PDA

View Full Version : On This Day 1 August



Coog
07-31-2012, 23:13
The Action of 1 August 1801 was a single-ship action of the First Barbary War fought between the American schooner USS Enterprise and the Tripolitan polacca Tripoli off the coast of modern-day Libya.

Following the recognition of the independence of the United States in 1783, the new country's early administrations had elected to make tribute payments to the Vilayet of Tripoli to protect American commercial shipping interests in the Mediterranean Sea. Tripoli, nominally a subject of the Ottoman Empire, was practically autonomous in conducting her foreign affairs, and would declare war on non-Muslim states whose ships sailed in the Mediterranean in order to extract tribute from them. In 1801, the payments demanded by Tripoli from the United States were significantly increased. The newly elected administration of Thomas Jefferson, an opponent of the tribute payments from their inception, refused to pay. As a result, Tripoli declared war on the United States, and its navy began to seize American ships and crews in an attempt to coerce the Jefferson administration into acceding to their demands. When word of these attacks on American merchantmen reached Washington, D.C., the Jefferson administration gave the United States Navy the authority to conduct limited operations against Tripoli. As part of the American strategy, a squadron under Commodore Richard Dale was dispatched to blockade Tripoli.

By July 1801, Dale's force had begun to run low on water. In order to replenish his supplies, Dale dispatched the schooner USS Enterprise, commanded by Lieutenant Andrew Sterett, to provision at the British naval base on Malta, while the commodore himself remained off Tripoli with the frigate USS President to maintain the blockade. Soon after leaving the blockade, Enterprise came upon what appeared to be a Tripolitan cruiser sailing near her. Flying British colors as a ruse, the Enterprise approached the Tripolitan vessel and hailed her. The Tripolitan answered that she was seeking American vessels. At this the Enterprise struck the British colors, raised the American flag, and prepared for action.

The Tripolitan vessel, Tripoli, and the Enterprise were quite evenly matched. Enterprise, with a complement of 90, was a 12-gun, 135-ton schooner built in 1799 that had seen action in the Quasi-War. In contrast, Tripoli, a lateen-rigged polacca with two masts, was crewed by 80 men under Admiral Rais Mahomet Rous and armed with 14 guns. Although the Tripolitans held a slight advantage in firepower, Enterprise had to its advantage the larger crew and the element of surprise. The Americans were also significantly more experienced in gunnery action than the Tripolitans, who preferred to attack by boarding and taking over their opponents' ships.

Shortly after Sterett had the American colors raised, he had his men open fire upon the Tripolitans at close range with muskets. In response, Tripoli returned fire with an ineffective broadside. The Americans returned fire with their own broadsides, which led Rous to break off the engagement and attempt to flee. Neither able to fight off the American vessel nor outrun her, the Tripolitans attempted to grapple Enterprise and board her. Once within musket range, Enterprise's marines opened fire on the Tripoli, foiling its boarding attempt, and forced Tripoli to try to break away once more. Enterprise continued the engagement, firing more broadsides into the Tripolitan and blasting a hole in her hull.

Severely damaged, Tripoli struck her colors to indicate surrender. As Enterprise moved towards the vessel to accept its surrender, the Tripolitans hoisted their flag and fired upon Enterprise. The Tripolitans again attempted to board the American schooner, but were repelled by Enterprise's broadsides and musketry. After another exchange of fire, the Tripolitans struck their colors a second time. Sterett once more ceased firing and moved closer to Tripoli. In response, Rous again raised his colors and attempted to board Enterprise. Enterprise's accurate gunnery once more forced Tripoli to veer off. As the action continued, Rous perfidiously feigned a third surrender in an attempt to draw the American schooner within grappling range. This time, Sterett kept his distance, and ordered Enterprise's guns to be lowered to aim at the polacca's waterline, a tactic that threatened to sink the enemy ship. The next American broadsides struck their target, causing massive damage, dismasting her mizzen-mast, and reducing her to a sinking condition. With most of his crew dead or wounded, the injured Admiral Rous finally threw the Tripolitan flag into the sea to convince Sterett to end the action.

At the end of the action Tripoli was severely damaged; 30 of her crew were dead and another 30 were injured. The polacca's first lieutenant was among the casualties and Admiral Rous himself was injured in the fighting. In what amounted to a total American victory over the Tripolitans, Enterprise had suffered only superficial damage and no casualties. Sterett, whose orders did not give him the authority to retain prizes, let the polacca limp back to Tripoli. However, before setting her free, the Americans cut down Tripoli's masts and sufficiently disabled her so that she could barely make sail. Sterett then continued his journey to Malta and picked up the supplies for which he was sent before returning to the blockade.

