CHAPTER 12

Preparing for War: Fresh Enemies and Money, Money, Money

HAMET AND EATON WASTED no time in leaving this armed Turkish camp. The host’s hospitality might evaporate in a mood swing or a new firman received. And even though Eaton had already scattered $500 around to various officers and guards, he found himself forced to promise to the Kourchief a very expensive gold watch to accelerate their departure. Eaton swore to send the jeweled timepiece immediately upon arrival in Alexandria. With their partnership just beginning in earnest, full-bearded Hamet rode alongside clean-shaven William. Though both men had longed for this meeting, they couldn’t chitchat or make plans easily because they both spoke bad Italian. Along with about forty of Hamet’s men, basking in the afterglow of their first good meal in weeks, they headed through the rich delta fields to Alexandria.

Half a day had gone well, then at a place called “English Cut” they were stopped by a troop of Turkish guards. Hamet presented a copy in Turkish of the viceroy’s firman allowing him to travel throughout Egypt. No discernible impact showed on the faces of the officers. By whose order were they stopped, Eaton demanded to know. He was told: the admiral of the Port of Alexandria.

Did not the viceroy rule all of Egypt? The question seemed legitimate. The admiral’s men informed Eaton that the viceroy’s jurisdiction ended at the low water mark, and that therefore the admiral considered it his responsibility to protect the coastline and all of Alexandria, since the town jutted out into the sea. The officers announced that the admiral refused to allow Hamet to embark at, disembark from, or enter Alexandria.

Now Hamet and Eaton had some quick choices to make. They were not arrested, but while Eaton could go to Alexandria, Hamet could not. So they decided that Hamet would circle to the south of Lake Mareotis and set up camp at an abandoned fortress, thirty miles from Alexandria, called Arab’s Tower.

More important, the two men now finalized a major strategy decision. Since Hamet couldn’t embark from Alexandria, he and Eaton would march across five hundred bleak miles of Libyan desert to attack Derne from the land side. If the U.S. Navy would not provide ships to carry troops . . . if the Turkish authorities closed the Mediterranean ports to them, then they would travel overland. As far as either man knew, no army in a thousand years had attacked Derne from the deserts of Egypt.

Their route, which would follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, would carry them into the northernmost Sahara, across the edge of the Great Libyan Desert. An avid reader, Eaton had not found one single detailed account by any travelers of this stretch of land; he knew it was a desert and not much else. He hoped to rely on Hamet, who had traveled the route once before, when fleeing his country. Eaton also knew they would have to rely on guides, camel caravan leaders, and local Bedouin tribes whose hospitality might determine whether they lived or died. All his hardships and exploits to this point would be nothing compared to the challenge of this desert.

Eaton and Hamet, together for all of forty-eight hours, now parted company. Eaton continued on horseback to Alexandria and to the Argus in the harbor. Hamet headed toward Arab’s Tower but would make it only a dozen miles to a seaside town called Marabout before deciding to pitch camp.

When Eaton reached Alexandria, rumors of renewed French-English battles were sending jitters through the seaside metropolis. The British consul, Samuel Briggs, heard that the massive French fleet led by Villeneuve, long bottled up in Toulon by Nelson, had escaped and was heading to Egypt; the French could be expected any day to offload the Grand Army.

Despite the chaos in Alexandria, Eaton hoped to recruit troops, drill them, buy provisions for them, hire a camel caravan, and be off on his way within two weeks. All this in a war-torn city, with supplies scarce and with suspicious city officials. To speed the process, he chose the obvious candidate for quartermaster, Richard Farquhar, a veteran of Mediterranean trade who had been lobbying for this post for two years in letters to President Jefferson and to Hamet. The Briggs Brothers also vouched for him. Farquhar intended to hitch his nonexistent merchant business to the regime change in Tripoli. On February 7, Eaton handed him the not so princely sum of $500 to amass supplies and recruits. The two men would chafe each other raw.

Within days, Farquhar informed Eaton that he had run out of money, was buying on credit, and would need more cash. Eaton gave him $250 more but demanded to see the accounts.

To Eaton’s military upbringing, Farquhar’s early bookkeeping was singularly cavalier. Eaton found fault with him—loudly and publicly. He must have really tongue-lashed the Scot because on February 12, a mere five days into his long-coveted job, Farquhar threatened to quit. He had developed a relationship of sorts with Hamet over the years, and he informed Captain Hull that Hamet had told him several times that he would never go overland to Derne unless Farquhar came along. So, convinced of his strong bargaining position, Farquhar high-handedly made an offer to the Americans to return to work: “I will do [the expedition] on the following conditions—Viz. that Mr. Eaton shall be more reserve in his manner of speaking, and that my account shall be paid up till today, and that at least one hundred and fifty men shall go from this to join the Bashaw, with three or four small guns, and [I receive] an agreement stating the pay and time of service.”

