned alive. If a Christian man was found to be engaging in a relationship with a Muslim woman, he could be beheaded and his lover drowned. Should a Jew raise a hand against a Muslim, the hand could be cut off. The most common punishment, however, whatever the faith or national origin of the offender, was a beating.

Some of the luckier ones were elevated to the status of servants. A few served in the ruler’s court; others served in the royal kitchens or worked in the dey’s gardens, minding the plants and his menagerie of wild animals. No matter the assignment, however, the work remained hard and humiliating—especially for men and women from a country established upon the ideal of personal liberty.

While most of the other former American captives vowed never to return to the Barbary Coast, O’Brien had been treated relatively well during captivity, and he had been eager for the opportunity to work for peace between the governments. Yet on arriving at the docks in Algiers with Captain Bainbridge, O’Brien experienced a renewed feeling of powerlessness. The hold of the George Washington contained only a few of the articles that the dey expected, and delivery of the promised gold and silver had been delayed. After O’Brien explained the facts, Bainbridge too understood that he had arrived in a tinderbox—and it wasn’t only a matter of hot, dry air and burning sun.

The next day, the crew of the USS George Washington began unloading the dey’s tribute, which included oak planks and pine, along with boxes of tin and casks of nails. The weather was pleasant and the winds gentle, and the men prepared to take aboard fresh stores of grapes, green figs, oranges, and almonds as well. Unaware of the diplomatic tension, the sailors aboard the George Washington expected that, having completed delivery as ordered, their ship would depart promptly for the return journey to their home port of Philadelphia.

But the “despotic dey,” as Bainbridge soon referred to him, had other plans for them.

In keeping with custom, the American captain, accompanied by O’Brien, sought an audience with the Algerian ruler to pay his respects. As the crew discharged the cargo back in the harbor, Captain Bainbridge, Consul O’Brien, and the Algerian minister of the harbor met the dey at his palace to give account of the tribute the Americans had brought. Dressed in flowing robes, his face half obscured by his generous beard, the aging dey grew angry upon learning that the ship had failed to bring all of the promised annuities.

“You pay me tribute,” Bobba Mustapha declared. “By that, you become my slaves. I have, therefore, a right to order you as I may think proper.”⁴

The outraged ruler then issued an order: he decreed that the USS George Washington must carry his ambassador and his entourage to the other end of the Mediterranean Sea to Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman empire, where the dey’s own annual tribute was due.

Bainbridge balked. He told his host that the assignment was impossible, as he had no orders to perform such a mission. O’Brien pointed out that the existing treaty permitted merchant vessels, but not military ships, to perform such duties for the Algerian regency. But even as they resisted, both of the Americans understood that they would have to obey. As O’Brien admitted a day later in a letter intended for the eyes of the secretary of state, “I am afraid [we] shall be obliged to give way to prevent extraordinary difficulties.”⁵

What he did not explain was why the George Washington could not simply ignore the dey, weigh anchor, and set sail for home: On arrival in what he’d believed was a safe harbor, the gullible Bainbridge had permitted the Algerian pilot to direct the ship to a berth directly beneath the guns of the fortress, a huge tactical error. Overly trusting, Bainbridge did not consider how his ship would make its exit should the talks with the dey go poorly, and now it was too late. Dwarfed by the fortification, the vessel faced two hundred cannons and a fleet of armed Algerian ships. Moored within range of the Algerian batteries, the USS George Washington was hopelessly outgunned and outmanned. If Bainbridge and his men attempted to escape, their ship could easily be blasted to kindling if the dey so ordered.

Bainbridge was out of options. The only way to send a message back to the Department of the Navy was by another ship, and ships from the Mediterranean, sailing against the prevailing westerly winds, often took two months to reach the United States and another month or more to return. In the event of severe weather, the turnaround time could be even longer, and the dey wasn’t going to wait several months. Entrusted with both his ship and the honor of his country, Bainbridge had to make a decision on his own.

