G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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DIRK PITT ® ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER
WITH DIRK CUSSLER
“We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.”
THE BAY OF TRIPOLI FEBRUARY 1803
Intrepid
Siren
Philadelphia
Six months earlier, the forty-four-gun
had chased a Barbary corsair too close to Tripoli’s notoriously treacherous harbor and grounded in the shallow shoals. At the time, the frigate’s captain, William Baimbridge, had done all he could to save his ship, including heaving her cannons over the side, but she was hard aground, and high tide was hours away. Under threat of a dozen enemy gunboats, Baimbridge had no choice but to strike the colors and surrender the massive warship to the Bashaw of Tripoli. Letters from the Dutch Consul residing in the city reported that Baimbridge and his senior officers were being treated well, but the fate of the
’s crew, like that of most others who fell to the Barbary pirates, was slavery.
It was decided among the American commanders of the Mediterranean fleet that there was no hope of recapturing the
and sailing her out of the harbor, so they determined she would burn instead. As to the fate of her crew, through intermediaries it was learned that Tripoli’s head of state was amenable to releasing them for a cash settlement, totaling some half a million dollars.
For centuries, the pirates of the Barbary Coast had raided all along Europe’s coastline, rampaging as far north as Ireland and Iceland. They had pillaged entire towns and carried captives back to North Africa, where the innocents languished as galley slaves, laborers, and, in the case of the more attractive women, as concubines in the various rulers’ harems. The wealthiest captives were given the chance to be ransomed by their friends and family, but the poor faced a lifetime of drudgery and anguish.
In order to protect their merchant fleets, the great naval powers of England, Spain, France, and Holland paid exorbitant tributes to the three principal cities of the Barbary Coast—Tangiers, Tunis, and Tripoli—so the raiders would not attack their vessels. The fledgling United States, having been under the protection of the Union Jack until independence, also paid a tribute of nearly one-tenth her tax revenue to the potentates. That all changed when Thomas Jefferson took office as the third President, and he vowed that the practice would cease immediately.
The Barbary States, sensing a bluff by the young democracy, declared war.
Jefferson replied by dispatching an armada of American ships.
The very sight of the frigate
The Bashaw of Tripoli wasn’t so impressed, especially when his sailors captured the USS
and renamed her
For five days after the Americans espied the
, protected by the one hundred and fifty guns of Tripoli’s inner harbor, the skies and seas raged in a battle as fierce as any aboard the two warships had seen. Despite the best efforts of their captains, the squadron became separated and drifted far to the east.
As bad as it was aboard the
faced during the tempest. Not only was the ketch much smaller than his ship, coming in at a mere sixty-four tons, but until the previous Christmas the
had been a slave ship called
Constitution
No amount of lye could mask the stench of the human misery.
The storm finally abated on February twelfth, but it wasn’t until the fifteenth that the two ships rendezvoused at sea and made their way back to Tripoli. That night, Captain Stephen Decatur, the squadron commander, convened a war council aboard the plucky little
. Henry Lafayette, along with eight heavily armed seamen, rowed over to join him.
“So you get to wait out the storm in comfort and now come aboard looking for glory, eh?” Decatur teased, reaching out to give Lafayette a hand over the low gunwale. He was a handsome, broad-shouldered man, with thick dark hair and captivating brown eyes, who wore the mantle of command easily.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, sir,” Lafayette replied. Though the two men shared the same rank, were the same age, and had been friends since their midshipmen days, Lafayette deferred to Decatur as the squadron commander and captain of the
.
Henry was as tall as Decatur but had the slender build of a master fencer. His eyes were so dark they appeared black, and in the native garb he had donned as a disguise he cut as dashing a figure as the legendary pirate they hoped to one day face, Suleiman Al-Jama. Born in Quebec, Lafayette had crossed into Vermont as soon as he turned sixteen. He wanted to be part of America’s experiment in democracy. He already spoke passable English, so he anglicized his first name from Henri and became an American citizen. He joined the Navy after a decade working the timber schooners of Lake Champlain.
There were eighty men crammed onto the sixty-foot ketch, though only a few wore disguises. The rest were to hide behind her gunwale or wait in the hold when the
sailed past the stone breakwater and into Tripoli’s principal anchorage.
“Henry, I’d like you to meet Salvador Catalano. He’s going to be our pilot once we near the harbor.”
Catalano was thickset and swarthy, with a massive bush of a beard that spread across his chest. His head was covered with a filthy linen turban, and in his belt was stuck a wickedly curved knife with a red semiprecious stone set into its pommel.
“I assume he didn’t volunteer,” Lafayette whispered to Decatur as he moved to shake the pilot’s hand.
“Cost us a king’s ransom, he did,” Decatur retorted.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Catalano,” Henry said, grasping the Maltese’s greasy palm. “And on behalf of the crew of the USS
“Good to have you with us,” Lafayette replied absently. His attention was already on his new, temporary home.
The
’s two masts stood tall, but several of her stays sagged, and the sails she presented to the wind were salt-crusted and oft-patched. Though her deck had been scrubbed with both lye and stones, a fetid miasma rose from the oak timbers. Henry’s eyes swam with the stench.
She was armed with only four small carronades, a type of naval cannon that slid on tracks mounted to the deck rather than rolling backward on wheels when fired. The men of the raiding party lay sprawled where they could find space on the deck, each with a musket and sword within easy reach. Most still looked like they were suffering the aftereffects of the five-day storm.
Henry grinned at Decatur. “Hell of a command you have here, sir.”
“Aye, but she’s mine. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Lafayette, no one has yet called you captain in all your years of service.”
“True enough”—Lafayette threw a smart salute—“Captain.”
Another night would pass before the winds picked up enough for the
to make her approach on Tripoli. Through a brass telescope, Decatur and Lafayette watched the walled city slowly emerge from the vast, trackless desert. Spread along the high defensive wall and sprouting from the ramparts of the Bashaw’s castle were more than a hundred and fifty guns. Because of the seawall, called the mole, which stretched across the anchorage, they could see only the tops of the
’s three masts.
“What do you think?” Decatur asked Henry, whom he had appointed his First Officer for the attack. They stood shoulder to shoulder behind the Maltese pilot.
Henry looked up at the
’s spread of canvas and at the wake trailing behind the little ketch. He judged their speed to be four knots. “I think if we don’t slow down we are going to enter the harbor long before sunset.”