The Scotsman added that British consul Briggs would be pleased to settle the details. No record has survived of the string of curses with which Eaton greeted this offer. Farquhar sheepishly resumed his job as quartermaster.

Hull, beyond impatient and out of provisions and money, wanted to leave immediately to rejoin the squadron, which meant that Eaton must now plead his case in a letter to Commodore Barron for supplies and reinforcements. In brusque military fashion, Eaton noted his needs: three small navy vessels (to rendezvous with them at Bomba, a harbor east of Derne), two brass fieldpieces (capable of shooting four-pound balls) with balls and powder, and a hundred rifles with cartridges. He added that for the plan to be “beyond caprice,” he would need a hundred marines with fixed bayonets to deliver a “coup de main” (a deathblow).

He noted that he had already disbursed $10,000 (borrowed from the Briggs Brothers) and expected to need $10,000 more.

Turned down for funds so many times, Eaton knew the ill commodore was fiscally tight, especially toward this mission. So during his brief hours with Hamet he had quickly roughed out an agreement that called for complete repayment of expedition costs. “The Bashaw assures me,” Eaton wrote to Barron on February 14, “he will be able immediately to refund these sums when established in those provinces. And to indemnify the United States for all expenses arising out of a cooperation with him, he pledges the tribute of Denmark, Sweden and Batavian Republic in case of recovering his throne, which may be calculated upon as a certain event.”

The latter was a staggering concept—it’s unlikely that the irony was completely lost on Eaton. The United States, fighting to stop paying tribute to Barbary pirates, would receive the blood money of three European nations. Taking this gold would make the United States a beneficiary of Tripoli’s piracy and extortion. (This kind of fuzzy thinking on Eaton’s part infuriated lawyerly Jefferson.)

In addition, Eaton wrung a dazzling list of concessions from Hamet, which he now used to lure Barron into cooperating. Hamet promised to release all American slaves for free; he would stipulate a permanent peace with the United States; he would treat all future war captives as prisoners of war liable for exchange instead of as slaves; he would deliver Yussef, his family, as well as Murad Rais (Scotsman Peter Lyle) to American authorities; he would hand over any Tripolitan privateer vessels that had ever attacked a U.S. ship.

Eaton sweetened the entire request by painting a glowing picture of Barron’s future role. “You will have the glory of carrying the usurper a prisoner in Your Squadron to the United States and of relieving our fellow citizens from the chains of slavery without the degrading conditions of a ransom.”

Eaton folded the letter, applied wax, sealed it with his ring, and handed it to Captain Hull to give to Commodore Barron. Now all Eaton could do was to try to gather an army of mercenaries and then go traipse off into the desert, without enough supplies, food, or ammunition for a war or even to last them many days beyond the journey itself . . . on the hope, the slender hope that Commodore Barron would send the U.S. Navy to show up to save them at the far end of their 500-mile trek.

Would Barron’s ailing liver allow him to make prompt decisions? Would he be willing to spare the ships, guns, and men? Would he regard it all as outrageous tomfoolery? Eaton was wagering his life that Barron would deliver.

Hull was ready to weigh anchor, but Eaton convinced him to let him borrow a handful of men: Lieutenant O’Bannon and seven U.S. Marines, as well as two midshipmen, George Washington Mann and Pascal Paoli Peck. He sent his stepson Eli back on board.

On February 19, Captain Hull and the Argus left Alexandria for the thousand-mile voyage to Malta. (He would soon run into a horrific winter storm, pushing him off course.) Within days, Eaton finished formalizing his agreement with Hamet into what Eaton called a “Convention between the United States of America and his Highness, Hamet, Caramanly, Bashaw of Tripoli.” The document was signed by Hamet and Eaton, later witnessed by Lieutenant O’Bannon, Dr. Francesco Mendrici, and Pascal Paoli Peck, and a copy in English, Arabic, and Italian filed at the British consulate in Alexandria. The “Naval Agent” with imprecise responsibilities had just negotiated a fifteen-clause treaty.

