When We Captured an African Kingdom

Did you ever, by any chance, leave the Boston State House by the back door? If so, you found yourself in a quiet and rather shabby thoroughfare, cobble-paved and lined on the farther side by old-fashioned red-brick houses, with white, brass-knockered doors, and iron balconies, and green blinds. That is Derne Street. Though a man standing on Boston Common could break one of its violet-glass windows with a well thrown ball, it is, as it were, a placid backwater of the busy streams of commerce which flow so noisily a few rods away. I wonder how many of the smug frock-coated politicians who hurry through it as a short cut daily have any idea how it got its name; I wonder if any of the people who live upon it know. Though the exploit which this Boston byway was named to commemorate has been overlooked by nearly all our historians, perhaps because its scene was laid in a remote and barbarous country, yet it was a feat which, for picturesqueness, daring, and indomitable courage, is deserving of a more generous share of the calcium light of public appreciation. Though I am perfectly aware that history only too often makes dull reading, this chronicle, I promise you, is as bristling with romance and adventure as a hedgehog is with quills.

You must understand, in the first place, that the declining years of the eighteenth century found a perfectly astounding state of affairs prevailing in the Mediterranean, where the four Barbary states—Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli—which stretched along its African shore, collected tribute from every nation whose vessels sailed that sea as methodically as a street-car conductor collects fares. Asserting that they were no common, vulgar buccaneers who plundered vessels indiscriminately, the Barbary corsairs, claiming for themselves the virtual ownership of the Mediterranean, turned it into a sort of maritime toll-road, and professed themselves at war with all who refused to pay roundly for using it. Nor was their boast that they were the masters of the Middle Sea a vain one, scores of captured merchantmen and thousands of European slaves laboring under the African sun proving indubitably that they were amply capable of enforcing their demands. As far as the question of economy was concerned, it was about as cheap for a nation to be at war with these bandits of the sea as at peace, for so heavy was the tribute they demanded that their friendship came almost as high as their enmity. It cost Spain, at that time a rich and powerful empire, upward of three million dollars to obtain peace with the Dey of Algiers in 1786. Though England boasted herself mistress of the seas, and in token thereof English admirals carried brooms at their mastheads, she nevertheless spent four hundred thousand dollars annually in propitiating these African despots. Previous to the Revolution there were close on a hundred American vessels, manned by more than twelve hundred seamen, in the Mediterranean, but with the withdrawal of British protection this commerce was entirely abandoned. The ink was scarcely dry on the treaty of peace, however, before we had despatched diplomatic agents to the Barbary coast to purchase the friendship of its rulers, and had taken our place in the line of regular contributors. We were in good company, too, for England, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Denmark, and the Italian states had been paying tribute so long that they had acquired the habit. Think of it, my friends! Every great seafaring nation in the world meekly paying tribute to a few thousand Arab cutthroats for the privilege of using one of the seven seas, and humbly apologizing if the payment happened to become overdue!

Our friendly relations with the Dey of Algiers were of short duration, however, and by 1793 his swift-sailing, heavily armed cruisers had captured thirteen American vessels, and sixscore American slaves were at work on the fortifications of his capital. In his prison-yard, indeed, one could hear every American inflection, from the nasal twang of Maine to the drawl of Carolina. After two years of procrastination, Congress, spurred to action by public indignation, purchased the liberty of the captives and peace with Algiers for eight hundred thousand dollars, though the Dey remarked gloomily, as he scrawled his Arabic flourish at the foot of the treaty: “If I keep on making peace at this rate, there will soon be no one left to fight. Then how shall I occupy my corsairs? What shall I do with my fighting men? If they have no one else to rob and slaughter, they will rob and slaughter me!”

The Bashaw of Tripoli at this time was a peculiarly insolent and tyrannical Arab named Yussuf Karamanli, who had gained the throne by the effective method of winning over the body-guard, quietly surrounding the palace one night, and deposing his elder brother, Ahmet, whom he promptly exiled. Despite the annual tribute of twenty-two thousand dollars which we were paying to the Bashaw, not to mention the seventeen thousand dollars’ worth of presents which we presented biennially to the officers and officials of his court, he complained most bitterly to the American consul at Tripoli that he was not getting as much as his neighboring rulers, and that unless the matter was remedied immediately, he would have to get some American slaves to teach him English. Now, Yussuf was a bad man to have for an enemy, for his cruisers were numerous and loaded to the gunwales with pirates who would rather fight than eat, and he had, in addition, the reputation of being most inconsiderate to those sailors who fell into his hands, sometimes going so far as to wall a few of them up in the fortifications which he was constantly building. To put it bluntly, he was not popular outside of his own circle. As Mr. Cathcart, the American consul, did not take his demands for a larger tribute very seriously, the Bashaw wrote to President Jefferson direct, mincing no words in saying that the American government had better grant his request, and be quick about it, or American seamen would find the Mediterranean exceedingly unhealthy for them.

Incredible as it may seem in this day and age, the authorities at Washington ordered a vessel to be loaded with the arms, ammunition, and naval stores demanded by the Bashaw, their total value being thirty-four thousand dollars, and hurriedly despatched it to Tripoli, with profuse apologies for the delay. A few months later the Bashaw, who evidently knew a good thing when he saw it, suggested that a token of our esteem for him in the form of jewels would be highly acceptable, whereupon the American minister in London was instructed to purchase jewelry to the value of ten thousand dollars and have it hurried to Tripoli by special messenger. Emboldened by his undreamed-of success in shaking the republican tree, the Bashaw reached the very height of audacity by again sending a peremptory note to President Jefferson, demanding that the United States immediately present him with a thirty-six-gun war-ship! As no attention was paid to this modest request (and in view of the other outrageous concessions made by our government, it is somewhat surprising that this demand was not granted also), the Bashaw ordered the flagstaff of the American consulate to be chopped down as a sign of war, and turned his corsairs loose on American commerce in the Mediterranean. The war opened most disastrously for the United States, for a few months later the frigate Philadelphia ran aground in the harbor of Tripoli, the Tripolitans capturing Captain Bainbridge and his entire crew. No wonder the Bashaw went to the mosque that day to give thanks to Allah, for had he not received an even larger war-ship than he had demanded, and did he not have two hundred American slaves to instruct him in the English tongue? “God is great!” exclaimed the Bashaw devoutly, as he knelt on his silken prayer-rug, and “God is great!” echoed the rows of corsairs who knelt behind him.