Legacy of Naval Power

Want to explore even more history Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world from the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland There is plenty to discover With your subscription, you'll unlock hundredundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exxploring everything from the ancient world to World War II Just visit historyhit d. com slash subscribe bring the past alive It is february eighteen oh four In the dark waters of Tripoli Harbor on the shores of North Africa Flames climb high into the night sky as the American warship Philadelphia burns fire consuming its wooden hull, sending sparks swirling high above the harbor Along the waterfront, a crowd gathers to watch the spectacle. while out of sight, beyond the glow of the fire A small vessel filled with Americans slips quietly and covertly out to sea twentywenty years after gaining independence from Great Britain The United States has found itself enmeshed in a distant conflict on Mediterranean shores in a dangerous web of privateers, tribute, diplomacy, and war But why Why was America fighting on the far side of the Atlantic against pirates and warlords What could this possibly mean for a fragile repepublic only now climbing to its feet as a nation And how would this obscure struggle? transform the United States into an emerging force on the world stage Greetings all. Welcome to American History Hit. I'm your host Don Weilddan Thanks for listening Today, we speak of piracy on the high seas and the barbary wars of the early eighteen hundreds with an expert on the subject Abigail Mullen is an assistant professor of Naval history at the United States Naval Academy in Anneapolis. The midshipman She is the author of two fics and National character, United States in the First Barbarie War, eighteen hundred to eighteen oh five Professor Mullan, Abby. veryery nice to have you here. Thank you. It's really great to be here. We're going to talk today about military and diplomatic events that few Americans know anything about, but which are fundamental to the development of this country, especially the Navy In your view, why are the Barbaric W so little understood by Americans? That's a great question. And before I answer it, I need to say a little disclaimer, which is that everything you're going to hear from me today is my own opinion And it is not the opinion of the United States Naval Academy or the Department of Defense or the United States Government. So In so far as they have an official position on the firstirst Barbarie War, I will not be delivering it today. I am just speaking to you from my own academic perspective. Fantastic So yeah, why are the why is the first barbery war or evenven more so, the second one so little understood, I think in part because reasonably speaking doesn't seem that important. It is not a big war. It doesn't make the headlines. There's not big moments. There are a few, I'm sure we'll talk about a few that are the big moments in the war, but it's not like the United States goes and crushes their opponent or anything like that and no major legislation comes out of it or anything like that. So It sort of feels like it is going to happen Yeah. But the fact is, obviously, you've written a whole book on the subject is very much not that way. It's the fact of the fragmented events of this that happen over time and there's two different ones. The origin story is a little cloudy. We're going to straighten all this out today. So before we dive into this into the Mediterranean and all of what is so complicated about that part of the world at this time What is happening back here at home in eighteen hundreds, just to give us context So the question of what's going on in eighteen hundred, I think from the perspective of thinking about this conflict in North Africa, you kind of actually have to back up a little bit because the situation changes pretty drastically after the Constitution gets ratified So the crisis with North Africa starts right after the Revolution, as soon as the United States no longer has the protection of the Royal Navy for its commerce But of course, that happens under the Articles of Confederation And so it's a whole different, literally a whole different country. It's a whole different governmental system And so one of the key things that changes between the first encounter with North African corsairs and the beginning of the war The Constitution gets ratified. As you mentioned Of course, George Washington becomes the president. and so all of the sort of spin up things that we think about, the founding of the country, all that stuff, that's all happening. But part of what it takes to build a country is building a bureaucracy, building an apparatus whereby state power can actually be used. And there's two particular places where the United States is building Kind of from scratch. in a lot of ways And Those are the military and the Diplomatic Cps And both of those are going to be critical in understanding what's going on in North Africa. And in both cases The United States is kind of figuring this out as they go along And so of all the things that you just mentioned, the Constitution and the end of the Revolution, the thing that has happened the most recently, as of eighteen hundred, is the founding of the Navy itself. So the Navy doesn't get founded until seventeen ninety four. And it is in direct response to the North African crisis that it gets founded. But the same thing true can be said for the State Department that the real diplomatic apparatus of the United States is just really Very, very, very brand new There's no ambassadors. there's not going to be ambassadors for a long time. There's no sort of head of state to head of state negotiation going on there's no permanent what we sort of think of as like permanent diplomatic presence in most places And so Whatever conflicts the United States has in the world Figuring them out on the fly H it. is complicated and it doesn't always go great. I love The Barbie Wars is really the beginning of the challenge of dealing in the world. on multiple levels This is certainly the first military conflict we go into overseas as we'll discuss, but also becomes, you know, we think of France and Ben Franklin and all that as the diplomacy and that was begins it all, and certainly that did. But this is the first time America is really thinking, oh my goodness, we're in this whole world and we're going to have threats all over the world and we have to have policies and all the rest of it that go into it. Barbarary Warars stakes that ground, doesn't it? Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't. So the thing that is the most important to understand about the first Bribery War in the Navy, in particular is that when the Navy was founded in seventeen ninety four It was founded as an ad hoc temporary organization. So the act that creates the Navy, the Naval Armament Act, I teach my students about this all the time and I make a big deal about this The act that founds the Navy specifically has a clause in it that says if peace is signed with Algiers, then this whole Navy thing goes away. because there's deep suspicion of a navy that exists all the time during peacetime. Same thing with the Army. and this is in part a legacy of what how the former British colonists had perceived what Navies do, which is maintain an empire And at this exact moment, not many people are thinking about the United States as an empire, present or future So they don't want a standingavy many people don't want a standing Navy. Certainly plenty do. There's a big congressional debate about this. And so the Navy that arises in seventeen ninety four is actually a compromiseed Navy It's very small. It's a total of six ships, which is not very many ships And it is specifically meant to be a temporary measure. And so when I teach about this in class, I always ask my students, so Did the United States sign peace with Algiers? because I always say, this is the founding document of the Navy that you are in right now So the logical conclusion is the United States didn't sign peace with Algiers They did. Wow. did sign peace with Algiers in seventeen ninety five. so literally one year after the Navy is founded by the Naval Armament Act So what happened is that the United States finds out that diplomacy is more complicated than I thought. because the thing that's going on in the world that's so important that the United States gets caught up in is the Napoleonic Wars And they don't want to take a side. And George Washington sort of famously doesn't take a side in this. There's a neutrality Act in seventeen ninety two. And then of course, if you've watched Hamilton, you know all about the neutrality, the discussion about neutrality and U And it turns out that the United States can't actually stay out of that conflict because both sides don't want the United States to remain neutral And so both sides see the way that the United States acts towards the other side as being hostile or aggressive And so very They get in trouble with everybody. And so the argument is made by some more Navy focused, let's say, Navy focused congressmen that it would be foolish to get rid of this navy that just started getting built when it's obvious that there are still maritime threats on the horizon And so even though Algiers, the barbary states are the impphetus for the creation of the Navy, the fact that it sticks around after peace is signed with Algiers is because of the Napoleonic wars. And then it turns out to be a good thing because France esssentially goes to war with the United States in seventeen ninety eight. And the Navy's first deployment then is not to the Barbarary States, but to the Caribbean whereas fighting against France So it's sort of a dry run for the Barbary war in some ways. Yeah, it's a very complicated time. We think of so many Americans think of the revolution as we parted ways with all that trouble in Europe, but in fact, we were very very quickly. always follow us. And in some ways, the Barbary states are part of that story, and not directly, but yes. Also now we're at eighteen hundred, Thomas Jefferson is about to be the new president He elected in eighteen hundred famamously a man who cares a lot about international loves, Paris. intellectually, but who politically was very much turned inward. He was one who wanted to stay out of these kinds of things and these ent entanglements as president, ideally, anyway First the basics of the story that we're talking about, who were the Barb states and how did they pose any kind of threat to the US? Yeah. so this is the number one question that anyone always asks about this, which is totally reasonable And so this is where I get to say, They're not pirates. Oh, there you go. I buil it ros. It's you're not alone. They're not pirates, and here's why becausecause the way the barbary system works is first of all, there's four barbary states going if you start from the Atlantic and go into the Mediterranean, you've got Morocco and then Algiers and then Tunis and then Tripoli. Those are the four Barbarary states And they are obviously they're in North Africa and three of the four of them are nominally dependencies of the Ottoman Empire. So they pay tribute to the Ottoman state basically the extent of Ottoman control of these three The one that's independent is Morocco. So the one that is controls the bottom half of the straight of Gibrtar and These four states are not powerful they're in a situation where their geography allows them to exert some sort of secondary power in a way that's never going to make them into a big power like Britain but it's going to make them able to survive in a place that isn't that good at growing things, for instance. It's not that easy to grow things in North. It does happen. I'm not saying there's no agriculture, there's plenty of agriculture. but like The desert. is difficult to work with. Yeah. And so they need some kind of way to support themselves And the state does, the rulers do. And so way back hundreds of years before this, there were actual what we might think more of as piradical people coming out of Morocco in particular from Cel. So the first ones that people usually talk about that go really far are the Salet Rvers. By the eighteenth century that sort of one off people just going and attacking people for the fun of it, that doesn't really exist anymore. Instead, what's going on is These states either fund ships or they essentially have a little navy that goes out and does what I like to call an extortion rreacket which is that because of the way that the intersection of European style law and Islamic style law works These barbberary states consider themselves to be at war with all European nations unless they're specifically at peace. whichich means if you don't have a treaty, you're at war. It's kind of the opposite of the way that European style law thinks of the steady state of the world which is that you're at peace unless you're at war But in this case, for a non Islamic country you're at war unless you at peace, whichich means any traffic