While Alexandria braced for a French invasion, quartermaster Farquhar scrambled to find supplies. A desert trek required portable food that wouldn’t spoil: Farquhar was able to locate only 25 bushels of rice and 18 barrels (100 pounds each) of biscuits. He bulked out the fodder with beans (68 bushels) and barley (90 bushels). But, without a head count, who knew whether that would be enough for a month-long trek? The sloppiness of the planning galled Eaton. In the meantime, the Scot sent fresh mutton and goat and beef to Hamet’s camp and to the table at British House. Farquhar, who had spent time in Cairo with Eaton, made special effort to load in ample liquor both for current imbibing and for the trek, including 14 bottles of brandy, a bottle of rum for the doctor, and two 63-gallon hogsheads of wine. Military supplies almost seem to have been an afterthought: 100 flints, 48 stirrups, 5 saddles, a ramrod.

Farquhar submitted to Eaton a revised expense account. Prickly Eaton planted little x’s all over it, signifying denied charges. He singled out a huge sum of $622.83 and thickly underlined it and branded it: “Neither authorized, specified nor vouched—Inadmissable.” William Eaton, whose own consular expense account from Tunis had been denied, was clamping down. If those charges were disallowed for items already purchased, then Farquhar would have to reimburse Briggs Brothers out of his own—empty—pockets.

One afternoon, a new threat to the mission arrived out of the deep blue sea. A ketch darted into the port of Alexandria carrying a messenger from brother Yussef in Tripoli, who promised great rewards to the governor of Alexandria and the admiral of the port if they would arrest Hamet. Through a bribe to the governor’s translator, Eaton learned, however, that the messenger carried no gold or silver to back up his words and that in desperation he had started pleading for help, saying that Yussef might lose his throne. “If the [messenger] has not the means of touching a more sensible nerve than a turk’s pity,” observed Eaton, “[then] his case is forlorn.”

Despite Eaton’s plans inching forward, the New Englander still had one glaring missing item on his agenda: an army. He had persuaded Hull to let him borrow a handful of men. He still had some Cairo recruits, including a French musician and that eccentric Jean Eugene, but that was it. Anyone else would have to be hired from the human flotsam and jetsam stranded in Alexandria, the soldiers cast off by other armies or hiding from them.

Farquhar scoured for Christian mercenaries. Cripples were weeded out. He fortunately found an intact troop of thirty-eight Greeks—Spiro, Constantin, Cosmo, Giorgi, et al. under Captain Luca—and twenty-five artillery men of various nationalities, including French, Maltese, Italian, Coptic. Eaton, in an offhand comment, once described them as “principally old soldiers.” They might be cannon fodder for other armies, but they were Eaton’s stalwarts. The muster roll, with rare exception for some officers, lists only first names. (Many of them were probably deserters.) Some are identified as merely “the cook” or “the drummer.”

Farquhar still had to wrestle with the new recruits over their salaries and signing bounties. Back in Cairo, he had paid a $20 signing bonus, but now Eaton wanted him to be stingier, especially since an age-old trick among soldiers was to collect the bounty, then skip town. “I have endeavoured to perswead the men to take Eight Dollars telling them they would get Prize Money but they will not go for less than Ten Dollars. Therefore all is at a Stand which I am very Sorry for. They all want a Months advance. Their Officer will be Securety for them.”

Ten dollars a month, while still a low-end wage for men about to march across the desert, was more than privates in the U.S. Marines earned at the time. Eaton, a man in a hurry, agreed to the ten-dollar price tag, but he still regarded Farquhar’s inventories and expenses as all muddled. “You will immediately make out your account, supported by proper vouchers . . . The statement of your account will specify the dates, weights and measures . . . all articles will be reduced to English Standard.”

Hull had already been gone a week; Eaton wanted to leave town. “The delay in your account have already caused a suspense in our operations . . . the expedition will move the day after tomorrow morning, after which all your unclosed accounts, must be submitted to the department of the treasury of the United States to be audited, and passed or rejected, according to vouchers you may produce.”

Midshipman Pascal Paoli Peck delivered Eaton’s letter to the Scot and demanded any cash still on hand. Farquhar denied having any, and teenager Peck, inspired by mentor Eaton, loudly berated the older quartermaster.

All this time, Hamet and his forty followers were camped at Marabout, the spot where Napoleon had landed his army in 1798. By now, Eaton had discovered that Hamet had a second wife in Alexandria who lived there with their child and a black slave woman. (Hamet’s first wife and family were still hostages in Tripoli.) No doubt Hamet’s wife visited him. Farquhar also continued to take care of his old friend, delivering by pack ass a steady supply of various fresh meats, and even of tobacco and pipes. The two men, who had corresponded on and off for years, grew more intimate.

