A Call to Arms (24 page)

Suddenly, a Tripolitan sailor watching the approach of
Intrepid
saw something he didn't like. “Americans!” he shouted. “Americans are aboard!”

The captain of the Tripolitan guard ordered a halt to the proceedings and demanded to know if the ketch carried any Americans as crew.

“Certainly not,” Catalano shouted back indignantly in Arabic. “This is a Maltese trader with only English and Italians aboard.”

The Tripolitan captain believed him and ordered
Intrepid
to be hauled in closer. The whistle-blower, however, remained adamant.

“They are Americans!” he shouted again, this time almost pleading. “They are Americans, I swear it!”

Whether it was the man's certainty or because his own suspicions had been aroused, the captain of the guard ordered the line cut. Only a few feet of water separated the two vessels.

Catalano, his self-confidence rattled, yelled aft to Decatur, “Board, Captain! Board now!”

Decatur drew his sword and held it high in the air. “Belay that!” he roared. “Obey no order but mine!”

As a Tripolitan sailor raised an ax to slash the towrope, the Americans heaved on the rope one final time, propelling
Intrepid
forward just as the line was severed. Izard swung the tiller over to bring the starboard hull of the ketch gently alongside the larboard hull of the frigate.

Decatur leapt up onto
Intrepid
's elevated bulwarks and from there onto the frigate's mizzen chain-plates. “
Board
!” he commanded. As he made to jump down, his foot slipped and Midn. Charles Morris sprang past him, the first to set foot on
Philadelphia's
quarterdeck.

Decatur and the volunteers followed close on Morris' heels while the oarsmen in the cutter quickly overpowered the Arabs in the launch and rowed hard for
Philadelphia.
Four men carried lighted lanterns in double bags joined by a strap passing over one shoulder and connecting under the other arm—leaving both hands free to fight enemies who, stunned by the wave of Americans scrambling over the frigate's larboard railing, had backed up in defensive positions across the deck. Several of them jumped overboard. Others, attempting a rally, called on Allah and charged the Americans, their short, scimitar-like swords held high. One muscular Arab came directly at Jamie Cutler, in the front line of attack, and slashed down violently with his sword. Jamie raised his own sword to defend, but too late. The savage blow knocked the weapon from Jamie's hand and sent it slithering across the deck. Jamie groped for his pistol, but the Arab was too quick for him. He lunged in with his fist, striking Jamie on the jaw and knocking him backward and down. The Arab raised his sword high for the kill, his dark eyes flashing hatred.

Jamie, barely able to focus his eyes, saw a glint of silver to his left as a blade pierced the Arab under his ribs, its sharp point and edges tearing, ripping into vital organs, penetrating ever deeper, all the way to the hilt. The Arab, eyes bulging, arched his back and his sword clattered onto the deck. He fell to his knees, blood dribbling from his mouth, and leaned forward as if in a final prayer to Allah. Seaman John Stokes withdrew his blade from the bloody heap and then, for good measure, ran it through at the base of the Arab's neck, execution-style.

Jamie struggled to his feet. “Thank you, Stokes,” he said numbly, his gaze stuck on the Arab's butchered corpse. “Thank you most kindly.”

“My honor, Mr. Cutler.” Stokes whirled around in search of new prey, crouching low, his left arm out, his sword clutched firmly in his right fist. But he found no one to accommodate him. Five Arabs lay dead on the deck. Others had leapt overboard and were either drowning or swimming for shore.
Philadelphia
was once again under American command.

“Anyone injured?” Decatur shouted to the volunteers gathering around him.

No one was.

“Right. We must move fast, men. You know your orders. Squad leaders, transfer the combustibles from
Intrepid
and proceed below. We meet back here on the gun deck in five minutes. Five minutes! That is all the time you have. Roundly, now!”

