Battles of the First Barbary War

1 August 1801 · Off Malta

American victory; the corsair dismasted and sent home

Lieutenant Andrew Sterett's 12-gun schooner Enterprise, carrying water to the squadron, met the 14-gun corsair Tripoli west of Malta. In a fight of some three hours the Tripolitans three times hauled down their flag and then opened fire again when the Americans came near. Sterett finally shot away her mizzen mast and battered her until her captain threw his colours into the sea. Tripoli had 30 killed and 30 wounded; Enterprise did not lose a man. Without orders to take prizes, Sterett cut down her masts, threw her guns overboard and let her drift back to Tripoli, where the pasha had her captain paraded through the streets on a donkey.

31 October 1803 · Kaliusa reef, off Tripoli

Tripolitan success; Philadelphia and her crew captured

Blockading Tripoli alone, William Bainbridge chased a blockade runner close inshore east of the harbour and ran Philadelphia onto the uncharted Kaliusa reef. She stuck fast. Bainbridge threw guns overboard and cut away the foremast to lighten her, but she would not come off, and with Tripolitan gunboats firing into her from where her own guns could not bear, he surrendered. Her crew of 307 were taken prisoner. Two days later a storm lifted her off, and the Tripolitans brought her into the harbour.

16 February 1804 · Tripoli harbour

American success; Philadelphia burned

Rather than leave a frigate in Tripolitan hands, Commodore Preble sent Lieutenant Stephen Decatur into Tripoli harbour to destroy her. On the night of 16 February Decatur took the captured ketch Intrepid, disguised as a Maltese trader with a Sicilian pilot calling out to the harbour watch, alongside Philadelphia under the guns of the batteries. Some sixty sailors and marines swarmed aboard, cleared her decks in minutes, set her on fire and got back to Intrepid as she began to burn, without losing a man; her loaded guns went off in the flames and fired into the town. Syren waited outside with her boats. Admiral Nelson is said to have called it the most bold and daring act of the age.

3 August – 3 September 1804 · Off Tripoli

Indecisive; Tripoli held out

Commodore Preble brought his squadron before Tripoli with six gunboats and two bomb vessels borrowed from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and attacked five times in a month. In the first attack on 3 August the American gunboats went in among the Tripolitan gunboats and fought them hand to hand; Decatur took two, and when he heard that his brother James had been shot dead after accepting a surrender, went back and killed the man who had done it. Constitution and the smaller ships bombarded the batteries and the town, but the walls were strong, the Tripolitan gunners stood to their guns, and the pasha would not give up his prisoners. One American gunboat was blown up by a shot in her magazine in the second attack.

4 September 1804 · Mouth of Tripoli harbour

Failure; Intrepid blew up before reaching the Tripolitan ships

As a last blow, Preble had Intrepid packed with 100 barrels of powder and some 150 shells, to be sailed into the harbour among the Tripolitan ships and blown up. Lieutenant Richard Somers volunteered to take her in with twelve men, among them Lieutenants Henry Wadsworth and Joseph Israel. On the night of 4 September she was seen to enter the harbour, and then blew up with a great explosion short of her targets, killing everyone aboard. Whether a Tripolitan shot set her off, or Somers fired her himself to keep her from being taken, has never been known.

27 April 1805 · Derna, Cyrenaica

American victory; Derna taken

William Eaton, the former American consul at Tunis, planned to put the pasha's exiled brother Hamet on the throne. With eight US Marines under Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon and some 500 Greek, Arab and other mercenaries, he marched 500 miles across the desert from Alexandria and met three American warships at Bomba with supplies. On 27 April, while Argus, Hornet and Nautilus bombarded the shore batteries, Eaton's force stormed Derna; O'Bannon raised the American flag over the fort, and the town was held against counter-attacks for weeks. The threat helped bring the pasha to make peace in June, and the march is remembered in the Marines' hymn: "to the shores of Tripoli".