First Barbary War

The Barbary states of North Africa lived partly on tribute paid by Christian nations to keep their corsairs from seizing ships and enslaving crews. When President Jefferson refused to pay more, Yusuf Karamanli, the pasha of Tripoli, declared war in May 1801. American squadrons blockaded Tripoli for four years, at first half-heartedly. In October 1803 the frigate Philadelphia ran aground off the harbour and was captured with her crew of over 300, but in February 1804 Stephen Decatur slipped into the harbour in a captured ketch and burned her. Commodore Edward Preble then attacked Tripoli five times in the summer of 1804 with his ships and borrowed gunboats and bomb vessels. In 1805 an American-led force marched across the desert from Egypt and took Derna with the help of three American warships, and the pasha made peace, releasing the prisoners for a ransom of $60,000.