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Updated: June 14, 2025
Down must come the colors, and down they came. The officers and the sailors were taken ashore and thrown into prison. After a time, the Tripolitans got the Philadelphia off the reef. Then, towing her into the harbor of Tripoli, they anchored her close under the guns of their forts.
On his arrival at that port, he was informed of the fate of the frigate Philadelphia, which had run aground on the Barbary coast, and fallen into the hands of the Tripolitans. The idea immediately presented itself to his mind of attempting her recapture or destruction.
Shortly before he reached there, the U.S. frigate Philadelphia, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, had gone upon a reef just outside the harbor of Tripoli and had been surrounded and captured, with all her crew, by the Tripolitan gunboats. The Tripolitans got her off the rocks, towed her into the harbor, and anchored her close under the guns of their forts.
In the month of August, 1801, Captain Sterrett of the United States schooner Enterprize, of twelve guns and ninety men, fell in, off Malta, with a Tripolitan cruiser of fourteen guns and eighty-five men. In this action the Tripolitans thrice hauled down her colors, and thrice perfidiously renewed the conflict. Fifty of her men were killed and wounded. The Enterprize did not lose a man.
The Tripolitans immediately took possession of her, and made prisoners of the officers and men, in number, three hundred. Forty-eight hours afterwards, the wind blowing in shore, the Tripolitans got the frigate off, and towed her into the harbor. On the 14th of December, Commodore Preble sailed from Malta, in company with the Enterprize, commanded by Lieutenant Stephen Decater.
The climate is mild and healthy. The Tripolitans keep among themselves, and never venture out, so that we shall have nothing to do but to visit the different ports of the Mediterranean. The closest friendship and harmony prevails among the officers of the ship. Every thing, in short, that we could wish, we seem to have, to make our situation comfortable. Pray remember me kindly to Mrs.
This brave little vessel sailed into the harbor as if she had been an ordinary merchantman, and managed to drift down close to the fine frigate which the Tripolitans had snatched from their blundering enemy.
They chose a Sunday for the attack, well knowing that the Tripolitans, who are good-natured simpletons, would be least prepared to resist them on that day, and half of them in a state of jollification; and they were so sagacious, that they actually induced a few drunken Tripolitans to insult them, before beginning the conflict. This, they knew, would be counted in their favour afterwards.
The suspicions of the Tripolitans, however, were not aroused, and when they hailed the Intrepid, the pilot answered that they had lost their anchors in a gale, and asked that they might run a warp to the frigate and ride by her. While the talk went on the Intrepid's boat shoved off with the rope, and pulling to the fore-chains of the Philadelphia, made the line fast.
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: I communicate to Congress a letter received from Captain Bainbridge, commander of the Philadelphia frigate, informing us of the wreck of that vessel on the coast of Tripoli, and that himself, his officers and men, had fallen into the hands of the Tripolitans.
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