CHAPTER 23

Wounded and Restless

WILLIAM EATON AND HIS victorious mercenaries headed sullenly to Syracuse, underappreciated and eager to drown their sorrow in whatever spirits the navy would spare. The evacuation of Derne had soured Eaton and his officers, as did the lack of congratulations for their role in imposing peace. The crowded ship Constellation fought contrary winds and tacked its way northward. One hundred men—Eaton’s 35 Greek mercenaries, 25 artillerymen, and Hamet’s 40-person entourage—camped out on the deck or curled up in whatever uncluttered space they could find. A navy frigate was serving as a ferryboat.

No one has left an account of daily shipboard life, but letters written later imply the weeklong voyage was no celebration. The sense of betraying Hamet hung in the air like a foul odor. No one rejoiced at handing Yussef $60,000; no one toasted Tobias Lear, commissioner of peace.

Eaton arrived in Syracuse, the unofficial headquarters for the U.S. Navy in the Mediterranean, on June 23, 1805, two days before Mr. and Mrs. Lear would arrive with Rodgers from Malta on the Constitution. Eaton’s mercenaries still called him “General,” but to Captain Campbell and the other officers of the U.S. Navy, he was now politely addressed as “Mr. Eaton.”

Syracuse, population 12,000, was an impoverished, intensely Catholic backwater on the island of Sicily, just outside the French Napoleonic domination of mainland Italy. Church and opera dominated the place. Midshipman Ralph Izard Jr. called Syracuse “detestable” and once said that despite having liberty, he hadn’t bothered to set foot onshore for six weeks.

The Constellation anchored in the harbor near the Vixen and President; Captain Hull in the Argus arrived soon after and then came the Essex. The scattershot American fleet was finally gathering in one place.

Eaton had absolutely no money except what he could borrow from navy officers. His main concerns were to get his mercenaries paid by the navy and fed as well—no small feat in a bureaucracy. He convinced local navy agent George Dyson to provide 95 rations a day on the promise that Eaton would soon clear it with Commodore Rodgers. Of greater urgency, Eaton wanted to provide for Hamet, now and for the future, and then to get out of the Mediterranean and go home. While undertaking these tasks, Eaton complained to anyone about the rushed peace.

Mr. and Mrs. Lear arrived in port on June 26, but Mrs. Lear said she found the heat oppressive onshore (or maybe she found the town dull or Eaton threatening), but in any case she chose to remain day after day aboard the American flagship and Tobias hovered at her side. The only documented face-to-face meeting in Syracuse between Lear and Eaton would take place in a week, and it would be harsh.

On Saturday, June 29, Eaton, restless and irritable, found himself drafted for an unusual task. He was asked to serve as judge advocate for a U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry. The case was the conduct of William Bainbridge during the grounding of the Philadelphia on October 31, 1803. Eaton, normally impassioned, seems to have performed his duty in a singularly lethargic fashion.

The extremely formal proceedings lasted a few hours aboard the President in Syracuse harbor; clearly, by the tenor of the questions, little appetite existed among the three captains on the panel—James Barron, Stephen Decatur, Hugh Campbell—or Eaton to probe too deeply into the matter. Bainbridge, the most gaunt of all the prisoners, had suffered for eighteen months.

The most aggressive question was the first: “Had you any boats sufficient to carry out an anchor?” The answer of no by Lieutenant Porter, accompanied by the statement that the enemy had command of the waters where the anchor needed to go, seemed to defuse the probe immediately. Eaton asked only one perfunctory question: “Did you notice anything of remissness or neglect in her commander which would tend to the loss of the Philadelphia?”

The court of inquiry ruled that Bainbridge had acted “with fortitude and conduct” and “no degree of censure should attach itself to him from that event.” Case closed. The thirty-one-year-old New Jersey native would be free to resume his career.

Eaton now tried to rally support for Hamet. The prince, anticipating that Eaton would leave soon, had just sent him a farewell letter that was both poignant and pathetic. It reeked of a Moslem man eager not to be abandoned in a Christian land, of a royal heir in need of a new meal ticket, but it also showed Hamet graciously refusing to blame his misfortunes on Eaton. (A copy would be sent to President Jefferson.)

“I cannot forbear expressing to you, at this moment of our final separation, the deep sense of gratitude I feel for your generous and manly exertions in my behalf. . . . It is true my own means were small. I know indeed they did not answer your reasonable expectations. And this I am ready to admit is a good reason why you should not chuse to persevere in an enterprise hazardous in itself and perhaps doubtful in its issue. I ought therefore to say that I am satisfied with all your nation has done concerning me—I submit to the will of God and thank the King of America and all his servants for their kind dispositions towards me.”