As the volunteers sprang to action, Decatur scanned the weather deck. He discovered nothing of note except on the quarterdeck, where he found the 32-pounder carronades, salvaged from the waters where
Philadelphia
had gone aground, loaded with powder and shot. He glanced ashore. No alarm had been raised, either within the city or aboard the Tripolitan warships anchored nearby. Likely, those Arabs who had abandoned
Philadelphia
had not yet made it to shore. He beseeched God for fifteen more minutes.

When Decatur clambered below to the gun deck he confronted a sight more in keeping with a Christmas Eve church service than a desperate raid on a captured warship. Thirty Americans stood silently before him, each man holding a candle lit from one of the four lanterns. The illumination effect was beautiful, magical, ethereal. Even the bowsed-up guns seemed transformed from instruments of destruction into symbols of something sacred. Decatur paused just a moment to take it all in.

“Right, lads,” he said quietly, as if unwilling to intrude upon such sanctity. “Squad leaders, repair to stations. Wait for my order.”

“Squad One, to me,” Jamie Cutler called out. The five men assigned to him, each carrying a candle and combustibles, followed him down the forward companionway one deck below to the berthing deck. At the forward part of the ship, near the manger, they dumped paper, straw, odd scraps of wood and rope, anything and everything that would burn in a conflagration. When the combustibles were gathered in a pile, Jamie sprinkled a container of turpentine onto it and waited . . . and waited . . . until Decatur shouted down through the hatchway above.

“
Fire
!”

Jamie and the men in his squad set their candles against the pile as Decatur ran along the deck above them, shouting the order to the other squads waiting on the berthing deck. One by one, four other piles of combustibles burst into flames.

Jamie grabbed a lantern from a sailor named Freese and hurled it into the blaze. The glass shattered, spilling sperm oil that fueled the flames to greater heights and intensity. By now they almost reached the deckhead. Thick gray smoke curled about the forecastle, a living thing seeking the blessing of oxygen. It found it, through the hatchways.

“Everyone topside!” Jamie cried.

When he followed his squad up the ladder, he found Decatur, Morris, Izard, and Lawrence scrambling up to the gun deck. Decatur made a quick survey. Satisfied by what he saw, he pointed upward. “There's no more for us to do here, lads,” he shouted over the crackle and sizzle of hot burning timbers. “It's time to shove off!”

Decatur, bringing up the rear, was followed up the companionway by tongues of flames that hissed up to the lower shrouds, instantly setting them ablaze. Melting tar dripped onto the deck. After a wild last look about the frigate, Decatur ran past the stump of the foremast and leapt aboard
Intrepid.

“Every man accounted for?” he demanded of James Lawrence.

“Every man, Captain.”

“Then douse our sails lest they catch fire. Man the cutter to turn us around.”

“I've seen to that, Captain,” Lawrence said. “We're turning as we speak.”

Ashore and within the warships in the inner harbor, Tripolitans had by now awakened to the disaster unfolding in the harbor. Warning bells clanged furiously, and the shouts and curses of angry men could be heard in the distance. Cannons thundered into the night, sending up plumes of water all about
Philadelphia
and
Intrepid.
Musket balls peppered the sea perilously close by.

Oarsmen in the cutter heaved on their oars. Gradually, as if reluctant to abandon a sister ship in her anguish,
Intrepid
turned northeastward and slid away from
Philadelphia.

“Run out the sweeps!” Decatur shouted.

At his command, sixteen sweeps, eight to a side, rumbled out of ports on the ketch's weather deck, their wooden blades digging into the water, rising, falling, rising, falling, until
Intrepid
had gathered sufficient way for the oarsmen in the cutter to ditch their little boat and scramble aboard
the ketch. One of the last men up, a topman named Edwards, took a hit in the arm from a musket ball, lost his grip, and splashed into the sea.

“Man overboard!” Decatur cried out. “Back oars, you men!”

Even as his captain spoke, Ralph Izard swan-dived into the water and swam over to the struggling topman. He seized Edwards around his upper torso and sidestroked the short distance back to the ketch. Eager hands reached down, took hold, and dragged both men aboard.

Oars dug in and found traction, and
Intrepid
was back under way.