in the Mediterranean is absolutely fair game by the standard, even European rules of war, which is that you can raid commerce. So these are just commerce raiders And the way that they make money is not actually by signing or not by capturing ships, even though they do is by signing those peace treaties because the peace treaties don't come without price The peace treaties are be at peace, and in order to maintain the peace, you, random European nation, including big onlandes, like Great Britain are going to pay triby money And it's actually usually not mostly money. It's usually mostly naval stores which allows these European countries essentially to subsidize attacks on other European countries. They're paying for the Navy that takes out other people This is a good deal actually for even big states like Great Britain because Britain has got bigger fish to fry. They got to worry about France, they got to worry about Spain then the Dutch and there's all, you know, got they got other people to worry about If they pay the tribute, if they pay the subsistence of these forces, then that means the barbary states can be a real thorn in the side of nations that Britain doesn't really have time to deal with, but Algiers is going to take care of them essentially. That's the logic. It works, actually, it totally works for Great Britain and for France Anybody who can pay their tribute basically just does' it And because not worth it for them to go and try to fight these barbary states. They try every once in a while, I think Britain tries like three or four times to get rid of Algiers Algiers is the most powerful of them. It has the most money as the most ships and Great Britain tries a few times to get rid of them and then decides it's not worth it because Algerers is really heavy fortified and they always like grow back like mushroom. So they just give up and you're like, whatever, we're just gonna pay the tribute and let them mess around with the Italians or whatever it's fine. So when we talk about pirates These guys aren't pirates, they're actually state actors. Interesting And they're acting within a legitimate and ratified legal framework. Everybody agrees to what they're doing So they're not pirates. Now, of course, Pis is in the eye of the beholder. if your ship gets taken and you don't like it Th then you're going to call somebody a pirate. Like that's just kind of howes. So that's kind around. There's no jolly Rog. There's no yeah, there's no Jolly Roger. There's no like chopping people's heads off or whatever. But the thing that happens to the captives are what happens when you get captured. So if a ship, if you are in a ship that doesn't have a treaty then when you get captured Customarily for Europeans, you would take that ship to a prize court. And the prize court would rule on whether it was a good prize, so whether you had done everything lawfully. and then you would sell the ship And you might make the prisoners prisoners of war, but just as likely you're probably going give them their parole or you're going to just release them because it's too much work But what the barbary states do is they actually hold those people captive And this is often called barbary slavery. and there are certainly times in the history of the Barbary states where it is more Um more like slavery, but it's not really, really slavery. and certainly not slavery like when we say slavery in an American context. It's not chattel slavery. it's not race based It's really more like holding somebody for ransom and that's what they're hoping. They actually People die, certainly. it's a very they're held in bad conditions But there are ways to get yourself out of the bad conditions and more importantly, what they want is for your rich family to come and pay money to get you. still happens today. And that happens. Yeah. That actually happens a lot.. So but the fear of captivity is what makes the Barbary states so dreaded is first of all, it's about them not being European. So that's one thing. It's just some good old racism in there. But But it's also about this fear of being held captive and of Unfamiliar and terrifying place. Exactly. If anyone has the obsessive mind I'm cursed with, I looked up why it's called Barbberers' dates because of the Berbers, the barbers they were called and that's like the Bber rugs that you hear about. That area was generally called for those indigenous people that were there And so it sort of morphs into the barbary states we talk about today. America had those treaties for a long time from seventeen eighty seven to ' ninety four. There were several of those situations where they paid tribute to these merchants. What happens in september eighteen hundred starts to change things. The USS George Washington arrives in Mediterranean to deliver tribute to Algia And they are pressured into allowing the ship to be used as a transport. for the Algerians own tribute to thettomans. every this is where the how the world used to work. peopleeople this was they paid tribute to everybody. So the Algerians have to pay tribute to the Ottomans. I guess that's in Constantinople And they want to use the USS George Washington for this reason The capaptain relented and the Algerian flag is hoisted over the USS George Washington. Can you imagine that happening today? This incident really humiliated the US, didn't it? But why was that different than any other time? This is actually something where my particular interpretation of this event is different from how it was perceived by the actors at the time for sure, but also most historians have sort of accepted the the wisdom of the people who are in the moment And I think they're wrong. So I'm going to tell you my Abby Mullin hot take about the USS George Washington. So yes, it is certainly humiliating from a certain point of view because the very first naval interaction, this is a Navy ship, this is a naval frigate The very first interaction the United States Navy has with the Barberry states with Algiers is and being its sl cargo ship which is, yeah, of course that's humiliating. but The thing that the Americans are not wor on at that moment is that this is actually a customary practice that other nations navy ships have done this sort of thing before. It is customary if you're carrying tribute of another nation to fly their flag, it is not actually that big a deal Nobody's going to be like, oh no, the Americans, they're so weak because they carry this tribute to a Constantinople Nobody's actually thinking about the Americans at all, to be honest. so they can't