CHAPTER 8

The Mission: Eaton Unleashed

JUST AFTER DAWN, Commodore Samuel Barron in the privacy of his cabin aboard the USS President off the coast of Tripoli handed a set of orders to Isaac Hull, the thirty-one-year-old captain of the brig Argus. William Eaton stood nearby and recorded what happened next in an entry in his notebook under the heading “Secret Verbal Orders of Commodore Barron to Captain Hull . . . in the presence of the undersigned . . . Sept. 15, 1804.” Both Eaton and Hull later signed it as witnesses, and Eaton gave three additional signed copies to officers to carry home to the United States.

Eaton stated that Commodore Barron said the following to Isaac Hull.

Sir,

The written orders I here hand you to proceed to the port of Alexandria or Smyrna for the purpose of convoying to Malta any vessels you may find there, are intended to disguise the real object of your expedition, which is to proceed with Mr. Eaton to Alexandria in search of Hamet Bashaw, the rival brother and legitimate sovereign of the reigning bashaw of Tripoli, and to convoy him and his suit[e] to Derne or such other place on the coast, as may be determined the most proper for co-operating with the naval force under my command. . . .

Should Hamet Bashaw not be found at Alexandria, you have the discretion to proceed to any other place for him, where the safety of your ship can be, in your opinion, relied upon.

The Bashaw may be assured of the support of my squadron at Bengazi or Derne where you are at liberty to put in, if required. And you may assure him also that I will take the most effectual measures with the forces under my command for co-operating with him against the usurper, his brother, and for re-establishing him in the regency of Tripoli.

William Eaton appeared finally to have a U.S. Navy ship ready to take him to his first destination in search of Hamet. However, conspicuously absent from Hull’s “Secret Verbal Orders” was any mention of supplying arms, ammunition, or money. Barron was, in effect, approving the transporting of Hamet with naval support for Hamet’s war efforts. Eaton and Captain Hull left the President and at 8 A.M. boarded the Argus, which set sail for Malta. They arrived about forty hours later at midnight on September 17.

Now Eaton had a ship, and according to his notebook entries, he fully expected to leave for Alexandria within a day or two. But he still had no money. He dashed off a furious letter to Don Antonio Porcile. He opened with no chitchat or gracious greeting but launched very abruptly with the words: “It seems you have wholly mistaken the intentions of my government in consenting to the release of your daughter Anna.” Then Eaton stated he had drawn a bill of credit upon one Charles Wadsworth for the sum of $8,354 (the loan plus interest), payable on sight, “which I have no doubt you will honor.” (It was a bluff for money on Eaton’s part, and Wadsworth, a U.S. Navy purser, would never secure a penny from Porcile.)

Eaton, still furious over his lack of funds, also scribbled a testy note to Secretary of State Madison, also beginning abruptly: “I request you will be pleased to cause information to be forwarded from the office of the Department of State by which I may learn on what grounds . . . the Chevalier Antonio Porcile of Sardinia founds a pretext of having been released.” Eaton explained that he had been counting on that money to finance his mission. “This disappointment embarrasses exceedingly my calculations as I am left wholly without an alternative.”

Exasperated, Eaton also complained in a letter that same day to the secretary of the navy. “Commodore Barron declares he does not consider any construction of the President’s instructions will justify him in furnishing cash, arms and ammunition to Hamet Bashaw.” Eaton added that therefore, he must reluctantly retract his offer not to receive a salary and requested that he be allowed to draw his salary of $1,200 to use to finance his mission.

Eaton’s frustrations boiled over. “I cannot forbear expressing on this occasion the extreme mortification I suffer on account of my actual situation: destitute of commission, rank or command, and I may say, consideration or credit.”

Despite the hurdles, Eaton remained doggedly determined. “I hope to be organizing my saracen militia on the plains of Libya in order to bring them to the field next spring,” he wrote to a Federalist friend, Colonel Dwight. And he stated if Barron denied him supplies, “I shall be compelled to draw on the enthusiasm of Arabian resentment . . . as a substitute for field artillery, muskets, cartridges, flints, &c.—for I shall not abandon the object.”

