By Joan Brown Wettingfeld
On May 10, 1815, Capt. Stephen Decatur took command of a 10−ship fleet setting sail for Algiers, his mission to end the raids of the Barbary pirates on American commercial shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. This sounds familiar today, as we may one day soon have to embark on a similar mission.
As it turned out, on July 26, 1815, Decatur had Tunis sign a treaty in which it agreed to halt interference with American commercial shipping in the Mediterranean, cease tribute demands from the American government and make restitution for the American vessels it allowed the British to seize during the War of 1812.
Shortly thereafter, on Aug. 5, 1815, Decatur made Tripoli adopt a treaty guaranteeing the cessation of raids on American commercial shipping in the Mediterranean, release of American prisoners without ransom and dropping of all demands for American tribute. Tripoli was to compensate the United States for American vessels also seized by Great Britain as prizes in consort with Tripoli during the War of 1812.
Piracy, history reveals, has been around as long as man has used the oceans as trade routes. The earliest documented evidence of piracy harkens back to the seafaring peoples who threatened the Aegean and Mediterranean seas in the 13th century B.C. Pirates in antiquity also included Greeks and Romans. The Island of Lemnos remained a haven for Thracian pirates and Phoenicians often resorted to piracy, especially to kidnap boys and girls to be sold as slaves.
By the first century B.C., pirates along the Anatolian coast threatened the commerce of the Roman Empire. From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, pirates raided the coasts of Europe while Muslim and Arab pirates terrorized the Mediterranean.
Unconventional and ruthless pirates are not new to the United States. As we have noted, more than 200 years ago, our newly established nation made an early attempt to protect its citizens against an enemy that could not be called “conventional” — i.e., pirates and piracy. The focus was on the Barbary pirates from Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco and Algiers, who were plundering the Mediterranean.
Before the United States obtained independence, it was protected from the North African pirates by the naval and diplomatic power of Great Britain. During the Revolution, we were protected by our alliance with France, which required the French to protect American vessels and effects against all attacks by pirates and the Barbary states or their subjects.
After we won our independence in 1789, however, the United States had to protect its own commerce. In 1784, Congress, following the tradition of European shipping powers, appropriated $80,000 as a tribute to the Barbary states. But a year later, in July 1785, Algerians captured two American ships and the Dey of Algiers held 21 people for a ransom of $60,000. U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson opposed paying tribute, but he was not successful in forming an association of powers with articles for a special confederation. The plan fell through.
Believing paying ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson continued to argue that paying tribute would alone invite more demands. By 1795, the United States was forced to pay nearly a million dollars in cash, naval stores and frigates to ransom 115 sailors from the Dey of Algiers.
When Jefferson became president in 1801, he would not accede to Tripoli’s demands and the Pasha of Algiers declared war on the United States. It was then that Jefferson sent a small squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean.
Jefferson was not deterred by criticism. Aggressive action in 1803−04 by Commodore Edward Preble forced Morocco out of the fight while five bombardments did the same for Tripoli. Some order was restored to the Mediterranean so that by December 1806, Jefferson was able in his sixth annual message to Congress to state that, in addition to the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition, “the states on the coast of the Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship.”
Joan Brown Wettingfeld is a historian and freelance writer.