be humiliated because no one even knows they exist. So They get very in arms about this, particularly Captain William Bainbridge. We're going to talk about him again later I assume. But they take the wrong message. You're explaining a system that is really kind of a replacement for diplomacy in a way. It's just an understanding that this is all going to exist the way it is, the way it's been for a long time and the Americans are entering have agreed to enter into this system But at some point and this is the point of the show, is that they will reject this and that's going to cause a war to happen They could continue paying tribute to this point. The path they would go down was made clear in eighteen hundreds. When Thomas Jefferson beats John Adams and ascends the presidency and argues that America was being subjected to the spoilations of foreign cruisers and humiliated by paying an enormous tribute to the petty tyrant of Algiers. My goodness. After this short break, we'll be back to talk about the opening of hostilities between the Americans and I was going to call them pirates, but they're not Welcome back. I'm speaking with Professor Abigail Mullen of the U.S. Naval Academy about the Barbary Wars. To recap, Abby, Thomas Jefferson is now president. the US is set to confront the Barbary pirates. It's almost like it was part of his campaign or to be president. Was it that big a policy of his? Historians disagree about how much this thing mattered, how much the Algerian crisis mattered. and It's important to emphasize that it's an Algerian crisis up to this point So the other three Barbary states, they're in the mix, but the United States is laser focused on Algiers because they see it as the number one U most powerful of these four barbery states So yeah, it certainly does come up and different historians have different feelings about how much it mattered in terms of Jefferson's approach versus Adams' approach, that kind of thing But certainly it's part of people are aware that it's that there is a crisis of some kind, even if they aren't necessarily totally aware of what it is that's going on. Yeah it has to have stung, especially for the people at home that the votat was named after a president George Washington,, our first president, amazingly, you know, daring of them to take that on. Yeah How do the Americans plan to fight to take the fight to the Barbary states? We don't have much of an ability to sail over there and do anything, right? Yeah, so this is actually a situation where there's that we have to talk about the diplomats who are in the area. because again The United States rhetoric is very heavily focused on Algiers But Aliers. is not actually the problem here Algiers is the one getting the most payment And it's a lot. So the initial treaty is really big, about a million dollars, and that's a lot of money. And so that's, you know, people are rightly focused on that And so each of these States has a treaty. For Algiers, the treaty involves annual payments And same thing with tunis only it's much, much less, but trioli's agreement actually does not even include annual payments. It was just a one time sort of lump sum b payments And the problem is that Tripoli looks at what the United States is doing for Algers and says, how come we're not getting that And in particular, the thing that they get really worked up about, which you know, maybe a little bit understandably is it's not just the money. But the United States is actually building ships for Algiers. So across the time from seventeen ninety five onwards, the United States actually builds five ships for Algiers. and one of them is like as big as a US Navy ship and it has guns. So they say, how come Algiers gets all the cool stuff? What are we second class citizens around here And so the Bashaw of Tripi, the ruler of Tpoli, a guy named Yussef Caramonley starts talking to the American who has been placed in Tripoli as the diplomatic representative Now, he's not a diplomat. This is really important. he's not a diplomat He's a consult. And everywhere else in the world, a console is just a commercial agent So someone who is design whose job is designed to help merchants G through all the papwork essentially and if they're stranded mariners or whatever, they take care of them. But they do not have an official diplomatic role everywhere else in the world. So when these guys get put in the barbary states, they are kind of given a job extra from what they really have signed up to do. And some of them really love that, and other ones of them don't So the guy who's in Tripoli really, really hates them James Leander Cathcart who was the console in TripleolA His main job as he sees it is to revenge the humiliations that he and by extension, the United States have suffered at the hands of the Barbarary states. So the United States lost its first ship to Algiers in seventeen eighty five And those captives that were taken in seventeen eighty five actually stayed in captivity for ten years before the United States could actually get them out. So he basically grew up in an Algerian prison because he was young. He was seventeen when he first got captured So when he gets out of captivity One main mission in life is to stick it to the barber states. So when the Bachel ofob tririie comes to him and says, hey, you need to cut us a better deal We want a ship Cathcart says Right. And stop asking And this results in Tripoli declaring war, right eighteen o. That's right. So in eighteen oh one, the Bashw tells him, you have six months to figure this out And if you can't figure it out, then I'm going to declare war. And Cathcard's like, okay I'm just going to tell everybody to go away. and that's what he does. So the American he tells the Americans to get out And they all do. And in May of eighteen oh one, the Bashaw cuts down the flagpole at the US Culate, which is the signal that he has declared war So the core idea here is the Americans have refused to pay this tribute they basased on a lot of bad feelings and a long prison sentence, it sounds like in one case It results in feebruary eighteen oh two, Congress authorizing President Jefferson to send the Navy across the ocean and blockade the harbor of Tripoli. My goodness, what a moment Off we go into a foreignic incursion So let's walk through the most famous events of this conflict because there's a lot of smaller ones. It's tied to several ships The first Naval squadron's sent had proven pretty ineffective at halting these activities that were going on. In September eighteen o three This is Commodore