On the verge of embarking, Eaton suddenly lost his one firm asset: the ship. The Argus, after a season in the winds off Tripoli, needed caulking, but no caulkers were to be found at Malta or Syracuse. So it was decided that the Argus would sail to Messina in northern Sicily. Also, Commodore Preble (the honorific title Commodore remains for life) wanted to return eight gunboats and two bomb boats he had borrowed from the King of Sicily. Preble requested that Hull in the Argus shepherd the loaner vessels to Messina. Since the caulking would take a week or more, the senior officers decided instead of sailing and killing time in Messina, they would take a little excursion to see Europe’s tallest active volcano.

So crusty Preble, dashing Decatur, dogged Eaton, along with two other officers and an Italian hotel owner, set out to make a 95-mile overland trip from Syracuse to Messina.

Eaton, who wanted nothing but to train an army, found himself on a weeklong tourist trip on horseback on deeply rutted Sicilian roads. Preble complained about “the torments sufferd from bugs & fleas.” Eaton barely mentioned seeing Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, and spending a day at Lake Lentina. The edgy patriot made a bad tourist. This New Englander’s longest comments dwell on being appalled by the poverty and ignorance of the deeply religious Catholic peasants. He notes that only a revolution will rid the region of the wealthy priest class. More cheerfully, he mentioned enjoying the company of Edward Preble and Stephen Decatur, and he clearly spent hours asking them about their summer naval exploits off Tripoli. (A month later, Eaton would produce a 10,000-word account of naval operations, complete with a swashbuckling version of Decatur wrestling the huge Turkish captain.) The friendship with Preble, which would continue until Preble’s death, would prove crucial to Eaton’s pursuit of his mission.

With an early morning start on October 5, the group reached Messina, an ancient port on the tip of Sicily, and found that the navy ships had already arrived for repairs.

For a week, the harbor echoed with the sound of hammers striking the flat-bladed caulking irons to drive the tar-laced hemp deeper into the seams. Once the Italian shipworkers had embedded caulk in every seam of the brig, the hull had to be sanded smooth, then painted. No fires were allowed anywhere near the oil-based paints.

Finally, on October 18, the Argus was ready to sail from Messina to Syracuse, where she would spend a few days while Preble handled government business there. Syracuse, an impoverished port full of devout peasants and one glorious opera house, often served as unofficial U.S. Navy headquarters for the region. Eaton, with no ability to order anyone, had no choice but to go along and wait.

Some of the wait was endured by visiting the British consul, Mr. Gould Leckie, who happened to have as a houseguest an odd pudgy entertaining young man, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The poet had already written “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan,” but there’s no indication that the Americans knew they were in the presence of literary genius. None of the Americans were impressed enough to include Coleridge in their notes or letters; the poet, however, would mine material, especially from Decatur and Eaton.

Coleridge, about to celebrate—morbidly, of course—his thirty-second birthday, had come to Malta and Sicily to escape his dejection back in England over marrying the wrong woman. “He has had no calamities in his life,” once commented Robert Southey, the poet laureate, “so contrives to be miserable over trifles.” Perhaps that assessment was a bit harsh. Coleridge was deeply in love with one Sara Hutchinson, and he was still fighting a constant battle against opium addiction. He arrived in Malta earlier that year in May 1804, eventually took up lodgings in the palace headquarters of the British governor, Sir Alexander Ball, and by October was well into a three-month “working holiday” in Syracuse. He clearly wasn’t winning all his battles with opium. In one Syracuse diary entry, he devotes an entire page to describing how he could squint his eyes while looking through mosquito netting and make the “french grass-like streaks” on the netting multiply and multiply on the walls.

On October 19, Eaton and the Americans chatted with Coleridge, who made notes about a story that Decatur told. A pair of Indians had ambushed an American family, massacring everyone except two boys, aged nine and eleven, whom they hauled toward the Indian camp. They passed the first night on the road, and the Indians drank a bottle of wine and fell asleep. The older brother “put up the musket to the ear of one of the Indians, & placed his little brother there to fire it off.” The eldest stood with a tomahawk over the other Indian. He gave the signal; the little one pulled the trigger, the elder swung the hatchet, and the boys escaped. Orphaned, they went to sea and wound up serving under Decatur, who told Coleridge he would introduce him to his cabin boys.

The following day, Coleridge marked his birthday. “O Sorrow & Shame! I am not worthy to live—Two & thirty years.—& this last year above all others!—I have done nothing.”

