Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/158

1803. frigate, and brought her under the guns of the castle. The officers became prisoners of war, and the crew, in number three hundred or more, were put to hard labor.

The affair was in no way discreditable to the squadron. Morris had been recalled in disgrace for over-caution, and Bainbridge was required to be active. The Tripolitans gained nothing except the prisoners; for at Bainbridge's suggestion Preble, some time afterward, ordered Stephen Decatur, a young lieutenant in command of the "Enterprise," to take a captured Tripolitan craft re-named the "Intrepid," and with a crew of seventy-five men to sail from Syracuse, enter the harbor of Tripoli by night, board the "Philadelphia," and burn her under the castle guns. The order was literally obeyed. Decatur ran into the harbor at ten o'clock in the night of Feb. 16, 1804, boarded the frigate within half gun-shot of the Pacha's castle, drove the Tripolitan crew overboard, set the ship on fire, remained alongside until the flames were beyond control, and then withdrew without losing a man, while the Tripolitan gunboats and batteries fired on him as rapidly as want of discipline and training would allow. Gallant and successful as the affair was, it proved only what was already well known, that the Tripolitans were no match for men like Decatur and his companions; and it left Preble, after losing in the "Philadelphia" nearly one third of his force, still strong enough to do the work that needed to be done.