Edward Preble on board the U.SS Constitution. Oh my goodness. If you want relevancy, you know, modern relevancy, this is the boat that's that's still harbored in Boston. You know, you can go see this historic ship mostost famous for its warar of eighteen twelve, but it begins its work in seepptember eighteen oh three. As I understand it, the Americans inststitute a blockade. to limited effect. Their ships are too big to properly enforce it Eventually, they'll get smaller ones, but they'll still struggle to stop the Tropolitan blockade runners. There are two main incidents we should look at The first being what happens to the USS Philadelphia? Philadelphia is captained by a guy that we've already met, Captain William Bainbridge who was the captain of the George Washington in eighteen hundreds. So he's got something to prove here. And he had actually already been in the Mediterranean once, he was in the initial squadron. He was the captain of the Essex in the squadron in eighteen oh one, and he's actually the one who made the recommendation for smaller ships So he out of anyone has a better sense of what Trioli Harbor perils of Tripoli Harbor R. Despite that, he goes to Tripoli and he's enforcing the blockade and he's chasing a blockade runner into Tripoli Harbor and because their charts were not done by them and had not been validated by them. They were using mostly French charts. I think his chart was French On the chart that he had The entire area around Tply Harbor had not been fully charted. And so L there's a reef out there. It's calledalusa Riff and the Philadelphia runs aground on Calius Rf on october thirty first He must have been screaming bloody murder that guy after all lotots of contention about like what went down after that and whether he did the right thing and should they have fought to the death and all of that stuff. but he judges that there's no chance that they're going to get off this reef. And so it's stupid to have a big firefight where everybody dies. because that's certainly what's going to happen. And so they surrender the Philadelphia to the Tropolitans basically without shot And You know, like I said, lots of people have different feelings about whether or not that was the right call, including his Codore, Edward Prevble, who reassures him you know, publicly says, yeah, you did the right thing, you did the right thing. And then in letters back to the seecretary of the Navy is like, what is that guy's deal? Why did he not fight to the death? So, you know, different different strokes for different folks, I guess. But the problem is that now Tripoli has two big bargaining chips. Number one is they have the captives of the Philadelphia. They've got almost four hundred guys And some of them are hy fairly high profile like the captain of the ship and stuff like that, but they've also got lots of sailors And then they also have the shit because the tide shifts the next day and the Tropolitans are able to refloat the Philadelphia. So it's not just out there foundering on the reef, but they actually bring it into the harbor. So now they've got two pretty big bargaining chips. So whatever sort of momentum the United States had been able to develop, which was not much They're really in a bad situation now So when Prevble arrives, finally, he gets there in like or he learns about this in November and he then of course has to go laser focus on Tripoli because this can't continue. Something's got to change here, but they They spend a long time talking about what they're going to do because what they're afraid of is that if the United States does anything extremely aggressive, then the basashot is just going to kill all the captives, which would not be totally unheard of. So they have to tread carefully here. Yeah. So about six months after this all happens or during this time, In february eighteen oh four, this is when a really covert activity happens where an American naval crew sneaks into Trioli's harbor, disguised as a merchant ship led by a man named Lieutenant Stephen Decator. Take us through this moment. It's very exciting. Yeah, it is very exciting. So the thing that they decide to do And I don't tell anybody, even the crew is they decide they can't get it, they can't get the Philadelphia out of Trioli Harbor because it's anchored under the guns of the fortifications and like people would die and they wouldn't probably actually get it out. So they decide they can't get it back But if they can't get it back, they can at least keep the Tropolitans from using it And so they decide to G go and burn it So Stehen Decator, who's a lieutenant, he's twenty five years old And he is just in the squadron and He gets picked to lead this mission of seventy is volunteers and they do all volunteer from all the ships in the squadron And they're going to sail this little catch that they had captured a few in December of ' eighteen o three this ottoman catch it looks like aetropolitan ship. they can rig it to look like aropolitan ship. They can get all the, you know, so they can sort of going cognito. hopefully. And so they're going to put everybody on board and then hopefully they're going to swarm up on the Philadelphia and then they're going to set a bunch of charges and they're going to explode it. And hopefully everybody gets off. And the key actor in this story is the pilot So there's a pilot who is Maltese and his name is Salvati Catalano. And he has a real talent. Number one, he knows the area, so he's not going to run them aground again because that would be embarrassing But also he speaks all the local languages, including Arabic which of course, none of the Americans speak Good all. So when they sail into Tripoli Harbor, they actually get a boon. They get a a coincidence that works well for them which is that there's a big storm that comes up. They want to do this at the beginning of February and Catalano keeps telling them, donon't go now, donon't go now. you're going to get crushed to death by this storm. And everybody's like, he's just a coward. He doesn't want us to do it. But he was totally right about that. They would definitely have gotten crushed But then they have the opportunity when they sail into Tripoli finally on february sixteenth of making the claim that the storm made them lose their anchors. And so they need something to tie up next to. So Catalano calls out to the guards on the Philadelphia, the Tropolitan guards and says, hey As you can see, we really got beat up by this storm. C we can we just tie up on the Philadelphia, you know, and we'll onnce the waters