In the coming days, Bainbridge continued to argue that he could not comply with the humiliating request. But the dey’s anger deepened. He demanded payment of what O’Brien calculated was “upwards of 110 thousand dollars in debt.”⁶ The regency’s ruler escalated his threats, warning that, if Bainbridge failed to perform the mission, friendly relations between their nations would come to an end and Algerian corsairs would again harass shipping as they had done in the past. It was a threat that O’Brien, the former captain of the captured Dauphin, understood very well.

Bainbridge could do little but watch as other ships departed while he remained at the dey’s mercy. He supervised sail repairs, and his ship’s log recorded the weather and the activity of his crew. Finally, after several weeks of demands and demurrals as the Americans and Algerians went back and forth, O’Brien received a final summons. He was told that Bainbridge must submit to the order or surrender the ship and subject his crew to captivity. A refusal, O’Brien understood, would also have a wider consequence: it would mean war with Algiers. With no alternative, the two Americans bowed to the dey’s demand.

What had begun as a proud voyage was about to become a national disgrace. As Bainbridge observed sternly to O’Brien, “Sir, I cannot help observing that the event of this day makes me ponder on the words Independent United States.”⁷

The humiliation of the USS George Washington began. Only after agreeing to transport the ambassador did Bainbridge learn the extent of the diplomatic retinue. This would be no modest delegation, but the ship, configured for a maximum crew of 220 men, would be required to accommodate the ambassador, 100 attendants, plus 100 captive Africans.

The George Washington had become a slave ship.

The dey further required that the overloaded ship carry gifts bound for his ruler at Constantinople, including 4 horses, 25 cattle, and 150 sheep, in addition to 4 lions, 4 tigers, 4 antelopes, and 12 parrots.⁸

The warship had become a floating zoo.

Then, just before departure, adding another insult to the cramped quarters, the deafening squawking, and the stench of manure, the dey’s coup de grâce fell. He ordered the American flag taken down and the Algerine flag hoisted. Seven guns were fired in salute of the new flag. Among the American crew, the ship’s log recorded, “some tears fell at this Instance of national Humility.”⁹

The USS George Washington had become a Barbary ferry service.

The journey to Constantinople took twenty-three days. Once in open water and out of range of the harbor guns, Bainbridge raised his own flag, unopposed by the Algerians on board. Yet he wasn’t truly in control of his own ship, as the uninvited passengers demanded that the ship’s course be adapted to their prayer schedule. The helmsman was forced to navigate so that the George Washington, though pushing its way through stormy seas, pointed eastward toward Mecca five times a day for the faithful to perform their required prayers. One of the Muslims was assigned to watch the compass heading to ensure the correctness of the ship’s position.

While the American crew found a certain dark humor in this peculiar manner of worship, the situation was no laughing matter. The trip was uncomfortable and degrading—and it would have serious diplomatic repercussions. When the George Washington deposited its haul in Constantinople and turned homeward, Captain Bainbridge remarked, his resolve firm, “I hope I shall never again be sent to Algiers with tribute, unless I am authorized to deliver it from the mouth of our cannon.”

When the ship finally returned to the United States, the American public was outraged by the report. As news of the events in Algiers spread, some regarded Bainbridge’s submission as inexcusable. Many believed that the United States had stared evil in the face and blinked first. Others complained that it had been blinking for years and that to continue to pay tribute was to invite more abuse. Those against the navy also felt justified; the attempt to demonstrate that the United States possessed military might in international waters had backfired. The USS George Washingtonhad been unable to prevent its own hijacking.

On learning of the events at Algiers, William Eaton, stationed at Tunis, gave vent to his strong feelings in writing to his fellow diplomat Richard O’Brien.

History shall tell that the United States first volunteer’d a ship of war, equipt, a carrier for a pirate—It is written—Nothing but blood can blot the impression out—Frankly I own, I would have lost the piece, and been myself impaled rather than yielded this concession.¹⁰

Horrified by America’s inaction in the face of the humiliation, Eaton added a final question: “Will nothing rouse my country?”