During the 1780s and '90s, European states paid the rulers of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli (the North African region known collectively as the Barbary Coast) to capture their competitors' ships. This raiding was "an organized government activity, not piracy; the United States and other powers negotiated with the North African states to protect their commerce." The U.S. was slow to send the tribute it had promised in 1795 for the purpose of freeing more that one hundred American sailors captured two years before, causing the Pasha of Tripoli to demand payment in terms just short of a declaration of war in 1801.
President Thomas Jefferson sent the much-diminished U.S. Fleet to the Mediterranean, where in cooperation with ships from Sweden, Sicily, Malta, Portugal and Morocco, they forced the Pasha to back down. From then on, a small naval squadron patrolled the North African coast, until the U.S.S. Philadelphia ran aground in 1830, and the Triplolitans seized the ship and her 300-man crew. Lieutenant Stephen Decatur earned his captain's bars as well as recognition as a true American hero in 1804 when he entered the harbor at Tripoli, burned the Philadelphia, and bombarded the city. The American consul in Tunis, William Eaton organized a force composed of Arabs, Greeks and U.S. Marines to attack the Tripolitan city of Derne, which they captured just as the U.S. finalized a peace agreement with the Pasha. Decatur returned to the scene once again in 1815 to negotiate a settlement with Algiers, which had declared war on the U.S. in 1807, although no battles were fought due to the fact that the embargo and War of 1812 kept Americans out of the Mediterranean throughout those years.
American Casualties, Tripolitan Wars
| Branch of Service |
Killed in Action |
Wounded in Action |
| Navy |
31 |
54 |
| Marines |
4 |
10 |