Hamet then asked Eaton for a monthly stipend and for a U.S. Navy ship to go pick up his family.

On July 1, Eaton gained a brief meeting with Rodgers. He apparently had little opportunity to recount his victory at Derne or his march across the desert, but Eaton did lobby for Hamet and did inform Rodgers that he would need $6,000 to pay off his troops. Eaton said he would give receipts for the sum, and he also offered to “hold [himself] responsible” for the amount. Once again, Eaton was putting his personal credit on the line to make sure his government acted honorably.

Eaton also repeated his request that he wanted to return home. His first choice of transport was not a frigate but a U.S. supply ship because he had learned that the Ann of Baltimore intended to take in salt at Cagliari in Sardinia. Eaton had no hankering to lie on the beach; he told Rodgers he hoped to recover a debt owed to him by Count Porcile. (Relentless Eaton was still chasing that down-at-the-heels nobleman.)

Commodore Rodgers, weighing Eaton’s request to pay off his mercenaries, resented the New Englander’s abrupt tone. Rodgers demanded “a pay roll, with a statement of contingent expenses.” Rodgers had been the junior officer back in Tunis when Commodore Morris bailed Eaton out of his $32,000 debt. As for food for Eaton’s mercenaries: “It is totally out of my power to order subsistence for Men that have not been reported to me, agreeable to the regulations prescribed by our Service. The Governor has this Ins.t made a complaint to me of some of the Greeks, landed here by the Vessels from Derne, having committed various outrages on the Inhabitants of the Town—I can only say on this subject that these people are accountable to the laws of the Land . . . and no interference of mine shall rescue them.”

Yet another commodore was mucking with Eaton. Navy agent Dyson stopped feeding the European soldiers on the Fourth of July.

Sometime during that day of national celebration, it appears that Eaton finally got a chance to tell his tale of adventure to Commodore Rodgers. Maybe it was during the endless rounds of toasts that evening aboard the Constitution. The ship, fitted out with patriotic bunting and banners, was the site of a gala ball for navy officers and for the town’s leading citizens and local aristocracy. (Several silver spoons would later be found missing.) A half dozen U.S. Navy ships bobbed proudly nearby, flags flapping. Eaton, at some point in the festivities, mesmerized the officers with his extraordinary tale of finding Hamet in Upper Egypt, coaxing him down the Nile, and shepherding him on that desperate desert march.

Two days later, gruff Rodgers performed a complete about-face in his approach to Eaton and Hamet. In a letter to the secretary of the navy, Rodgers called Eaton’s mission “that Singular expedition.” (For Rodgers, that adjective denoted high praise; he called the pint-size U.S. gunboats crossing the Atlantic Ocean “a singular phenomenon [which] will greatly astonish all Europe.”)

Rodgers stated that he would immediately order the $6,000 paid to the Greeks and the rest of the mercenaries. “If it was double the Sum, policy dictates that it should be paid, and this you will no doubt be convinced of after reading the accompanying correspondence.”

Rodgers also committed to paying $200 per month to support Hamet and his entourage in Malta or Messina and said he hoped one day to send him to the United States, if Hamet would agree. “He is a helpless unfortunate being and humanity dictates that something ought to be done for him.”

Eaton was informed of all this good financial news. His loyal troops were paid off and dismissed; Hamet could survive on his allowance, but one matter still rankled him: Hamet’s family held hostage in Tripoli. Our three hundred prisoners were free; Hamet deserved his wife and five children.

So, Eaton in his typical direct manner, arranged a meeting in Commodore Rodgers’s cabin aboard the Constitution. He was rowed out through the harbor to the tall frigate, its sails furled, the American flag flapping. Eaton climbed over the side. He was no longer in a homemade general’s uniform but in civilian clothes.

When he entered the cabin, he saw Tobias Lear standing alongside Commodore Rodgers. Eaton repeated to Rodgers his request for a small naval vessel, a brig perhaps, to go pick up Hamet’s family “agreeable to the treaty.” Aboard the gently rocking ship, Eaton continued to press his point. He later recalled of the meeting: “I urged the measure as a just claim on our national honour and our humanity, till at length Mr Lear observed, that it would be useless at present to send for Hamet’s family; for that it was expected by the reigning bashaw, that they were not to be claimed until Hamet should be so withdrawn and so situated as to remove all apprehensions of his ever further attempting to regain his kingdom.”