After Enterprise left, Tripoli began its journey back to the port of Tripoli. On the way it ran into USS President and asked for assistance; Rous falsely claimed that his vessel was Tunisian and that it had been damaged in an engagement with a French 22-gun vessel. Dale suspected the vessel's true identity and merely provided Rous with a compass so he could find his way back to port. When he finally arrived at Tripoli, Rous was severely chastised by Yusuf Karamanli, the Pasha (ruler) of Tripoli. Stripped of his command, he was paraded through the streets draped in sheep's entrails while seated backwards on a jackass before suffering 500 bastinadoes.

Enterprise's victory over Tripoli had very different consequences for the two nations involved. In Tripoli, the defeat, combined with severity of the Rous' punishment, severely hurt morale throughout the city, and led to significant reductions in recruitment for ships' crews. In the United States, the exact opposite occurred, with wild publicity surrounding the arrival of news that the Americans had won their first victory over the Tripolitans. The American government gave a month's pay as a bonus to each of Enterprise's crew members, and honored Sterett by granting him a sword and calling for his promotion. Fanciful plays were written about the victorious Americans, and morale and enthusiasm about the war reached a high point. The victory did not have any long-term consequences in the conduct of the war, however. Dale's blockade of Tripoli was ineffective in preventing ships from entering and leaving the port, and was equally ineffective in altering the Pasha's diplomatic stance toward the Americans. Dale's squadron was relieved in 1802 by another under Richard Morris, and the war continued until 1805.

Coog
07-31-2012, 23:49
The Battle of the Nile (also known as the Battle of Aboukir Bay), was a major naval battle fought between British and French fleets at Aboukir Bay on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt from 1–3 August 1798. The battle was the climax of a naval campaign that had ranged across the Mediterranean during the previous three months, as a large French convoy sailed from Toulon to Alexandria, carrying an expeditionary force under General Napoleon Bonaparte. The French were defeated by the British forces led by Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson.

Bonaparte had sought to invade Egypt, as the first step in a campaign against British India whose ultimate aim was to drive Britain out of the French Revolutionary Wars. As Bonaparte's fleet crossed the Mediterranean, it was pursued by a British force under Nelson, sent from the British fleet in the Tagus, to establish the purpose of the French expedition and defeat it. For more than two months, Nelson chased the French, on several occasions only missing them by a matter of hours. Bonaparte, aware of Nelson's pursuit, enforced absolute secrecy about his destination and was able to capture Malta and then land in Egypt without interception by the British force.

With the French army ashore, the fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay, a station 20 miles (32 km) northeast of Alexandria, in a formation that its commander, Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys D'Aigalliers, believed established a formidable defensive position. When Nelson's fleet arrived off Egypt on 1 August and discovered Brueys's dispositions, he ordered an immediate attack, and his ships advanced on the French line. As they approached, they split into two divisions, one of which cut across the head of the line and passed between the anchored French and the shore while the other engaged the seaward side of the French fleet. Trapped in a crossfire, the leading French ships were battered into surrender during a fierce three-hour battle, while the centre was able to successfully repel the initial British attack. As British reinforcements arrived, the centre came under renewed assault, and at 22:00 the French flagship Orient exploded. With Brueys dead and his van and centre defeated, the rear division of the French fleet attempted to break out of the bay, but ultimately only two ships of the line and two frigates escaped, from a total of 17 ships engaged.

The battle reversed the strategic situation in the Mediterranean, and allowed the Royal Navy to assume a dominant position which it would retain for the rest of the war. It also encouraged other European countries to turn against France, and was a factor in the outbreak of the War of the Second Coalition. Bonaparte's army was trapped in Egypt, and Royal Navy dominance off the Syrian coast contributed significantly to its defeat at the Siege of Acre in 1799, which preceded Bonaparte's return to Europe. Nelson, who had been wounded in the battle, was proclaimed a hero across Europe and was subsequently made Baron Nelson. His captains were also highly praised, and would go on to form the nucleus of the legendary Nelsonic Band of Brothers.

Comte de Brueys
08-01-2012, 03:03
French flagship L'Orient - exploding...:(

David Manley
08-01-2012, 10:55
de Brueys certainly went up in the world that day :)

csadn
08-01-2012, 14:05
de Brueys certainly went up in the world that day :)

Most accounts have him dead at least an hour before _Orient_ blew.

