3/5/23
Newsletter #266
The Crack of Dawn
The Duelist and the Pirates, Part II:
1st Lt. Stephen Decatur was sent on a secret mission. He and seventy men dressed up like Arabs, sailing in a confiscated Tripolitan ship (only suited to hold fifty men), and infested with fleas, arrived at the mouth of Tripoli harbor. The weather was so inclement that the seventy men, smashed into the ship’s hold and swarmed with fleas, waited a week before they could enter the harbor. They sneaked onto the moored Philadelphia, and using only knives and swords (gunshots would alert the guards on shore), took over the ship. Decatur and his men poured barrels of coal tar everywhere and set the ship on fire. The flames tipped off the guards who all climbed into boats and came after them. Once Decatur was sure that all of his men were safely back on their own ship, with cannons being fired at them from shore, and many boats coming, Stephen Decatur dove off the deck of the Philadelphia, which was fifty feet higher than their little stolen boat, landed in the sail and slid down to the deck. With hundreds of cannons firing at them, cannonballs splashing into the water all around, they made their escape. To Pasha Yusef Karamanli’s horror, the Philadelphia burned to a cinder.
Word of Stephen Decatur’s exploit firing the Philadelphia preceded him back to the U.S. When he returned home he was famous. At the age of twenty-five, Stephen Decatur was promoted to captain (and remains the youngest captain ever) and was given command of his own ship.
Meanwhile, Decatur had previously served under two commanders: the unlucky William Bainbridge – who, after a year’s captivity with his crew of three hundred men in Tripoli, was freed – and Commodore James Barron, who was Decatur’s mentor and friend.
The First Barbary War came to an inconclusive end in 1805. Decatur was promoted to Commodore, and was given a seat on Naval Board.
Commodore James Barron, Decatur’s mentor and a highly-regarded officer, had a big drinking problem. He became a thoughtless commander. When he had to transport the new Mediterranean Ambassador and his family to Malta, in an act of blatant stupidity he went to sea with all of the ambassador’s enormous amount of luggage and crates of equipment and supplies all over the deck to the extent that you couldn’t get to the guns. Right off the shore of Norfolk, Virginia, Barron, commanding the Chesapeake, encountered the British warship, the Leopard, and a battle ensued. Unfortunately for Barron, none of his artillerymen could get to their guns. The Leopard blew the Chesapeake to pieces, killing and wounding most of the crew. Wounded himself, James Barron managed to fire one gun, then surrendered.
The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair became the giant scandal of 1807. Sitting on the Naval Board judging Barron was Stephen Decatur. Barron was found guilty of incompetency, and given a very light sentence – he couldn’t command a ship for five years – but was utterly disgraced and he fled to England.
Then came the War of 1812 with Britain. Commodore Stephen Decatur was the biggest hero of the war and was involved in many heroic, adventurous exploits, cementing his position as America’s greatest naval hero.
After the war, James Barron returned from the enemy country, England, to America a broken, drunken man. All he wanted in the world was to be given command of another ship. It was a bad idea and Stephen Decatur was the first to say so.
James Barron then focused all of his anger and bitterness on Decatur, whose star just kept rising. Decatur and his wife Susan built one of Washington D.C.’s first big, impressive houses, the Decatur House (still there), right next door to the White House.
However, James Barron and Stephen Decatur had taken to writing each other long, acrimonious, accusatory letters. Both of them felt that their honor had been infringed upon, and Barron became threatening. But this ugly letter-writing went on for several years, and didn’t seem like it was actually going to lead anywhere, until Commodore William Bainbridge showed up in town. Decatur showed Bainbridge, with whom he had never been friendly, Barron’s threatening letters. Bainbridge became outraged on Decatur’s behalf and promptly arranged a duel, to Stephen’s chagrin.
Because dueling was illegal, but occurred regularly, there were little strips of land in “unincorporated” areas used for this purpose. On March 22, 1820, Stephen Decatur met James Barron in a an unincorporated bit of Maryland known as “The Valley of Chance,” where at least fifty duels had previously been fought. They were accompanied by Bainbridge, who was Decatur’s “Second,” as well as Barron’s second, two naval surgeons and an old doctor.
The combatants took their positions twenty paces apart, facing each other, Bainbridge dropped a handkerchief, and both men shot each other directly in the groin. James Barron’s wound wasn’t very serious; Stephen Decatur’s wound was fatal, having severed an artery. At which point, William Bainbridge ran away and was not seen for a weeks. The doctors managed to get Decatur back to his house where he bled to death that night.
There are twenty-eight cities, towns and counties named after Stephen Decatur, like, Decatur, Georgia. James Barron stayed in the navy, became the senior officer, and died at eighty-two. William Bainbridge also remained in the navy and died at the age of fifty-nine. Susan Decatur lived to be ninety-four.
And that’s the story of Stephen Decatur. Just trying to tell it in a succinct form tells me that it’s too complicated of a story to be told in an easy way. Still, it’s a fascinating bit of American history about a forgotten hero, and the forgotten time period in which he lived.
In White Mischief (1988), Sarah Miles wakes up, and completely naked steps over and opens the window shade revealing a stunning view of a glistening Kenyan jungle. She says, “Not another fucking beautiful day.”