As William Eaton cracked down on Farquhar’s spending, Hamet made a very curious decision. He chose the Scot over the American. He wrote an unctuous note that implied that he wanted to abandon the Tripoli mission and instead sneak off with the Scot.

To our Friend and Son, Mister Fahr, English Merchant.

I inform you if God wills it, you are our friend, I swear by God if you will come to me it is no concern of anyone else. [Apparently Eaton had forbidden Farquhar from visiting Hamet.] You are like my son and not like the others, and when you come, you may do as you desire. If you come, you will be welcome, you are as one of my sons M’hamed and Omar and Ahosen.

I have need from you of a little money, and I will give you a letter written in my own hand; to you I owe much money, and you have spent much on me and I have much love and friendship for you.

The camels have arrived and we wish to depart with the money in safety. If you love me, you will get along with me better and better. Not to know all is to know nothing.

That last paragraph reeks of a getaway conspiracy. Hamet, with a life of setbacks, must have found Eaton’s passion and temper daunting. Hamet sent the note on February 28 and received no reply. (Maybe Farquhar found it dangerous to take Eaton’s money and saunter off with Hamet.)

Even British consul Briggs tried to help Farquhar, who was busy trying once again to deliver accounts acceptable to Eaton. He submitted them; the effort was doomed. At the very top of the muster roll from Cairo, Eaton found four phantom recruits; others listed as receiving $20 had been given $10, according to Eaton, who wrote in his notebook that Farquhar had “chiefly embezzled or misapplied” the bulk of $1,350. Eaton fired him.

Eaton had yet again refused to compromise and had made an enemy, and this very vocal enemy, it so happened, would head in the next month to Syracuse and Malta, where he would meet with two of the most important men in Eaton’s life: Commodore Barron and Tobias Lear. Upsetting Farquhar further was the fact that his own son George had decided to abandon his father and join Eaton’s expedition across the desert.

Yet another sideshow feud was going to make a hard mission harder.

Eaton, taking over the quartermaster job himself, raced to finish buying supplies and landing recruits. Tough men were hard to come by. While he never admitted committing the following recruiting caper on the French, he never denied it either. French consular records indicate that a fellow identified as “Roc Maltais” helped two criminals, a couple of soldiers named Angelo Agravanni and Bernard Semerelli, escape from the prison at the French consulate. (Eaton had hired three Maltese as couriers, and he had an officer named “Rocco” on the muster roll.) The French guards lost the trail and Roc Maltais led the escapees—possibly thieves or murderers—to the Bashaw’s camp at Marabout, where they enlisted in the American-Hamet expedition.

The French found out in a way that certainly seems like Eaton was taunting them. While running an errand at Colucci’s Pharmacy, Eaton’s personal servant told the druggist within earshot of the dragoman of the French consulate about the whereabouts of the escaped prisoners.

The French consul, Drovetti, found the insult totally unacceptable. He dashed off an angry protest to Samuel Briggs, British consul.

The world in 1805 was split into friends of Napoleon and his foes. The British diplomat wrote a carefully crafted reply stating that he could not contact Drovetti as a representative of the British government because of the state of war between the two nations; nor could he contact him as a representative of the U.S. government because he had no authority over American public officials. However, as a private citizen, he would relay the French consul’s complaint to Eaton. Briggs, with faux politeness, added: “I am persuaded that a regular report directed to him will receive all the consideration that it merits.”

Eaton’s reply to Drovetti was more direct. “My reports . . . [will] require your explanations to our respective governments and to the world for the open indignity you have shown the flag of the United States in this port . . . [and for] the singular insult . . . [of] your order, ‘French subjects in this city should have no intercourse with Americans.’ ” Finally, he expressed his “extraordinary outrage” that Drovetti had accused them of spying on the Turks.

Eaton had once again exacerbated a public dispute and transformed it into a personal quarrel. Antagonizing the French consul would quickly reap unpleasant consequences. The following week, Drovetti would hire a special courier to deliver to Bashaw Yussef in Tripoli a detailed report of the American-Hamet troop strength and of their plans to attack Derne. Eaton’s surprise attack on Derne would be no surprise.