find No they were anchors. They didn't know they were Americans. M mostost of the Americans were below. And Catalano's the only one talking. So of course they're all dressed in, you know ropolitan guard or whatever. So but they're most of the crew is below. so they can't even see them. And so the Tropolitan guards, they buy it And they say, oh, yeah, sure. And in fact, they even row a little boat over to the Intrepid, which is the catch. they rename it the intntrepid to help them haul the intntrepid closer to the Philadelphia. Wow. And it's not until they're really close, like yards away that the Tropolitans start picking up on something not quite being exactly as described. And so they raise the alarm, they shout Americanos, Americanos. But by then it's too late. And so the seventy five guys swarm over the side and they set all the charges and they kill some of the guards and they go back onto the intntrepid and Decator lights the charges and then they all get back on the intrepid and they sail out And then the ship blows up And it works. Absolutely every single piece of this plan works absolutely perfectly. And so it's, you know, people talk about being able to see the flames of the Philadelphia from miles away and it's a huge deal and people get really excited about it. And Decatater gets some good stuff out of this because he gets a promotion to captain He's a lieutenant, so he actually skips a rank and he goes straight to captain, which makes him the youngest captain ever commissioned as a captain in the US Navy. That is still true today. actuallyctually, he's still the youngest captain ever So he gets something out of it. He will go on to distinguish himself in the war of eighteen twelve He would and D. Yeah And yeah, and again in the second Barbar of work actually. So. Yeah. so but the thing is that this action, though it's heroic and it's awesome and like, you know, kudos to Steven De Katater, It doesn't really get the Americans anything becausecause the Tropolitans were never going to use the ship anyway. they were planning on maybe selling it to Tunis. The captives don't get any better treatment, they don't get killed, so I guess that's something, but it's not like they make any headways diplomatically by getting rid of the ship, but it's enough to galvanize the Americans. to say, okay, like we can do this. let's keep going. The other part of the story is the Battle of Durna The U. S. had been debating whether they could end the war with Tripoli by using naval force. Eventually they decide to go for a land invasion and they'll topple Tripolese leader Yuf Karanlei Eventually, a plan put forward by U. S. diplomat William Eaton got approved And they joined forces with Yussef Carmani's rival and brother Hammet and they gather together a multinational army of mercenaries Bedouin fighters. and Hamnet's followers and prepare to march on Tripoli But they leave from Egypt, right? They're in Alexandria, Egypt Now Tripoli, the city of Tripoli is a thousand miles away. So they decide they can't get straight to Tripoli. So they're going to go first to Durna, which is about five or six hundred miles away from Alexandria And they're gonna to start there. And if they can take Dna, then from Durna they can stage the next attack on the city of Tripoli, which is again, another about another five hundred miles down the road. And of course, this is like really challenging because it's desert. This is the second you know, it's like walking across the desert for six weeks and they run into all kinds of terrible stuff. They run out of water all the time And then on a different day, they actually their camp gets washed away by flood and they don't have food and Eaton doesn't have any money to pay these guys and he makes them all kinds of promises. And One thing you can say about William Eaton is even though he had a lot of really outlandish ideas and He had some very strange personality quirks, but that guy knew how to get people moving because somehow magically they start this journey and about March of eighteen oh five and by April of eighteen oh five, six weeks later there outside of Durna. And not only do they still have all four hundred of the initial guys, but they've actually brought on another about between six and eight hundred. So we got about twelve hundred guys roughly. Right. What was this battle like So the thing that they needed desperately before they could stage the attack was they needed artillery And that's where the Navy comes back in. So the two ships that the Navy had promised arrive and they are able to give them a few cannons, which they haul up this big hill and it's like a whole thing. And so once the Navy arrives with the supplies and with the cannons then the attack can really get started And the shocking thing is that even though the town is very heavily fortified, it's it's a walled city and there's There's military people in there. Once the attack starts, this force, Hommit force It takes the city in about two hours It it's a route And If you ask the Marines The Marines lead the charge into this, those eight guys charging into there and everybody else just comes in and picks up the pieces after the Marines have already taken the whole sea. Yeah Th think that's unlikely.. Th think that's unlikely I mean, the Marines are awesome. Don't get me wrong, but these guys are not trained as expeditionary war fighters or anything like that. They're just ship policemen. So They have no special talents and they certainly don't have the sort of ethos of the Marine Corps that might make this possible today. I don't know, probablyroably would not. But still So but the Marines like to tell the story that the eight Marines go in and they impress Lee O'Bannon is the you know the hero of the day. and which is fine, like knock yourself out. But the moral of the story is Hamit forces are successful in Eerna. They take the city. And then they wait because the next step is supposed to be that they go to Tripoli But the problem is that Yusuf Kimany has been watching all of this. And he is actually sending forces from Trioli to Durna And chances are, if USIS forces actually get there, they're going to cream the Americans. They're going to cream this this force by humit But he doesn't really want that because What he really wants is to get rid of Homet Oncece and for all And he wants the Americans to help him do it essentially So he's kind of tired of this war and this thing that has happened, it does not affect him, not really It's just annoying. It's like it's like a fly And there's there's actually an