Zacks - The pirate coast : Thomas Jefferson, the first marines, and the secret mission of 1805

Also by Richard Zacks

The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd

An Underground Education

History Laid Bare

To Mr. Robert Berman, mentor and tormentor

Contents

WILLIAM EATON, ex-captain, U.S. Army; ex-consul to Tunis; secret agent

WASHINGTON

THOMAS JEFFERSON, President

JAMES MADISON, Secretary of State

ROBERT SMITH, Secretary of the Navy

TIMOTHY PICKERING, former Secretary of State, Senator (Federalist, Massachusetts)

STEPHEN BRADLEY, Senator (Federalist, Vermont)

JOHN COTTON SMITH, Representative (Federalist, Connecticut)

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, Senator (Federalist, Massachusetts)

AARON BURR, Vice President (1801-1804), conspirator plotting to invade Spanish territory

DIPLOMATS

TOBIAS LEAR, U.S. consul general to Barbary Regencies

RICHARD OBRIEN, former U.S. consul in Algiers

JAMES LEANDER CATHCART, former U.S. consul in Tripoli

NICHOLAS NISSEN, Danish consul in Tripoli

BERNARDINO DROVETTI, French consul in Alexandria, Egypt

ANTOINE ZUCHET, consul in Tripoli for Republique Batave (Holland under Napoleon)

C. BEAUSSIER, French consul in Tripoli

SAMUEL BRIGGS, British consul in Alexandria

MAJOR E. MISSETT, British resident agent at Cairo

U.S. NAVY

RICHARD V. MORRIS, Commodore of second U.S. Mediterranean Squadron (1802-1803)

EDWARD PREBLE, Commodore of third U.S. Mediterranean Squadron (1803-1804)

SAMUEL BARRON, Commodore of fourth U.S. Mediterranean Squadron (1804-1805)

JOHN RODGERS, Commodore of fifth U.S. Mediterranean Squadron (1805-1806)

JONATHAN COWDERY, assistant surgeon, USS Philadelphia

GEORGE WASHINGTON MANN, midshipman, USS Argus

ELI E. DANIELSON, midshipman, USS Argus

FOR OTHER NAVAL OFFICERS, see SHIPS on following page

U.S. MARINES

PRESLEY OBANNON, lieutenant

WILLIAM RAY, private and memoirist

BARBARY AND EGYPTIAN OFFICIALS

YUSSEF KARAMANLI, Bashaw of Tripoli

HAMET KARAMANLI, deposed ruler of Tripoli

MOHAMMED DGHIES, foreign minister of Tripoli

MURAD RAIS (PETER LYLE), admiral of Tripoli

HAMOUDA, Bey of Tunis

AHMET PACHA, Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt

KOURCHIEF, regional Ottoman commander of Demanhour, Egypt

MUHAMMAD ALI, Albanian general commanding Cairo region for Ottoman Empire

TAYYIB, SHEIK, warrior, and camel driver

MISCELLANEOUS

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, poet

ANNA PORCILE, twelve-year-old Sardinian hostage

ANTONIO PORCILE, count of Sant-Antioco, father of hostage

LORD HORATIO NELSON, British admiral

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, crowned himself Emperor on December 2, 1804

ALEXANDER BALL, British Governor of Malta

RICHARD FARQUHAR, Scottish entrepreneur based in the Mediterranean

ELIZA DANIELSON EATON, Williams wife

SHIPS

USS PHILADELPHIA, 36-gun frigate, Captain William Bainbridge

USS CONSTITUTION, 44-gun frigate, Commodore Edward Preble, then Commodore John Rodgers

USS PRESIDENT, 44-gun frigate, Commodore Samuel Barron, then Captain James Barron

USS CONGRESS, 36-gun frigate, Captain John Rodgers, then Captain Stephen Decatur Jr.

USS ESSEX, 32-gun frigate, Captain James Barron, then Lieutenant George Cox

USS CONSTELLATION, 36-gun frigate, Captain Hugh Campbell

USS INTREPID, 4-gun captured Mastico ketch, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur Jr.

USS ARGUS, 18-gun brig, Lieutenant Isaac Hull

USS VIXEN, 12-gun brig, Lieutenant John Smith

USS SIREN, 16-gun brig, Lieutenant Charles Stewart

USS NAUTILUS, 12-gun schooner, Lieutenant John Dent

USS HORNET, 10-gun sloop, Lieutenant Samuel Evans

AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN on September 3, 1798, the waves of the Mediterranean tugged at the coast of the island of San Pietro near Sardinia, lullabying the thousand or so sleeping residents. So peaceful was it, so rhythmic and hypnotic the soundor perhaps it was due to a bottle of local vino biancothat even the two municipal watchmen in the church tower had fallen asleep. So there was no one to puzzle out the faint white flecks of sails growing larger on the pinkish gray horizon, and no one to ring the massive church bells to sound the alarm that a fleet of seven ships was approaching.

Standing silently at the rail of these lateen-sailed ships, visible in faint silhouette, were bearded men in loose billowy pants and turbans, carrying scimitars and pistols. The vessels, packed with one thousand Barbary pirates from Tunis in North Africa, glided to anchor inside the harbor. The crews quietly lowered small landing boats and began to ferry men ashore. The first group, barefoot and heavily armed, raced to seal off the two roads leading out of town.

Surprisingly, the leader of this attacking Moslem fleet, the pirate commodore, as it were, was an Italian who had converted to Islam. The ritual had involved losing his foreskin and gaining a new name. He was now Muhammed Rumelli, and in the Lingua Franca slang of the Mediterranean, he was dubbed a rinigado, a renegade. Over the centuries, the rulers of the Barbary countries of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli had learned that Christian captains could navigate better than their homegrown Moslem talent.

Another Italian, acting as harbor pilot, had guided the fleet to the perfect anchorage. This fellow from Capri (never identified by name) carried a deeply personal motive for joining the attack. He had married a woman from San Pietro, but she had abandoned him; he was now convinced that she was cuckolding him here on the island. He had turned Turk expressly to seek his revenge.

As the first ray of dawn caught the sails, Muhammed Rumelli gave the signal to wake up the townspeople. The pirates unleashed a sudden unholy thunder. The ships cannons bellowed out broadsides. The sailors onshore added a lunatics drumroll of small arms fire. The cacophony climaxed as close to a thousand mouths let loose impassioned Arabic war cries and the men rushed into the town. Allahu akhbar speeded their pursuit of profit.

The corsairs engulfed the tiny town; they battered down the doors, burst into homes, brandishing torches and scimitars, rousting the stunned citizens from bed and kicking them into the streets. They cursed their victims as Romo kelb (Christian dogs). The women cowered in corners, trying to avoid what one observer described as shame and villainies.

A French naval officer, arriving the next day, found that five women had died in their beds of knife wounds, their bodies entwined in sheets caked with blood. The first female victim, according to local accounts, was the unfaithful wife of that pilot from Capri. A Sardinian historian later called her a fishwife Helen who had no idea that her husbands jealous rage had drawn the enemy to her homeland.

The attackers spent the entire day hauling money, jewels, church silver, silks to the harbor, but by far the most valuable commodity to be stolen walked on two legs: human slaves. Sura 47 of the Koran allowed these Moslem attackers to enslave and ransom any of these captives. Young Italian women would fetch more than the men in the flesh markets of Tunis and Algiers.

The crews dragged the townspeople aboard various ships, tossing them like ballast willy-nilly belowdeck into the holds for the 160-mile voyage. The prisoners wore only what they had slipped into at bedtime on that seemingly unimportant September night, which would turn out to be their last night of freedom for half a decade.