Abstract WAGING WAR ACROSS the OCEAN by Seth C. Warburton July, 2011 Chair: Dr
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Abstract WAGING WAR ACROSS THE OCEAN By Seth C. Warburton July, 2011 Chair: Dr. Michael Palmer Major Department: Program in Maritime Studies The Barbary Wars, fought against Tripoli from 1801-05 and Algiers in 1815, were among the first overseas operations for the young United States Navy. Historians have explored the combat that took place and chronicled the daring deeds of some of America‟s first military heroes. Also heavily explored are the impact of these conflicts on both the navy and the nation‟s place in the world. Inadequate attention, however, has been paid to how the wars were managed and won, and that is the focus of this study. Commanders‟ decisions outside combat proved far more important than any heroics they displayed in battle. The commodores had a wide range of duties and significant latitude in the direction of their squadrons. The lack of previous naval operations in the Mediterranean and the long time required for cross ocean communications necessitated this. In a war with few actual engagements, commanders made their most important decisions away from the battlefield. Each year of the conflict, a new commodore relieved the old. Comparing the success of each with that of his predecessor and successor allows an evaluation of each commodore. From the miserable tenure of Richard Morris to the brilliant victory of Stephen Decatur Jr., each commodore demonstrated that good decision-making in areas such as supply, fleet disposition and negotiation outweighed the importance of heroics in battle. WAGING WAR ACROSS THE OCEAN A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Maritime Studies East Carolina University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of the Arts By Seth C. Warburton July, 2011 ©Copyright 2011 Seth C. Warburton WAGING WAR ACROSS THE OCEAN By Seth C. Warburton APPROVED BY: DIRECTOR OF THESIS:_______________________________________________________ (Michael A. Palmer, PhD) COMMITTEE MEMBER: _______________________________________________________ (Wade G. Dudley, PhD) COMMITTEE MEMBER:________________________________________________________ (Nancy L. Spalding, PhD) COMMITTEE MEMBER:________________________________________________________ (Carl E. Swanson, PhD) CHAIR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY:____________________________________________________________________ (Gerald J. Prokopowicz, PhD) DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL:_____________________________________________________________________ (Paul J. Gemperline, PhD) TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: RICHARD DALE 10 CHAPTER 2: RICHARD MORRIS 33 CHAPTER 3: EDWARD PREBLE 62 CHAPTER 4: SAMUEL BARRON 119 CHAPTER 5: STEPHEN DECATUR 162 CONCLUSION 184 BIBLIOGRAPHY 188 INTRODUCTION Before the thirteen colonies broke with Great Britain, ships owned in America conducted a significant overseas trade. After the United States achieved independence, its merchants quickly began to re-expand their commercial operations around the world. Their ships became pawns, however, in the European wars of Britain and France. The heavy-handed practices of both of these nations sparked open conflict with the United States. The War of 1812 against Britain and the Quasi-War with France both sprang from this source. The piratical North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers, collectively referred to as the Barbary States, also preyed on American merchant vessels. With the exception of Morocco, geography largely confined the Barbary raiders to the Mediterranean, as their ports bordered the southern shore of that sea. The Pre-Independence trade of the Americans to that sea itself, however, was still a significant part of the whole. “Eighty to one hundred ships, annually, of twenty thousand tons, navigated by about twelve hundred seamen,” carried American wheat, flour, fish, and rice through the Straits of Gibraltar.1 This trade languished in the days immediately following the revolution because of the Barbary nations‟ depredations. Pirates captured three vessels before the Americans had even ratified the Constitution: the Betsy by Morocco, and the Maria and Dauphin by Algiers.2 The only Barbary state with Atlantic ports, Morocco, signed a treaty of peace with the United States on 28 June 1786, which Congress ratified 18 July of that same year.3 Morocco promptly released the Betsey, and American trade outside the Mediterranean gained a measure of safety. Hopes were 1 Thomas Jefferson, Mediterranean Trade: Report of Secretary of State to the Congress of the United States, in Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers, 1785-1801, U.S. Office of Naval Records and Library (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1939), 1: 22. 2 Thomas Jefferson, American Prisoners at Algiers: Report of Secretary of State to the President or the United States, in Naval Documents, 1: 18. 