Ignoring the enemy gunfire raging about them, those on the weather deck of
Intrepid
not assigned to the oars crouched down, gazing not ahead to safety but astern, mesmerized by the destruction they had wrought.
Philadelphia
lay engulfed in an inferno, a towering funeral pyre that had reached up to her tops, then to her mizzen masthead, and beyond into the heavens. Tongues of dragon fire darted out from her gun ports and scuppers. When flames consumed the ensign halyard and the flag of Tripoli came undone and fell into the harbor like a kite that had lost its wind, a great cheer went up from the ketch. Several seamen cracked jokes.

“Belay that!” Decatur admonished. “We're not out of this yet!”

Then the impossible happened. In a final act of defiance—perhaps, if one believed in such things, orchestrated by the spirit of John Paul Jones on the quarterdeck—the great guns on
Philadelphia's
weather and gun decks exploded from the heat, discharging an unholy broadside against the city walls and into Yusuf Karamanli's naval fleet. The damage could not be readily assessed. But to the immense relief of Decatur and every American in
Intrepid,
the enemy cannon fell silent, their gunners apparently stunned to the core by the specter of an American ghost ship firing on them.

Later, after midnight, as
Intrepid
ventured into the Mediterranean under an overcast sky, Decatur peered astern through a spyglass. All he could determine was that
Philadelphia's
anchor cables had burned through and the furiously burning frigate had drifted into shallow water directly beneath the bashaw's castle.

Later still, after
Intrepid
and
Syren
had reunited and yellow streaks of sun were flirting with the eastern horizon, captains and crews could still observe black smoke rising into the sky above the corpse of
Philadelphia,
now forty miles away to southward.

A
FTER
Intrepid
AND
Syren
had stood out from Syracuse Harbor for Tripoli and the violent gale had blasted through the region, Commodore
Preble dispatched his squadron on patrol between Syracuse and Tripoli. Their mission: to intercept enemy shipping and, should the opportunity present itself, act in support of
Intrepid
and
Syren.

Preble designed a three-sided, viselike strategy that cordoned off the central Mediterranean to enemy vessels. Master Commandant Isaac Hull was ordered to take position off Cape Misurata, 125 miles east of the city of Tripoli. Enemy cruisers and merchantmen attempting to hug the North African coast on their way to or from the eastern Mediterranean would find the 16-gun brig of war
Argus
there to greet them. Lt. John Smith in
Nautilus
and Lt. Richard Somers in
Vixen
cruised between Derne and Benghazi, two key enemy seaports in the eastern provinces of Tripoli.
Portsmouth
was stationed between Cape Bon in Tunisia and the western tip of Sicily.

Portsmouth
had been at sea for two weeks when she returned to base in Syracuse to take on fresh food and water. Only the flagship and the schooner
Enterprise
were lying at anchor when she arrived.
Intrepid
and
Syren
were conspicuously absent.

Richard Cutler, his anxiety for his son almost overwhelming, reported to Commodore Preble in the flagship's after cabin and informed him that he had not observed a single enemy cruiser or merchant vessel of consequence while out on patrol, just the usual feluccas, small xebecs, and innocuous fishing craft indigenous to the area. Preble acknowledged and then broached the subject weighing heavily on each man's mind.

“I must inform you, Captain Cutler, that as of yet we have received no word from either
Intrepid
or
Syren.
”

“I understand, sir. But it's only been two weeks.” Richard realized he was stretching the truth: in fact it was coming up on three weeks since the two vessels had departed Syracuse, longer than a “hit-and-run” raid across the Mediterranean should have required. Left unspoken was his worst fear, that the vicious gale of early February had cast the two vessels onto a lee shore and that all hands had either drowned or been taken prisoner. Preble no doubt harbored similar fears, Richard thought to himself as the two men stared across the table at each other. After several moments of silence, Richard collected his hat and said, in the measured tone of a naval commander, “I shall be returning to station, sir, as soon as
Portsmouth
is resupplied.”