On March 2, 1805, William Eaton directed supplies to be loaded onto a lateen-sailed djerm to carry them from Alexandria to Marabout. The mission was finally nearing its start. Once the dockworkers had finished loading all the sacks and barrels, Turkish guards immediately seized the vessel and the American supplies. Simultaneously, a troop of Turkish soldiers began the ten-mile march to Marabout to arrest Hamet. French intrigue might have caused the crackdown, or maybe Yussef’s emissary had borrowed some money for bribes.

Eaton sent a messenger racing to Marabout to warn Hamet. Never the warrior, Hamet decided to flee to the desert. Exact details haven’t survived—because Eaton rarely wanted to memorialize Hamet’s cowardice—but Lieutenant O’Bannon in command of seven marines changed the prince’s mind. “The firm and decided conduct of Mr. O’Bannon prevented their movement,” wrote Eaton tersely.

In Alexandria, Eaton applied to the British consul Samuel Briggs for help. Since Briggs, along with his two brothers at Briggs Brothers, had already lent Eaton $10,000, Samuel had a huge incentive to protect him from disaster. (Foreign consuls then could supplement their incomes; oftentimes, their schemes dovetailed with home office policy.)

Briggs investigated the problem. “We found . . . a supervisor of the revenue, who had not yet been bought,” he told Eaton. Cash was delivered; the small vessel departed carrying supplies. The Turkish troop was recalled.

On Sunday, March 3, Eaton and Midshipman Peck arrived at Marabout, where they found an odd disjointed army camped by the Mediterranean. Hamet—to his credit—had succeeded in landing a troop of about two hundred Arab cavalry from a nearby tribe, who agreed to join the mission. Their encampment sprawled over an open field. In another spot was Hamet’s Tripoli entourage, which had swelled to around ninety. Bivouacking in yet another area were Eaton’s 75 Christian mercenaries, in various uniforms from earlier stints, including Greeks, Italians, Maltese, a Tyrolean, several French. Near them in U.S. Marine uniforms were stationed Lieutenant O’Bannon and his seven U.S. Marines. Dozens of Arab baggage and camel handlers filled out the scene. The sound and smell of camels mixed with the sea breezes.

In theory, Eaton commanded this entire troop. His “Convention” with Hamet specified that Eaton “be recognized as General, and Commander in Chief of the land forces . . . and said Highness, Hamet Bashaw, engages that his own Subjects shall respect and obey him as such.”

Bereft of a quartermaster, Eaton found himself forced to negotiate for camels. It seems extraordinary that this agreement should have been hammered out so near the day of departure. With Hamet helping translate, Eaton struck a deal, or so he supposed, that Sheik Tayyib would supply 190 camels at eleven dollars a head for the journey to Derne. It’s unclear how much Eaton paid in advance, but in any case, the sheik quickly “raised fresh demands for cash,” as Eaton wrote in his travel journal. “[He] seemed determined to retard the march until his pretentions were satisfied,” complained Eaton. “Pacified him with promises.” The following day, at the start of the march, Eaton counted 105 camels.

So begins yet another contentious relationship for Eaton, one that would jeopardize their lives.

The motley band set off on a desert path for Arab’s Tower, a fortress that from the sea appears like a tower. The freestone fortress walls are five feet thick and thirty-two feet high.

The march was so disorganized that most of the camels and baggage straggled far behind and had to catch up. Just as their caravan began snaking along the dry road, a messenger on horseback raced to catch up with them. The Briggs Brothers—perhaps fearing that Eaton’s own navy would abandon him—offered to send a shipload of food to Bomba. He declined.

Midshipman Peck in a letter captured the first day’s events.

After marching near 40 miles in a burning sun, buoyed with the idea of finding water at the end of our march, we found on encamping, not the least sign of water nor was a green thing to be seen. All hands were employed in clearing out the well but were so thirsty and fatigued they could hardly move. For myself, not having taken the precaution to procure a small skin of water to carry on my horse, had it not been for a few oranges I had, I should hardly have been able to move next morning. I laid myself down on my bed to sleep but I could not, being for the first time in my life almost dead with thirst. Had I possessed thousands I would have given them for a gill of water.

Five hundred more miles of desert stretched out before them. The Americans had no map; they didn’t speak Arabic; Eaton didn’t trust his guides, and they didn’t trust him. The bleached bones of dead horses and camels were scattered in the area around this unexpectedly dry water hole.

Eaton quickly learned that the physical challenges of the trek would be made far worse by simmering religious hatreds between his Moslem and Christian troops, and by the conniving of the greedy camel drivers, who could halt the caravan. At many moments of life-and-death crisis ahead, he also would learn uncomfortable truths about his man Hamet.