3 U.S. Department of State, “Treaty with Morocco,” 18 July 1787, in Naval Documents, 1: 6. high that the United States could reach a similar agreement with Algiers, strongest of the Mediterranean Barbary powers. These efforts largely failed, and only the Portuguese, also at war with Algiers, prevented continued serious losses to American shipping by closing the Straits of Gibraltar to pirate cruisers. The British, however, engineered a twelve-month truce between Portugal and Algiers in 1793.4 Though this did not grow to a lasting peace, Algerian vessels were still able to escape to the Atlantic where they inflicted severe depredations on American ships, capturing eleven vessels in less than two months.5 This presented a crisis, forcing the government of the United States to act. Congress took steps to appease Algiers with money and naval stores. There was recognition, however, that force would eventually be necessary. On 27 March 1794, therefore, Congress approved the creation of an American navy for the express purpose of protecting trade from the “depredations committed by the Algerine corsairs.”6 Because of the Quasi-War with France, the Navy was unable to act in the Mediterranean until 1801. Though the United States had secured treaties with all of the Barbary States, those with Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis demanded large sums of money, and the ruler of each constantly threatened war, demanding more payment. When the United States finally decided that the good “faith of Pirates … [was] but a feeble dependence” on which to place the stake of American commerce and international respect, they were forced to resort to war.7 The Barbary wars that followed, fought between 1801 and 1805 with a brief resumption of hostilities in 1815, were filled with the heroism of the new United States Navy and Marine Corps. This is how historians usually remember them. 4 Edward Church, Circular to Citizens of the United States, in Naval Documents, 1: 50. 5 James Simpson to Thomas Jefferson, 25 Nov. 1793, in Naval Documents, 1: 55. 6 U.S. Congress, An Act to provide a Naval Armament, 27 Mar. 1794, in Naval Documents, 1: 69. 7 Edward Church to Thomas Jefferson, 22 Sep. 1793, in Naval Documents, 1: 45. 2 Many authors have already examined the Barbary Wars, a topic that has inspired numerous books. These works generally focus on one or both of two main themes: terrorism or the birth of the U.S. Navy. Because the 200th anniversary of the start of this conflict occurred simultaneously with the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, several recently published works examine the Barbary conflicts with the goal of comparing them to the modern day. “In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks … the United States found itself in a new war much like the one two centuries earlier. … In truth the Barbary War was America‟s first war on terror.”8 These works are largely concerned with the response of the nation to the pirates, comparing them to modern terrorists. “The nation was forced to confront, for the first time, the vital question of … whether to give in to or actively fight against terrorism.”9 These authors draw the parallels of religious animosity, racial tension, government authority to wage war, and power projection problems overseas between the Barbary Wars and the modern conflicts faced by the United States. Even those works written before the modern War on Terror use language such as “holy war of Muslims against the infidel invader” and “dictators ruling in the name of Allah” to overemphasize the religious aspects of the war.10 A second group of books uses the Barbary Wars to examine the birth of the U.S. Navy and the growing pains of the young United States. They see the conflict as “an extension of America‟s War of Independence.”11 After winning their independence at home, at a time “when the nation‟s future prosperity was very much in doubt,” Americans began to assert their rights overseas and made a statement “to the rest of the world that the United States was not a country 8 Joseph Wheelan, Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror 1801-1805 (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003), xvii. 9 Joshua E. London, Victory in Tripoli: How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Built a Nation (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 11. 10 A.B.C. Whipple, To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 5. 11 Frank Lambert, The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 8. 3 to be mocked or bullied.”12 When the United States deemed war necessary, the “confrontation with Barbary pirates would give birth to the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps.”13 “Thus, a little band of petty despots along the Barbary Coast were in large part responsible for the formation of the United States Navy and Marine Corps, and not least for weaning a new nation from infancy to adolescence.”14 Some of these works focus on the military, and others on the situation of the United States in the world, but all embrace the theme of coming of age, whether they mean the United States as a whole or the nation‟s naval service.