ARE THE BARBARY PIRATES ARE BACK?

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Historians have estimated that between 1530 and 1780, as many as 1,250,000 Europeans were kidnapped by Muslim” Barbary” nations, involving piracy, ransom and enforced slavery. Most European powers made peace with the rulers of Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli and Tunis, by paying “tribute” in exchange for redeemed captives or immunity from plunder. In 1784, Barbary pirates began seizing American ships and their crews, as our new nation did not have a navy to protect its commercial ships. The American envoys, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were instructed to make treaties and pay the tribute. After meeting with the Ambassador of Tripoli and receiving his “outrageous demand for the release of the hostages,” Jefferson wrote to Congress: “The Ambassador answered us that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners; that it was their right right and duty to make war upon the wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all take as prisoners.”

Adams, who recommended building a navy, thought it wises to pay the “necessary sum without delay.” By the time Jefferson became president in 1801, he was in command of a new navy, as well as the U.S. Marines, both of which were created under Adams.

Jefferson, who originally opposed a standing army or navy, now sent his new warships to the Barbary Coast and effectively controlled the area except for Tripoli, whose pirates captured the USS Philadelphia in 1803. In February 1804, Captain Stephen Decatur sailed right into Tripoli Harbor, “boarded the captured Philadelphia and put the torch to it rather than let it remain in Barbary hands.” A few months later, Decatur resumed, “Bombarded the fortified town, and rescued the Philadelphia’s crew from a gruesome imprisonment.”

The following year, American Marines landed and captured the second city of Tripoli (now in Libya). The raising of the American flag preserved forever the opening line of the Marine anthem, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” Not long thereafter, the “Barbary nations signed treaties with the United States, renouncing piracy and kidnapping.”

Article by Bob Diamond written for the AventuraNews