A TYPICAL DAY IN THE BARBARY WARS

Official Navy records show that March 18^th, 1804, was a typical day for the vessels blockading the Barbary state of Tripoli.  This power had been holding American merchant crewmen and cargoes for ransom.  The problem had been simmering for a decade, since our independence from England had removed American ships from the protection of the Royal Navy–a force the States of Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis respected.  Earlier treaties under which our government paid indemnities in exchange for the free passage of our ships, had been abrogated, not surprisingly, by the profit-hungry North Africans.

The business of this day might be usual in any Navy and included Midshipman Henry Wadsworth aboard USS CONSTITUTION, 44, posting a letter to his cousin in the States, Nancy Doane.  In it he expressed that months of Mediterranean duty had engendered in him a dislike for the Bashaw of Tripoli, whose actions were the reason for this deployment.  His fervent hope was for peace, perhaps to be achieved without having to bombard Tripoli!  He praised USS ARGUS, 16, and the fine maneuvering of his shipmates in her crew, which had been noticed by Royal Navy sailors.  He had recovered from an illness that complicated his participating in the harrowing adventure of a month earlier, in which LT Stephen Decatur had burned the captured American frigate PHILADELPHIA, 36, in Tripoli harbor.  He concluded with a plea for a letter from her, via any ship bound for Europe.

CONSTITUTION then lay at Syracuse, Sicily, where skipper CAPT Edward Preble was occupied with the problem of obtaining gunboats for the blockade.  His entreaties to the US Consul in Messina related his suspicions that to accomplish that task, a personal visit to Naples would be necessary.  He was heartened with a letter from LT Charles Stewart, then commanding USS SYREN, 16, relating the capture the day before of the Tripolitan brig Transfer.  A survey of her hull, rigging, cables, anchors, sails, boats, and cargo of military stores had proven her to be a legitimate prize.

Elsewhere, US Consul James Simpson in Tangier received a letter from Mulai Suleiman, Emperor of Morocco, with whom a treaty of amity had been ratified five months earlier.  The letter thanked the United States for gun carriages received by the Emperor as partial fulfillment of the treaty obligations, describing the gift as, “fresh proof of your diligence and of the friendship of your Nation towards us, which we will at all times bear in mind.”  The Emperor concluded with thanks to the “only God,” on “this 28^th day if Dulkaada the Blessed, 1218,” (corresponding to 18 March 1804 on the American calendar).

Apparently little has changed in two centuries of Navy life!

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  24 MAR 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cooney, David M.  A Chronology of the U.S. Navy:  1775-1965.  New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965, p. 26.

“Letter to CAPT Edward Preble, U.S. Navy, from LT Charles Stewart, U.S. Navy.”  IN: Naval Documents Related to the United States War with the Barbary Powers, Vol III, Naval Operations Including Diplomatic Background from September 1803 through March 1804.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1941, p. 495-96.

“Letter to James Simpson, U.S. Consul, Tangier, Morocco, from the Emperor of Morocco.”  Op. cit., p. 498.

“Letter to Nancy Doane from Midshipman Henry Wadsworth, dtd. 17 March, 1804.”  Op. cit., p. 495.

“Letter to Secretary of the Navy from CAPT Edward Preble, U.S. Navy.”  Op. cit., p. 496-97.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Transfer had formerly operated as a French and British privateer and carried 10 guns at the time of her capture.  She was taken into the US Navy and placed in service under the name USS SCOURGE, 16.

          ARGUS had been dispatched on a solo mission to Gibraltar to keep an eye on another Barbary State, Morocco, and her conduct thereon had earned the praise of British in Gibraltar.  Though at various times Sicily had been an independent kingdom, at this time Sicily was under the rule of King Ferdinand IV and Queen Maria Carolina, the regents of the Kingdom of Naples.  Bombardment of Tripoli (for the third time) did ultimately become necessary in August 1804, in yet another effort to compel the release of ransomed sailors.

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                                                      USS LYNX

In modern times, the unexplained disappearance of a vessel at sea would raise much interest, concern, news coverage, and even sensationalist speculation.  Witness the loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in 2014.  In the 19^th century, however, losses due to act of God were a known risk of oceanic enterprise. 

When President James Madison received from Congress a declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812, he found the US Navy woefully inadequate to the task.  Part of the subsequent build-up for that war included the creation two squadrons that could raid British shipping.  A contract was let to Mr. James Owner of Georgetown, DC, for the construction of a Baltimore Clipper-rigged schooner of 150 tons displacement and six guns.  Construction delays prevented her completion prior to the summer of 1815, six months after the end of the fighting.  Nevertheless, on 3 July 1815 she was commissioned into our Navy as USS LYNX, manned with 50 crewmen, and sent with Commodore William Bainbridge’s nine-ship squadron to the Mediterranean to police Barbary piracy.

Here, LYNX arrived too late for combat again.  Bainbridge took over command of our Mediterranean Squadron, and LYNX remained in the area for a year, showing the flag to insure Barbary peace.  Upon her return to the United States, her new skipper LT George W. Storer surveyed the northeastern coast, until piracy, that had started before the turn of the century. surfaced again along our Gulf coast.  LYNX was sent south to address this.

