Stephen Decatur Boldly Sank Pirate Extortion Racket By Scott S. Smith
http://news.investors.com/management-leaders-and-success/032315-744673-stephen-decatur-attacked-pirate-nations.htm?p=full
Decatur took charge of the schooner Enterprise at the age of 25. He is the youngest man to reach the rank of captain in U.S. Navy history.
Stephen Decatur’s challenge was to prevent pirates from using a captured 36-gun U.S. frigate. America had been battling the city-states along the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which for 300 years had waylaid merchant ships and taken hostages for ransom.
Europeans found it cheaper to pay protection money than fight.
America, with its tiny navy, had gone along — until it launched the First Barbary War in 1801 to try to stop the extortion.
Two years later, that frigate — the Philadelphia — ran aground in Tripoli’s harbor, with its 307 sailors taken prisoner.
Enter Decatur. In February 1804 he captured a pirate ship and hid 80 Marines on it to sail up next to the Philadelphia without suspicion.
Then he led them aboard the frigate and set it ablaze. The American force took heavy fire as it escaped, but Decatur didn’t lose a single man.
It was a turning point in the war, although Tripoli didn’t surrender until the next year.
“It was America’s first war on terrorism, and his innovative approach to dealing with the Philadelphia against overwhelming odds was successful because of careful planning and his ability to communicate his intentions to the crew,” Terry McKnight, a retired rear admiral and the author of “Pirate Alley: Commanding Task Force 151 Off Somalia,” told IBD.
“He also led courageous attacks that helped gain the release of prisoners, the forerunner of modern SEAL operations and the fight against Somali pirates. His leadership is the folklore of every ship’s war room.”
Like Father, Like Son
Decatur (1779-1820) was born in Sinepuxent, Md., and at 19 followed in the footsteps of his father, an officer in the Continental Navy during the American Revolution, joining the new U.S. Navy as a midshipman.
He served under Capt. John Barry, a Revolutionary War hero, on the 44-gun United States, one of only three of the Navy’s large warships, known as frigates. Barry would become his mentor.
The Quasi-War, an undeclared two-year dispute with France over American trade with Britain, gave Decatur his first experience capturing and sinking enemy vessels.
A year after that ended in 1800, new President Thomas Jefferson declared war on the Barbary pirates to end the paying of tribute.
The pirate potentates ruled from Tripoli (in what is now Libya) to other cities in North Africa — Tunis, Algiers and Tangier — under the control of the Ottoman Empire, headquartered in Istanbul . They viewed their depredations as a profitable holy war, striking back at Christian countries that had reduced Islamic power.
Britain and France were too distracted with their global imperial contest to deal with the menace.
America wasn’t. Off went 1st Lt. Decatur as part of the first U.S. squadron to cross the Atlantic, but he saw little action until put in command of the 12-gun schooner Enterprise in 1803.
“Decatur had an innate understanding of the sailors and Marines who served under him,” said Chipp Reid, author of “Intrepid Sailors.” “He detested the practice of flogging and was among the officers who helped abolish the practice. He emphasized shared responsibility.”
Decatur had orders from Commodore Edward Preble to destroy the Philadelphia.
That special operation resulted in Decatur’s promotion to captain. He was just 25.
“But Preble’s entire fleet — six warships, six gunboats and two bomb ketches — had less than half the firepower of Tripoli’s land batteries and fleet,” wrote Robert Allison in “Stephen Decatur.” “Tripoli’s nine gunboats formed an outer defense in the harbor; and inside were two galleys, two schooners and a brig. On shore, Tripoli had 115 cannon and a new encampment of 25,000 soldiers.”
Decatur was hardly daunted. In an August 1804 attack, he boarded the first Tripolitan gunboat and, despite being outnumbered 2-to-1, took control in 10 minutes in hand-to-hand combat with swords, pikes and hatchets.
Decatur’s brother was the only one of the Americans to die, while they killed more than 100 of the enemy, captured three pirate vessels and sank three others while losing none of their own.
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