Eaton—ever trying to do something—dashed off an angry letter to an old enemy, Captain Alexander Murray, the one who had refused years earlier to aid him in the Hamet scheme. In the United States, Murray had apparently refused to fight a duel with him, so Eaton informed him that he would take his revenge another way. He would write a history of the Tripolitan War that would expose Murray as a coward and a hypocrite.

Preble finished his business, and the Argus, carrying Preble and Eaton, traveled to Malta, arriving on the night of October 23. The port of La Valette boasts one of the finest natural deep-draft harbors in the world, running inland almost two miles, with the city on a high spit of land. The harbor throat, or entrance, a mere four hundred yards wide, is flanked by huge batteries of cannons. The land surrounding the harbor is steep enough “that the largest ships of war might ride out the stormiest weather almost without a cable,” according to an American officer. The city, built on a hill, contained streets so nearly vertical that steps had to be carved into the stone. The sun glinted blindingly off the white freestone houses.

British quarantine rules, which required seven days’ wait for all ships coming from Sicily, kept restless Eaton on board ship in the harbor. He took the time to read the logbooks to help him on his history of the naval war. He planned to write of Preble’s heroics, which would glow in sharp contrast to the laziness and cowardliness of Eaton’s enemies, Murray and Morris; each word of praise would be a dagger to Murray.

Eaton, after all the waiting and forced sightseeing, expected to leave any day for Alexandria when Commodore Barron suddenly decided on October 27 to dispatch the Argus to go look for the ships on blockade duty: Congress, Constellation, and Nautilus. Barron had received news of a severe gale off Tripoli and wanted the Argus to check for damage and replace any ships, if necessary. Eaton’s mission clearly rated bottom end.

To make matters worse, Eaton discovered that Barron was deathly ill and growing almost incapable of making decisions. Barron had already spent ten days onshore in Syracuse trying to recuperate; he had tried reboarding his ship, but he only grew worse from what was described as “an affection of the liver.” The commodore who, when well, had been vague and polite toward Eaton, was now so ill that he could hardly think straight. Eaton, never the most politic one, didn’t hesitate to write the truth to the secretary of the navy: “The physician Doc Cutbush has been under serious apprehensions of alarm . . . and I much fear [Barron] will not have sufficient health to transact the business . . . preparatory to the operations of next spring and summer.”

At the end of October, Eaton found himself marooned in Quarantine Harbor of Malta, awaiting the return of the Argus. He grew even crabbier; everything set him off. He scribbled in his notebook that while his friend Dr. Babbit, also of Massachusetts, had just received a letter from home dated September 2, he hadn’t received any mail from his wife, Eliza. He had sent her a letter “three months and six days” earlier. “Why not an answer!” he fumed in thick letters, etched deep in his notebook.

Around this time, Colonel Tobias Lear, the new U.S. negotiator for Barbary, who with his wife had taken up residence in civilized Malta, paid Eaton a visit. Lear had himself rowed out in the harbor. The meeting was conducted politely, but the men barely concealed their disdain for each other. From Eaton’s point of view, Tobias Lear during that visit looked Eaton in the eye and told him a bald-faced lie. He informed Eaton that Thomas Jefferson refused to grant permission to American consuls to pay tribute to Tunis or Tripoli. (Eaton, of course, had already read the April 9, 1803, State Department document allowing tribute, preferably in secret.) “I have sometimes seen a brave man dishonest,” wrote Eaton of Lear. “I never saw a coward who was not.”

Eaton and his new friend, Preble, were Old Testament on the subject of tribute: The honor of the United States forbids the payment of a single penny to Barbary pirates in public or in private. He railed in his notebook that Jefferson was abandoning his own position on not paying tribute. “To secure himself in the secrecy of this disgraceful secession, [he] has placed his entire confidence, relative to our diplomatic intercourse with Barbary, in a man who has only distinguished himself for his treachery to the memory of the man who created him.” Eaton was referring to the fact that Lear had jumped from working for George Washington, the king of Federalists, to serving Jefferson, arch-Republican. Eaton, in quarantined limbo, seemed to be becoming a bit unhinged. Across the top of one page, he scrawled: “Colonel Lear not to be leered at!!!” Three exclamation points and two underlines.

