Roy Exum
I don’t want anybody to get excited, because this happened over 200 years ago, but if you ever wondered why we call our Marines “Leathernecks,” the tale of the Barbary Pirates is pretty intriguing. It is a great rainy-day read and proof America’s problems with Muslim terrorists are hardly new.
Around 1800 the people who lived on what was called the Barbary Coast of North Africa came up with a pretty sassy money-making scheme. The nations of Tripoli ("the de jure capital of Libya"), Tunis, Morocco and Algiers would capture ships and their crews and hold them ransom, demanding nations pay a “tribute” to sail that part of the North Atlantic.
In 1785 the pirates captured America ships and held them ransom.
The Dye of Algiers, who was kind of like a king, decided to ask for $60,000 to release a ship and its crew. Thomas Jefferson pleaded with Congress not to pay the money, saying he could get a coalition of nations to stop such nonsense, but weak Congress didn’t want to offend anybody so our lawmakers decided to pay the money in order to be politically correct.
Soon it got to the point the United States was paying a million dollars a year -- almost 10 percent of the country’s annual revenues (!) – to the extortionists so Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two of our great forefathers, went to London and tried to talk some sense into Tripoli’s ambassador, a somewhat haughty chap named Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. They asked the guy why Tripoli wanted “to make war upon nations that had done them no injury.”
According to Jefferson’s papers, the envoy answered:
“It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman (Muslim) who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.”
Jefferson, absolutely furious, went back to Washington and told John Jay, then the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, what the envoy said and Jay immediately told Congress. Unbelievably, Congress decided to pay $1 million for each of the next 15 years, which made Jefferson a whole lot more furious. Sadly, such idiocy has been the norm ever since in a ceaseless effort to be politically correct on the world’s stage.
In the election of the year 1800, Jefferson was elected as the nation’s third president but not before Congress created the U.S. Navy, which was charged to “protect our commerce and chastise any insolence by sinking, burning or destroying enemy ships wherever you shall find them”
Sure enough, not long after Jefferson took office, the Pasha of Tripoli demanded $225,000 for a captured ship and Jefferson surely must have giggled. Not only did he refuse, he didn’t even blink. So the Pasha got an axe, cut down the American flagpole of the U.S. Consulate, and declared war on the United States.
Jefferson, perhaps the smartest American who ever lived, grinned and immediately unleashed the new Navy to counter such nonsense. When word got out our war ships were moving fast under full sail, Algiers and Tunis quickly disassociated their countries from Tripoli, instead slinking back in order to be politically correct, proving there is something to be said for “Enough is enough.”
Sailing with the navy was a small newly-formed band of Navy toughies, called “Leathernecks” because their collars were actually made of heavy leather to stave off blows from the scimitars (curved swords) of the Muslims who would try to behead them. The pirates had captured a U.S. ship that had run aground near the harbor and were really cocky because it was an ideal defense point for the enemy and the harbor.
But when the Navy arrived, the Leathernecks immediately launched a brash attack on the Muslim-occupied ship and the fight didn’t last long at all. Not a one of the enemy had a dagger in his teeth, either, the throat a much better target. As a matter of fact, the great British Admiral Horatio Nelson, known for his world-wide daring, called the Marines’ unbridled bravery “the most bold and daring act of the age." And, right then, a reputation was born in Tripoli for the Marine Corps that has never wavered.
The first Barbary War lasted five years, the turning point being when eight U.S. Marines and 500 mercenaries – a mean and swarthy mix of Greeks, Arabs and Berbers -- marched from Alexandra, Egypt to capture the Tripoli city of Derna. It was there the Marines raised the United States flag for the very first time on enemy soil after delving out an awful whipping. Now you know where the line mentioning “the shores of Tripoli” comes from in the beloved Marine Hymn.
There was a second Barbary war, this after Algiers stupidly started kidnapping ships again and holding sailors hostage around 1807, but two swift victories by the much-improved U.S. Navy snuffed out the opposition and its fleet easily. Algiers soon wasted away to no more than a yapping dog and ransom payments were never made by The United States of America ever again.
So there. It is a history lesson we should enjoy, yet never forget. Those from foreign lands shouldn’t either. We don’t bow to extortion in the United States, this despite a spineless Congress that still insists on being politically correct and still does some foolish things.
We must never forget: those who do not study history are forced to relive it.
royexum@aol.com