Eaton was flabbergasted. No one recorded his angry words to Lear. Perhaps he restrained himself in the presence of the commodore. From this moment on, he began to suspect “a secret engagement on the part of the commissioner of peace.” Eaton soon queried other officers and heard rumors that the United States had no plans to compel Bashaw Yussef to return Hamet’s family. Commodore Rodgers, a friend of Tobias Lear’s, accepted the commissioner’s advice and refused to send a brig.

This refusal, which Eaton blamed on Lear, infuriated him, and he started drinking a bit more and changing and rechanging his plans for leaving the region. He didn’t sail on the Congress, President, or Ann. He lingered.

***

Over in Tripoli, mercurial Bashaw Yussef began to alter his perception of his peace treaty. While the $60,000 had saved him from disaster, nonetheless the sum was a far cry from the $1,000,000 he had once expected for his hostages. Also, his corsair fleet was in shambles, his finances still dire, and he feared the tough U.S. peace accord would embolden other countries to reduce their payments. Diplomat Zuchet reported that Yussef was acting even “more ferocious and barbarous” than usual. Yussef began to view the most trivial errors by his subjects as major crimes and started personally inflicting the punishments. “Recently, the Bashaw tired himself to the point of exhaustion beating a miserable wretch, who had tried to use the royal name to buy wheat . . . and then, to fully assuage all his rage, he poked the man seven or eight times in the genitals with the point of his dagger.”

The Bashaw’s rage was also felt at Derne. Eaton had written that Barron would have wept to see how the Americans were loved and respected for helping the townspeople. Now those same townspeople were being hunted down by Yussef’s henchmen. Many of Derne’s leading citizens were kidnapped and never reappeared. “This has the look of a ruined country,” wrote Zuchet.

It was an odd, unpleasant summer on the Mediterranean for some officers of the U.S. Navy as well. The precipitous end to the war with Tripoli seemed to throw the navy into a kind of malaise. Bickering and backbiting abounded. Rodgers made some remark about Commodore Barron dallying and preferring not to fight. (The exact remark hasn’t survived.)

Captain Bainbridge soon boarded the Constitution and informed Rodgers that Captain James Barron had heard that Rodgers had spoken disrespectfully about his brother Samuel, “for which aspersion he would call on him to answer in a proper place and a proper time and that Commodore Barron’s illness prevented him from doing it immediately.”

Rodgers wasn’t the least bit cowed by this threat, especially since the Barron brothers and Bainbridge were sailing later that same day for the United States aboard the President. Rodgers said he fully expected to hear from Barron in America. As Bainbridge made ready to exit, Rodgers added: “Tell him if I do not hear from him, I shall impute it to a want of . . . what no Gentleman who wears a uniform should be deficient in.” Bainbridge later wrote about his reaction to that insult. “Presuming he alluded to ‘courage,’ I replied I would not deliver such a message.” (Some might have presumed Rodgers referred to “testicles.”)

A couple of weeks later, by mid-July, seven gunboats arrived from America (too late to fight against Tripoli), and Jefferson’s armada of six frigates, four brigs, two schooners, one sloop, and numerous gunboats were now all dressed up in the Mediterranean with nowhere to go. Rodgers took many of the ships to Tunis and rattled his saber, and wrote about wanting to make the Bey “call for mercy on bended knees.” Ultimately, however, Tobias Lear, who handled the negotiations for Rodgers, allowed the Bey of Tunis to wriggle off the hook. Lear agreed to delay the final settlement until after a Tunisian minister, Soliman Melli-Melli, went on an all-expenses-paid diplomatic trip to the United States. (Secretary Madison, acting as a good host, would later approve the cost of hiring a Greek prostitute for Melli-Melli, and would expense the item under “appropriations to foreign intercourse.”)

After Tunis, Tobias Lear arranged for a vacation with his wife in Catania on Sicily, a town famed for its ancient buildings built of volcanic stone. When headwinds prevented a small boat from getting them there, Rodgers assigned the navy schooner Enterprize to carry the consul general and his wife to the historic locale. After that, they took a leisurely two months to return to Lear’s post as consul in Algiers.

By then, William Eaton was homeward bound, stewing in his bitterness, inexpressibly eager to recount his version of the events that had ended the U.S. war with Tripoli and to criticize the administration for caving in just when the United States could have set an example for the world by defying the Barbary pirates. He was convinced that no ransom needed to have been paid, that the consular present should have been officially abolished, and that no dollar figure should ever again be attached to freeing an American. The squandered opportunity galled him, and he intended to place the blame squarely and loudly on Tobias Lear and Thomas Jefferson.