expression that the Tunisian ruler uses, which I love, which is that A fly in a man's throat, though it won't kill him, it might make him vomit And that's kind of what this is. it's just an irritation But he's tired of fighting the war by this point, and he's tired of the Americans always being around and being annoying. So he's ready to talk to the Navy, to Samuel Baron and the official negotiator that's come from the United States. So he can see this thing happening. and even though he doesn't see it as an actual existential threat to him, it's a convenient excuse to start talking to the American negotiators. So while Eaten is doing this crazy march across the desert with Homit, Yusuf is talking to the Americans and they are very near actually coming to a peace agreement And that's actually what happens They sign a deal and it's all signed sealed and delivered on june tenth And it's not because of Eaton having done all that stuff, but it's not not because he did it the thing that happens as a result of this is the United States agrees to Okay tri sixty thousand dollars, which is a ransom. for the Philadelphia prisoners. I see. And then that's it. There will be no tribute payments going forward from the United States But what Yusuf gets out of this is now Hamet is never going to be on the throne of Tripoli And he's never going to be even in a position where he can make this kind of claim again becausecause now that the United States has officially recognized USuf again they can't very well sign up with Hamit So they can't keep on with Homit because now they have this good treaty with USuf. and it is a good treaty. in terms it's not what they want. It's not what the Americans want, but in terms of what it could have been, it's really good. But the upshot of it and victory for the Americans is we're no longer going to pay these tributes. We accomplish the objective, right? But is it Yes and notbes to all of them or just to one of them. Trii the tripi treaty is fine. Again, the sixty thousand dollars payment but then no treaty or no ribute going forward, but the other treaties are unaffected So the United States is still going to pay tribute to Algiers, It's still going to pay tribute to Tunis. So the system is not broken And a lot of times when people talk about this where, they talk about it as being that. as the United States breaking this system of barbberary extortion, but that's absolutely false. interestnteresting. Okay, we will take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the second Barbberary warar. It's a brief one, and then the resolution and legacy of all of this B back As we explained before the break, America has beaten these Barbary states in this war But it's a subtle and complex victory And by no means the last one that's going to happen. When did war break out again, Abby on what is called the Second Barbberie War? It's a brief episode, right? It is. It's very brief. And again, here the context matters because The secondecond Barbary War is the culmination of a lot of frustration about the War of eighteen twelve. in a lot of ways, I think. So Two big things are going on in the world in between the end of the first Barbberary War and the beginning of what we call the second one. Which is one exactly just to place the date? eighteen fifteen. Okay, so we are after the war eighteen twelve now. Exactly. So the two big things that are going on in the world for the United States are continuing and in fact ramped up aggression with both Britain and France And the reason for that is the second thing, which is the Napoleonic wars are raging at this point and they're only getting more sort of world domination esque So these two world events are what is occupying the Americans Headspace trying to figure out how to navigate because at the end of the day, the Barbberary states are not nearly as scary as the British And so when the British and the Americans go to war in eighteen twelve The Algerians, so the guys that the Americans were afraid of at the beginning, they see an opportunity to start exploring the lines of what is appropriate treaty bound behavior and not So they start taking American ships again, even though the United States still does have a treaty with them and there's some, you know, hijinks here and there But the United States just doesn't have the bandwidth because they're fighting against Britain. So they can't do anything about it at the time And of course, the United States does not fare extremely well in the War of eighteen twelve from a naval perspective So Even though there's the big frigate battles at the beginning, which we love Constitution Garrier, We love But that's in eighteen twelve. And then the Royal Navy comes down with the force of the British Navy hammer and blockades the US Navy import basically for the rest of the war And so all of these people who got their start actually in the First Barbary War, many people who were junior officers in the First Barbberary War are now the captains of the Frigate Navy in eighteen twelve And they're all sitting in port twiddling their thumbs and being annoyed. and the main person who's sitting in port being Annoyed is Stephen Decator He's an active young man. He wants to get out there and do stuff And when he tries to run the blockade in eighteen fourteen in USS president, he gets captured. and that makes him very angry So when the war ends, Napoleon is defeated in Europe And the Americans signed the Treaty of Ghent and it's all hunky dory and everything's fine then they can be like, okay, who can we go get now? We need to like go get this aggression out that we've been hanging on to for these past three years That's probably an uncharitable way to think about it, but that's how at least for Deater, that's how I always think about it So they're ready to go back and tell Algiers. We just took out the biggest navy on the planet So sit down and shut up. Yeah. And Algiers is ready to have that message brought to them. So actually the Navy authorizes a guy that we've already talked about twice now, William Bainbridge to take a squadron to Algiers and have a conversation. So do a little more naval diplomacy Stepven Decator is like No way is William Bainbridge going to do that and I don't get to do it. So He takes his own squadron. and sailes to Algiers in advance of Bainbridge and he gets there first which of course, you know, that means him and Bainbridge have some other things to talk about later, but this is in may eighteen fifteen. Yes. that's the Catater set sale. so they're sort of racing across the ocean. He