Decatur's Revenge

Details: By Edwin P. Hoyt

1804

The Path to Glory

It was Commodore Preble's war now, and he was still sore as an unlanced boil over the capture of the Philadelphia. His men were laboring on what the grinning Barbary pirates called the American Fort, to add to the British Fort and the French Fort, all bastions built by Murad's prisoners. Well, if Stephen Decatur had anything to do with it, there would be no American Fort, nor would there be any Bashaw on the throne of Tripoli.

The harbor was shaped like a giant U with the reefs forming one side, the landing the other, and the City of Tripoli, the castle and the battery dead center at the bottom of the U. The beautiful simplicity of Decatur's plan was to ignore the channel and approach straight through the reefs.

Even Commodore Preble put the odds at 100 to one against their success. Decatur knew better, but sailed ahead...