Combat· First Barbary War
First Attack on Tripoli
On August 3, 1804, Commodore Edward Preble's squadron attacked the harbor of Tripoli.
Six gunboats went in as two divisions, under Captain Somers and Captain Stephen Decatur. Decatur's division closed with the enemy's eastern division, fighting with pistol, sabre, pike and tomahawk. Captain Decatur boarded and took two Tripolitan gunboats, and Lieutenant Trippe boarded and carried a third. Lieutenant James Decatur was shot through the head while boarding a boat that had struck to him. On the Constitution, Captain John Hall and Lieutenant Robert Greenleaf with their U.S. Marines worked six long twenty-six pounders on the spar deck. Sergeant Jacob Boston stated ten Marines under Lieutenant Trippe fired five rounds of musketry into an enemy gunboat, which hauled down her colours, and then boarded her. The squadron captured three gunboats and 52 prisoners. Preble's return gave Lieutenant Decatur as the only American killed, with four Marines wounded: a sergeant in Gunboat No. 4, two in Gunboat No. 6, and one in the Constitution, where a shot shattered his arm.
Podcast episodes on First Barbary War
Record no. 902