gets their first. Yes. The war is basically several minor skirmishes, right? That's not essent. I don't even know that Yeah, I don't even know that there's anything that you could battle exxactly because Decator and Bainbridge pull up to Algiers, they park their ships off of Algiers and they say, okay, last time we were here, we had one ship, but now we've got fifty. So like What are you going to do And Algiers is weakened not by the United States, but because of the way that the Napoleonic course had gone and a variety of other things They're not in an extremely strong state, and so they're willing to listen and to talk And so ultimately there's not much of a war here It's mostly just diplomacy at gunpoint. Right. I mean the story really is The idea of carrying a big stick's born. Yeah' finally born here for the Americans. But of course, even here, even here though, we can't give the United States all the credit because Yes, the United States does accomplish something here in eighteen fifteen, but it's not until Lord EXmouith from the Royal Navy shows up in eighteen sixteen that Algiers really does stop charging tribute to everybody So even though the United States likes to take credit for breaking the system, they't. There are interesting events. I mean, we take ships and there's a skirmish off of the Spanish coast. It's all very Reeds is very romantic. I'm sure it was a bigess. But not much not much real danger. Exactly. Not much real. But the message here is the growth of the military, I guess is really important, especially the Navy, obviously And that's very interesting because in this podcast series, we talk many times about the fear of Americans about the standing arrmy and how that really is always the case right into World War one, know, as far as us not maintaining this standing army because it represents tyranny. And that's a big theme in American society, certainly through the nineteenth century On the other hand, you can't not have a Navy because it takes a long time to build boats for one thing. So you've got to keep that callall So this is really the message here that they created this Navy that's going to only get bigger and bigger over time And now we're ' really big. One of the lasting legacies, I mean, I'm already on it right there, but Navy credibility, right? That's basically the legacy there. Yeah. I think the way that I like to talk about this is that one of the things that the United States is trying to accomplish in the first war in particular, the second war is kind of a different beast, but In the firstirst warar, in particular, the United States is trying to establish credibility as a sovereign nation So The ability to make treaties is really important, but also the ability to enforce them and the ability to not take a frronts is the thing the United States is really interested in? And in terms of whether they succeeded in that in the firstirst Barberary War, it's really a mixed bag. But the thing that they get out of this is Even in eighteen oh five, when the war ends, people are not ready yet to say, let's keep the Navy forever In fact, Jefferson himself is not ready to say let's keep a Blue waterater Navy forever. but What they have learned is that diplomacy doesn't work without some force behind it And so one of the things you see as a result of the ways in which the United States does diplomacy during this war, is consuls go a lot more places. and they don't have diplomatic powers. Even only the Barbarary states guys have sort of dlatic quasi diplomatic powers. But the United States starts to expand its commercial and allow the state, the power of the state to go further. becausecause Americans normal, like standard Americans, regular commercial Americans are already going all over the world and that's only going to increase, but it becomes obvious that the United States needs some kind of official representation in a lot of places in the world so that that commerce can continue unabated And after the Second War, after the War of eighteen twelve, that is where the Navy really steps in. becausecause that by the end of the war of eighteen twelve, as you said The question of whether there should be a Navy is kind of settle Now what it's going to look like is certainly not settled, but the fact that it exists is settled And the reason it' settled is that diplomacy alone turns out to not be able to accomplish those commercial goals for the United States. So even though we think about the years after eighteen twelve or the war of eighteen twelve as being about territorial expansion and people going West and all of that stuff There's also a significant expansion, for instance, into the Pacific, in the commerce sphere. And the Navy's job is going to be to make sure that that commerce can be successful And so all of these guys who got their start in the First Barbber War are then the senior captains of that commercial Navy And they some some of them take some lessons from that experience, some of them don't. But I think really what the first Bar reward does for the United States is it shows them what is going to be necessary for the United States to be taken seriously as a sovereign nation and it is a combo of naval power or the ability to project power out into the world and making sure that your diplomats are where they need to be. Yeah, it's the it's the expanding markets It's the expansion of sale, a much more active shipping happening. And for that, you need to have diplomacy, but you also need force. You need the ability to get there and take care of problems Battle of Derna, first land battle the USS ever fought on foreign soil However the Marines played that role, they were there It was the first time the stars and stripes had been raised on foreign soil It really is the first time you break the image that the US is isolationist. You know, we so often hear that about the United States that it's inwardly turned, but really right from the beginning. Oh yeah, we're taking action overseas. No, the United States has never been isolated Eact not in that way now. Yeah. you can call that a myth and apocryphal because we have chosen that far flung fight many times all the way back Professor Abigail Mullen is headquartered at Annapolis, Maryland, the US Nav Naval Academy. She authored the book we've been discussing to fix a National character, The first Barbary War eighteen hundred to eighteen oh five orrder today. It's important history. Thank you so much, Abby. Really nice to meet you. Thanks for having. It's been great Thanks for listening to American History hit