Lear, for his part, despised Eaton as well. On November 3, Lear in a long letter to Secretary of State Madison wrote a starkly negative assessment of Eaton’s mission. “I presume the co-operation of the Brother of the Bashaw of Tripoli will not be attempted. Our force is thought sufficient to compel him to terms without this aid, and in any event it is very doubtful whether he has it in his power . . . to render us service. He is now in Egypt, driven by his brother from Derne, where it is presumed he might have made a stand, had he been a man of any force or influence; which from the best accounts I can collect, he is not.

“Indeed I sh^.d place much more confidence in the continuance of a peace with the present Bashaw, if he is well beaten into it, then I sh^.d have with the other, if he should be placed on the throne by our means.”

Lear stated that the rumors of the U.S. naval preparations appeared sufficient to bring Tripoli around to negotiate a reasonable peace treaty and ransom. He mentioned that in the spring he expected to accompany Commodore Barron to Tripoli “in order to be ready to treat with the Bashaw, if he sh^.d desire it; before we make an attack.” (The word before would prove ominous and prophetic.)

Barron and Eaton shuttled back to Syracuse, a place where lax quarantine laws would allow them to go ashore immediately. Barron’s health was worsening, and he wrote to Captain Rodgers, “I am so unwell to Day that I can scarcely write at all & am totally unfit for business—God knows how it will End.”

Finally on November 10, Commodore Samuel Barron, thinking himself near death, issued orders for the Argus, which had returned, to carry William Eaton to Alexandria. Barron had received some favorable reports about Hamet and, amazingly, he ordered Captain Isaac Hull to aid Eaton. “If on your Arrival in Egypt it should be found necessary to furnish any Stores, Ammunition, Money &c. for the Service of the United States, in aid of the intended cooperation with Hamet Bashaw, you are hereby Authorized to supply Mr. Eaton with such as may be wanted for that purpose, and can be spared from the Argus Brig under your command—taking his receipts & Vouchers for the same.”

A smallpox outbreak on board the Argus slowed the ship’s exit. Some of the sick men were ferried ashore to a new U.S. hospital that Barron was setting up in Syracuse. The ship was fumigated, and at least one sailor, Lev White, died and was consigned to the deep outside the harbor. (No one wanted the corpse to wash ashore.)

Eaton took advantage of these last few days prior to leaving. First off, he made certain not to visit Barron, who was recuperating at a country house outside the city. Eaton must have been afraid that Barron would change his mind. Eaton’s excuse, given a week later to Barron, is completely unconvincing. Eaton, who had trekked alone on the Mississippi and scouted Indians in Spanish Florida, claimed that he tried twice to find Barron’s house in the evening and once missed to the left and the next time to the right.

One can easily find another motive in Eaton’s avoiding Barron. The New Englanders, Eaton and Preble, were cooking up a little end run to help Eaton embark on his mission. Preble wrote a note to Sir Alexander Ball, British governor of Malta, a longtime friend. (Preble had once commissioned a fishing boat to be built in America and sent to Ball by way of thanks for help in fighting Tripoli.) Preble wrote: “Commodore Barron being at present sick in the Country for the recovery of his health, I take the liberty of introducing to your Excellency William Eaton, U.S. Naval Agent for the Barbary States. Mr. Eaton is going to Egypt, and wishes to obtain a letter of introduction from your Excellency to some Character of your acquaintance. Any attentions you may please to shew Mr. Eaton will be considered as an additional obligation to the many which your Excellency has already confered on . . . Edward Preble.”

With the French long evacuated from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, Sir Alexander Ball ranked among the most powerful men in the entire region.

Eaton, ready to depart early the following day, took one last crack at landing more supplies. (He clearly knew that the brig Argus—carrying 140 men—held but a trifle of what he needed, and that Barron might be delirious.) Eaton yet again wrote to the secretary of the navy.

On further consideration, I am of opinion that the supplies of arms and ammunition to be loaned [to Hamet] should come out from America. . . . Brass field pieces, well mounted, and excellent french arms are ready at Springfield; and as this place is in the vicinity of Hartford, the best port in the United States, perhaps for shipping salt beef, 14 brass 4p^.rs and 500 or a thousand stands of arms may be sent out from thence. Good muskets, powder, flints and balls; and suitable ammunition for the Artillery will be necessary.