By 1819 LYNX had yet a new captain, LT John R. Madison, and experienced her first brush with combat.  On 24 October she overhauled and engaged two pirate schooners and two smaller boats loaded with booty off Louisiana.  LYNX departed subsequently for the coast of Texas, then part of Mexico.  Here, in Galveston Bay, she captured another pirate boat also loaded with stolen booty.

By early 1820, LYNX was operating out of St. Mary’s on Georgia’s Atlantic coast, from whence she received orders to Kingston, Jamaica.  Piracy had become rampant in the Caribbean, as newly independent former Spanish colonies such as Venezuela and Colombia commissioned privateers against Spanish shipping.  These privateers too often placed profit above patriotism and attacked ships of any nation.  American traders were falling victim, and LYNX was to be part of our Navy’s efforts against this affront.

On this day LYNX disappeared over the horizon, heading south.  Neither she nor Madison nor any of her crew were ever seen again.  The mythical Bermuda Triangle notwithstanding, a search by USS Nonsuch, 14, turned up nothing.  Months later some unidentifiable wreckage was found on Craysons Reef, off Florida, that is believed today to have been the remains of USS Lynx.  In the days before accurate weather forecasting, losses at sea were not uncommon.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  15 JAN 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cooney, David M.  A Chronology of the U.S. Navy:  1775-1965.  New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965, p. 48.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, pp. 172-73.

Silverstone, Paul H.  The Sailing Navy, 1775-1854.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2001, p. 55.

The post USS LYNX appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                                PERSISTENCE…

At 1400 on 13 May 1944, CDR George C. Wright of DESRON 21 was ordered to take USS GLEAVES (DD-423), NIELDS (DD-616) and MACOMB (DD-458) out of Oran, Algeria, to search for a submarine that had torpedoed two freighters in Convoy GUS-39.  The sub was being held underwater by two British destroyers, but by the time the Americans reached the spot, the contact had been lost.  The effort was part of Operation “Monstrous,” an appropriately named effort to employ overwhelming force to counter a frustrating run of convoy losses in the western Mediterranean.

During that night, MV G.S. Walden and SS Fort Fidler were torpedoed and damaged 85 miles to the northeast.  ELLYSON (DD-454), RODMAN (DD-456), HAMBLETON (DD-455) and EMMONS (DD-457) were augmented to the fight, also out of Oran, under CAPT Adelbert F. Converse of DESRON 10.  When they arrived on scene HILARY P. JONES (DD-427) and two DEs were already searching.  JONES damaged the sub with depth charges, but she escaped.  Shortly a search plane radioed a contact 30 miles to the west.  The (now) eight destroyers rushed to the area, only to receive another airplane contact well to the north.  It was dark by now.  Signal flares guided Converse’s flotilla and rewarded them with a sonar contact.  They attacked, and the following morning, May 15^th, a ten-mile diesel oil slick revealed the sub had been hurt.

For two more days the destroyers combed the area near Cape Santa Pola, but without any luck.  Unknown to them, all these contacts were the same sub, U-616!

Then at 2226 on May 16^th a British Wellington bomber caught a U-boat on the surface about 35 miles from the destroyers, moving away fast.  Converse charged to the area, and at 2356 MACOMB’s radar picked up a surface contact at 4600 yards.  Her spotlight silhouetted a conning tower and Macomb got off six 5″ rounds before the sub went under.  The sonars pinged!  Contacts were made, and depth charges splashed.  Through the night the ritual went on.  Again, it was U-616, but she was damaged, flooding, batteries low, air bad, and with little hope of escape.  At 0807 this morning she could take no more.  She surfaced to allow her crew to abandon ship and was immediately brought under 5″ gunfire.  Fifty-three of her 54 crewmen made it out before U-616 sank.  Oberleutnant zur See Seigfried Koitschka ordered her rigged for demolition, and minutes after she disappeared below the waves a muffled boom told her fate.  Only one crewman was lost.  The tireless hunt for U-616 had stretched over 90 hours from the time DESRON 21 sortied from Oran.  They had been chasing U-616 the whole time.  It was the longest, most persistent prosecution of a submarine during the entire war.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  22 MAY 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, p. 186.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol X  The Atlantic Battle Won.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1956, pp. 257-59.

Roscoe, Theodore.  United States Destroyer Operations in World War II.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1953, pp. 371-73.

Wynn, Kenneth.  U-Boat Operations of the Second World War  Vol 2: Career Histories, U511-UIT25.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1998, pp. 84-85.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Neither G.S. Walden nor Fort Fidler (both British) was lost in the above attack.  U-616 was on her 9^th war patrol at the time operating with the 29^th U-boat Flotilla.  Across her career she is also credited with sinking two warships, the British landing craft HMS LCT-553 and USS BUCK (DD-420) both off Salerno, Italy, in October 1943.  Seigfried Koitschka was held in an Allied POW camp until June 1946.  During his captivity he was promoted to Kapitänleutnant and awarded the Knights Cross.

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