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Updated: June 6, 2025
After taking possession of the ship, a firing commenced from the Tripolitan batteries and castle, and from two cruisers near the ship; a number of launches were also seen rowing about in the harbor; whereupon Lieutenant Decater resolved to remain in the frigate, for there he would be enabled to make the best defence.
On her starboard quarter lay two Tripolitan cruisers within two cables length; and on the starboard bow a number of gun-boats within half gun shot. All her guns were mounted and loaded.
This insurrection, despite the best efforts of the Turkish Government, was never wholly suppressed, but dragged on year after year, draining Turkey of troops and treasure, and contributing materially to her Tripolitan and Balkan disasters in 1911-12.
When off Malta, he met a Tripolitan vessel of 14 guns, and they fought furiously for two hours, at the end of which time the enemy hauled down his flag. The Americans left their guns and broke into cheers, whereupon the Tripolitan fired a broadside. Nothing loath, Lieutenant Sterrett resumed the battle.
Some Tripolitan cruisers, two galleys, and nineteen gunboats also lay between the Philadelphia and the shore. Into the midst of this powerful armament Decatur had to go with his little vessel of sixty tons, carrying four small guns and having a crew of seventy-five men.
They were here visited by a Tripolitan merchant who was very rich, possessing no less than five hundred slaves and a vast number of horses. Through all the towns and villages which they had passed, the sick were brought to be cured, while numbers came for remedies against all sorts of fancied diseases. The governor received them in the most simple way.
Decater, in the struggle, was attacked in the rear by a Tripolitan, who had aimed a blow at his head, which must have proved fatal, had not this generous minded tar, then dangerously wounded and deprived of the use of both his hands, rushed between him and the sabre, the stroke of which he received in his head whereby the scull was fractured.
This Virginia farmer and landsman was not only ignorant and distrustful of all the implements of war, but utterly unfamiliar with the ways of the sea and with the first principles of sea-power. The Tripolitan War seems to have inspired him with a single fixed idea that for defensive purposes gunboats were superior to frigates and less costly.
About five o'clock the colours were lowered." The ship was looted, the officers and men were robbed, half stripped in some cases, and that night the crew was imprisoned in a foul Tripolitan den.
Tripoli, one of the Barbary States, had begun depredations upon American commerce and the President had sent a small squadron for protection. A ship of this squadron, the schooner Enterprise, had fallen in with a Tripolitan man-of-war and after a fight lasting three hours had forced the corsair to strike her colors.
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