Presuming on the perseverance of Government in the resolution you expressed to me last spring of furnishing those supplies I shall assure the Bashaw accordingly. If cash be loaned him, of which he will stand in need, I desire it may be under regulations which will impose no responsibility on me.

That last sentence marks one of the very few times that William Eaton showed any fiscal caution. At that moment, under tentative calculations at the Treasury Department, Eaton owed the enormous sum of $40,000 to the government. He clearly did not want this new mission to put him any further in debt; in fact, his best chance for escaping ruin was a victory by Hamet, which would halo Eaton.

At 6 A.M., on Wednesday, November 14, Captain Hull maneuvered the Argus out of Syracuse harbor. Eaton had agreed to take two men along on his mission: Richard Farquhar, the scheming entrepreneur with vague ties to Hamet, and Salvatore Busatile, consul in Sicily for Hamet Bashaw. Farquhar had been sending on average a letter a month to a U.S. official or even to the president himself, offering to help in aiding Hamet. His last letter of October 15, this one to Commodore Barron, reported that a famine in Derne and Bengazi made those two locales ripe for insurrection. He offered to arrange for boats or supplies or men. On board ship, he told William Eaton that his spies had told him that a vessel bound with grain for Tunis was actually smuggling arms and ammunition to Tripoli. The other passenger, Busatile, had written a letter to Commodore Barron on November 1 stating that Hamet had a large army ready to cooperate with the United States, that the United States could keep all prize ships captured, and that he would pledge eternal peace with the United States and would repay any money advanced to him. More immediately, the consul relayed that Hamet requested $10,000 to enable him to capture Derne and Bengazi. (Barron never replied; around this time, Midshipman William Allen in a letter home wondered whether Barron would live or not.)

At midnight on November 15, the Argus traveled south and arrived in Malta. British quarantine officers refused to let the men of Argus ashore, and the following day, Eaton sent Preble’s note, via shore boat, to Sir Alexander Ball. The secretary receiving the note was apparently none other than Coleridge, who had returned to Malta to take a low-level post in Ball’s administration. Later that same day, Eaton received Ball’s prompt reply, which included letters of introduction to Samuel Briggs, British consul at Alexandria, and to Major E. Missett, the British “resident” (agent) at Cairo.

The letters from Ball were quite strongly worded. “I request that you will assist him and do everything in your power to accelerate his business. Every attention paid him will be considered an obligation conferred on . . . your very faithful and obedient servant Alex. Jn.o Ball.” Ball also sent a package and some letters for Eaton to deliver to these civil servants in Egypt.

So while Eaton had not a single piece of paper from his own government authorizing him or even introducing him undercover, he carried two very potent British letters. These two documents—and the welcome they engendered—would facilitate and without a doubt save Eaton’s mission on several occasions.

Eaton had one last matter to attend to before the Argus departed from Malta. “It was my intention to have taken along with us Hamet Bashaw’s Consul,” he wrote to Barron, “but on a closer inspection, I don’t like him. There is too much wood about his head and beef about his ankles either to advance or retreat handsomely.”

One last American visitor was rowed alongside the Argus. Tobias Lear had received a letter from Commodore Barron informing him that Eaton was going forth on his mission. Barron had downplayed the level of his commitment, telling Lear that the mission was mainly for fact-finding and providing transportation for Hamet to take Derne and Bengazi. By way of lukewarm endorsement, Barron concluded in a note: “It may have a good effect on his brother, it cannot, I think, have an ill one.” Barron promised to inform Lear before taking any “ultimate measures.”

Saturday evening, Tobias Lear neared the Argus. The two men spoke. Whatever Eaton said did not change Lear’s opinions. “I am not at all sanguine in the expectation of ultimate good,” he quickly wrote to Barron.

The Argus weighed anchor and headed east, smack into a gale off Crete. They had to reef the sails and wait it out. Perhaps it was appropriate that Eaton sailed in the Argus; was he not like the mythic Jason who sought the Golden Fleece? Eaton’s quest—though without dragons—often seemed equally daunting. Eaton, aboard the pitching vessel, concentrated hard to copy letters into his notebooks. He now had a ship, a sympathetic navy captain with a small amount of supplies and cash available, and two British letters of introduction. All he needed to do was to find Hamet.