ing with the
Barbary pirates than by feebly paying them tribute, and in 1801 a small
squadron, under Commodore Dale, proceeded to the Mediterranean.

At the same time events occurred which showed strikingly the absurdity
as well as the weakness of this policy of paying blackmail to pirates.
The Bashaw of Tripoli, complaining that we had given more money to
some of the Algerian ministers than we had to him, and also that we had
presented Algiers with a frigate, declared war upon us, and cut down the
flag-staff in front of the residence of the American consul. At the same
time, and for the same reason, Morocco and Tunis began to grumble at the
treatment which they had received. The fact was that, with nations as
with individuals, when the payment of blackmail is once begun there is
no end to it. The appearance, however, of our little squadron in the
Mediterranean showed at once the superiority of a policy of force over
one of cowardly submission. Morocco and Tunis immediately stopped their
grumbling and came to terms with the United States, and this left us
free to deal with Tripoli.

Commodore Dale had sailed before the declaration of war by Tripoli was
known, and he was therefore hampered by his orders, which permitted
him only to protect our commerce, and which forbade actual hostilities.
Nevertheless, even under these limited orders, the Enterprise, of
twelve guns, commanded by Lieutenant Sterrett, fought an action with the
Tripolitan ship Tripoli, of fourteen guns. The engagement lasted three
hours, when the Tripoli struck, having lost her mizzenmast, and with
twenty of her crew killed and thirty wounded. Sterrett, having no orders
to make captures, threw all the guns and ammunition of the Tripoli
overboard, cut away her remaining masts, and left her with only one spar
and a single sail to drift back to Tripoli, as a hint to the Bashaw of
the new American policy.

In 1803 the command of our fleet in the Mediterranean was taken by
Commodore Preble, who had just succeeded in forcing satisfaction
from Morocco for an attack made upon our merchantmen by a vessel from
Tangier. He also proclaimed a blockade of Tripoli and was preparing
to enforce it when the news reached him that the frigate Philadelphia,
forty-four guns, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, and one of the best
ships in our navy, had gone upon a reef in the harbor of Tripoli, while
pursuing a vessel there, and had been surrounded and captured, with all
her c