David Manley
08-01-2012, 14:37
meh, OK so he wasn't exactly paying attention at the time

Anav
08-01-2012, 15:06
A quote from Lt Sterrett
“We would put a man to death for even
looking pale on board this ship.”

The Enterprise was everywhere.

csadn
08-02-2012, 17:01
The Enterprise was everywhere.

Something about US ships named _Enterprise_ causes that.... :)

"Fate protects fools, little children, and ships named _Enterprise_." [Riker, "Contagion"]

David Manley
08-02-2012, 23:15
The Enterprise was everywhere

And not just yours :)

1315

1316

1317

1318

1319

:)

csadn
08-03-2012, 15:47
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/USS_Enterprise_%28CVN-65%29.jpg/300px-USS_Enterprise_%28CVN-65%29.jpg

"Mine's bigger than yours." >;)

David Manley
08-03-2012, 17:16
Not for much longer

csadn
08-04-2012, 16:14
Not for much longer

"So certain are you, young Jedi?"

http://ussenterp.epetitions.net/signatures.php?petition_id=1870 ;)

David Manley
08-05-2012, 00:03
Based on what my chums in NAVSEA in DC tell me, alas yes. I would so love the ship that comes after Gerald Ford and the new JFK to be named Enterprise. I'm a signatory to that petition (but at less than 4000 signatures after a year I doubt whether public opinion is going to have any effect). The USN needs to get back to using its historic names rather than using ships names as a method of making political statements. Unfortunately my friends in the Navy Yard are convinced the names selected for 78 and 79 are merely confirming the trend that will be followed, but depending on what happens in November things might change.

I really do hope my chums are wrong (and even more, hope that in the meantime someone doesn't scupper the chance by allocating the name to an LCS or (even worse) the last DDG-1000, although I note that some are seeking to besmirch Robert Heinlein's name by naming the third ship after him!). Enterprise is a name that should live on in honour. It was a crying shame that CV-6 wasn't preserved after WW2. Far better, IMHO to be able to visit the Enterprise museum in NYC than the Intrepid.

csadn
08-05-2012, 22:02
Based on what my chums in NAVSEA in DC tell me, alas yes. I would so love the ship that comes after Gerald Ford and the new JFK to be named Enterprise. I'm a signatory to that petition (but at less than 4000 signatures after a year I doubt whether public opinion is going to have any effect). The USN needs to get back to using its historic names rather than using ships names as a method of making political statements. Unfortunately my friends in the Navy Yard are convinced the names selected for 78 and 79 are merely confirming the trend that will be followed, but depending on what happens in November things might change.

Even if nothing changes then, if folks know what's good for them....


I really do hope my chums are wrong (and even more, hope that in the meantime someone doesn't scupper the chance by allocating the name to an LCS or (even worse) the last DDG-1000, although I note that some are seeking to besmirch Robert Heinlein's name by naming the third ship after him!). Enterprise is a name that should live on in honour. It was a crying shame that CV-6 wasn't preserved after WW2. Far better, IMHO to be able to visit the Enterprise museum in NYC than the Intrepid.

Given _Intrepid_'s history (the ship better known as "Decrepid" or "Evil I" for its track-record of bad luck): Yes.

And if those spawn-of-blasphemy do append RAH's name to a crapwagon like DDG-1000, I will not be the only one heading to DC with crosses, nails, and rope. (Let's just say I know at least one person who named her first kid "Robert Anson" -- and with a last initial H to boot -- and a whole bunch of folks who like to talk about Lazarus Long.) >:)

David Manley
08-06-2012, 09:39
DDG-1000, as a friend once said it doesn't float, its repelled by the sea :)

And on LCS (commenting on the rather "interesting" corrosion issues) "when they said it was transformational we didn't realise the transformation was from aluminium to aluminium oxide" :D

csadn
08-06-2012, 15:21
DDG-1000, as a friend once said it doesn't float, its repelled by the sea :)

And on LCS (commenting on the rather "interesting" corrosion issues) "when they said it was transformational we didn't realise the transformation was from aluminium to aluminium oxide" :D

I keep trying to explain to the "peacetime professionals" I wind up explaining-to-why-they're-wrong "we're back where we were one hundred years ago -- the stuff we're trying to fight wars with is too expensive and complicated to risk losing, esp. against a $5-per-month infantrytard with a $50 AK47". Are we surprised no one is willing to hear it?