catur’s raid and pronounced it “the most bold
and daring act of the age.” Buoyed by success,
on August 7, 1804, Preble led his ships into
the harbor and commenced a two-hour bom-
bardment of Tripoli. This act affected no
change. But when coercion failed to convince
Karamanli to sue for peace, the Americans
then resorted to outright subterfuge. Taking a
captured Tripolitan vessel, renamed Intrepid,
Lt. Richard Somers loaded it with explosives
and set sail, intending to ignite the charge
once under the bey’s castle. However, disaster
struck when the ship exploded prematurely,
killing Somers and his 12-man crew. Shortly
after, Preble was relieved by Capt. Samuel
Barron, a less aggressive officer, and the Bar-
bary War slipped into a stalemate.
Jefferson, however, was determined to un-
dermine Karamanli’s regime by any means
possible. In November 1804, he conferred
with William Eaton, a former diplomat, who
proposed raising an army in Egypt, over-
throwing Yusuf Karamanli, and reinstalling
Karamanli’s brother, the deposed Hamet, to
the throne. Thus was born one of the more
quixotic episodes of American military his-
tory. Eaton arrived in Egypt, linked up with
Hamet, and began recruiting an army. He
ended up with a motley assortment of 1,000
Arabs and Greek mercenaries, stiffened by an
eight-man contingent of U.S. Marines under
Lt. Presley O’Bannon. Eaton subsequently led
his comic-opera force 600 miles across burn-
ing sand to the port of Derna, east of Tripoli.
The city fell to a combined assault of Eaton’s
adventurers and a small naval squadron under
Capt. Isaac Hull, on April 27, 1805. The follow-
ing month, the conquerors handily repulsed
3,000 of Karamanli’s supporters, and it ap-
peared that Eaton’s outlandish strategy might
succeed after all. Nobody was more aware of
this than the bey himself, who after the fall of
Derna decided it would be wiser to negotiate
with the Americans. His compliance was un-
doubtedly hastened by a prolonged bombard-
ment of Tripoli by the American fleet on June
1–3, 1805. Much to Eaton’s outrage, the Amer-
ican Consul Tobias Lear then signed a peace
treaty with the bey that recognized the legiti-
macy of his rule and ransomed the Philadel-
phia’s crew for $60,000. In exchange, he
promised to forgo tribute payments and stop
harassing American shipping. Both sides were
apparently pleased by the result. Hamet,
meanwhile, accused the Americans of negoti-
ating in bad faith and returned to exile in
Egypt. As a final concession to peace, Yusuf
allowed Hamet’s wife and children, held in
prison, to accompany him.
The Karamanli regime observed the terms
of the peace treaty until the War of 1812
erupted between England and the United
States. With the navies of both countries tied
down in other theaters, the pirates resumed
their freebooting activities. Their fun ceased
on August 5, 1815, when a powerful American
squadron under Stephen Decatur—now a
commodore—anchored into Tripoli Harbor.
Karamanli, who so vigorously resisted puny
American forces 10 years earlier, now
blanched before the prospect of a rematch.
This time, he paid out $25,000 for seizing
American ships and again promised to cease
piratical activities. Four years later a com-
bined British-French armada paid him a call
for similar reasons and secured the release of
several thousand Christian slaves. The bey
then continued to rule his subjects with an
iron hand until 1835, when, faced by the
prospects of civil unrest, he abdicated in
favor of his children. However, that year a
resurgent Ottoman Empire dispatched a
strong squadron to Tripoli, and they disposed
of the corrupt and unpopular Karamanli dy-
nasty altogether. The entire family was then
deported in chains to Istanbul, with the ex-
ception of Yusuf. In light of his advanced age,
he was allowed to live as a prisoner in his
own castle, dying there on August 4, 1838.Bibliography
Allison, Robert J. The Crescent Obscured: The United
States and the Muslim World, 1776–1815.New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995; Dearden, Seaton. A
Nest of Corsairs: The Fighting Karamanlis ofKARAMANLI, YUSUF