Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 223 - The First Barbary War

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

America scrapes together the US Navy to go fight pirates on the other side of the world. They accomplish almost nothing and then go home. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Wheelan, Joseph (2003), Jefferson's War: America's First War on Terror, 1801–1805 Zacks, Richard (2005), The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 https://clements.umich.edu/exhibit/barbary-wars/first-barbary-war/ https://www.historynet.com/tripoli-pirates-foiled/

I am not sure if this is a regular or bonus episode of the lines by donkeys podcast this was a bonus. Does that help? Schedules change. I don't know. We'll find out. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I record everything ahead of time, especially because I'm moving soon, so it's just like... Oh, Joe, are you moving soon? Yeah. So I am simply recording

the scripts that I have written, and I will then schedule them to Nate at a later at a later time and that is what will become a bonus uh the only for sure bet as a series will not become a bonus because that's it's just not how those work uh liam how do you feel about pirates uh i i you know i know they're they're sort of a problematic fave uh all of our problematic faves are getting in trouble these days but i uh i'm a i dude when i was a kid i wanted to be a pirate so fucking bad i kind of still want to be a pirate so fucking bad like that really hasn't changed to

be quite honest with you i will say of of all of the things that we've ever dreamed of being i think i i feel very safe saying we've both technically been pirates. Oh, yeah. We've both stolen music. Yeah, yeah. That's a civil crime. That's not criminal.

That's not criminal. I mean, I think if you steal enough of it, it's criminal. I stole a vending machine once. Okay, so you're a candy pirate. That's a pirate. Well, yeah. Lions led by candy pirates. Was it a candy vending machine or was it a chip vending machine?

This difference is important to me. No, not candy, dude. Well, candy and chips. Oh, it was a twofer. So you're a multifaceted pirate. Take that, Somalia. You're just going after tinkers and shit. Can you imagine?

There's a bunch of Somali pirates hijacking a container ship or whatever, and it's just me being like do you guys have snacks I will let you go for the price of three of those big bags of free notes I'm just envisioning the last like government office that I worked at I like the the windward Hawaii

school district and I'm going to the monster vending machine and like a rowboat rips off the beach and somalians get up and steal my fucking vending machine and scamper out like huh all right how are you guys even gonna fit it on that boat hey look i i respect the hustle you know the scene from the the you ever see the shitty remake of the italian job with like mark walberg no because i was warned okay i well i've seen it uh

i'm aware of it like on the flight to visit you uh i watched it and uh oh god what terrible airline still has that as a movie uh american okay that makes sense yeah no no seatback screens you got to bring your own device on two six six hour flights, but you know, champions of the sky. Yeah, I know. Uh, but they like blow a hole. So the, so the safe goes like right through multiple floors and,

uh, into like the bottom of the Venice canals. And, uh, that's how I picture Somali pirates stealing a vending machine. Just straight down to the bottom, whatever, speedboat cracking in half. Taking the Pepsi guy hostage. Oh, man, don't do that. He's a worker.

Yeah, they're union, I think. I think Pepsi's union. Someone's probably going to be like, actually, that's Coke. Whatever. Yeah, well, Coke funded Death Squad's in Nicaragua in the 80s, so let's all chill. At this point, who hasn't? Yeah. Stay tuned for our upcoming series on the 80s. So let's all chill. At this point, who hasn't? Yeah.

Stay tuned for our upcoming series on the Lions Led by Donkeys death squads. Yeah. I mean, they'll be crowdfunded at least. I mean, there's been like Chiquita, there's been Coca-Cola, there's been Ford, there's been others. You and Joe lie from the front lines of whatever conflict.

It's just me hiding behind you. Recording from a non-disclosed bush somewhere. I don't want to die. I don't want to die for 60 minutes. Now, the reason why I asked you

about pirates is we were talking about a pirate war. Kind of. Let's do this it's not like the caribbean pirates oh when i say the u.s is something of a history of fighting a lot of wars um far from its borders for um uh less than ideal reasons most people probably think i talk about the immediate like history of our immediate family. Us, depending on how old you are, of course, you, your parents, your grandparents have seen, assuming you're American too, have seen the United States engaged in a lot of really fucked up shit over the years. And some people will say that this is a rather new feature of American history, generally after the U.S. emerged as a superpower in the ruins of World War II.

That's not entirely true either, as we have talked about on this show. Does the phrase punitive expedition mean anything to you? Right. We've had a couple of those. We've had a Spanish-American and a Philippine-American war. There's been other wars we have yet to get to. I don't know why I'm saying this like it's a job interview. Bear with us.

We will get to all the wars. Yeah. I mean, technically, as long as people keep listening to the show, eventually I will get to all the wars yeah i mean technically as long as people keep listening to the show eventually i will talk about all of history forever that's actually my favorite thing you say like on a long enough timeline i'll get to it yeah i mean much much more likely as i just die first but like yeah you gotta stop smoking joe i need you to cut me those checks every month i don't smoke i simply drink terrible beer. Now when I drink enough terrible beer, I do

smoke. Okay, Jeff. I am solidly in the camp of when I get drunk, I will smoke and do random drugs that people give me because I am what's known as a responsible adult. No camel, everybody. Obviously,

we've talked a lot about yield crimes of empire obviously we just got done doing a series on that but with the u.s also has a lot of pre-superpower bullshit on the books as well and i i feel safe comparing or talking about the spanish-american and philippine american wars as being um not superpower bullshit but imperial bullshit like america certainly was not a superpower yet no but like regional power at the very least and using powers it had to do with imperialism yeah no all by that and i mean those were all part of a very long series of different policies because there was a type of american that wanted to leave isolationism and join the big kids power the big kids club of world power with like you know the

british the french and then the germans you go into that a little more because like what i was taught sort of in school was basically we were an isolationist power you know isolationist obviously it sort of couched in relative terms uh that wanted nothing to do with the powers that be of europe so was there like an actual like undercurrent of like no like let's say post bellum america like we want to be at the big kids table too or like i understand yeah okay like monroe doctor and i understand that but like is there anything beyond that uh there was there was definitely a group of people i mean i say group of people like it was some kind of like secretive group but i mean there was certainly politicians and presidents who thought that america desperately needed an overseas empire

to hang out with their friends in europe um now i think uh a lot of people see american isolationism as this idea that we weren't going to leave continental north america the united states it's not really what that meant american isolationism was more like we're not going to get involved in european affairs um militarily of course well we still wanted to play the big boys club yeah we wanted our own empire on this side of the pond like american isolationism involved a whole lot of invasions well yeah absolutely that's our side of the pond you know right but it was sort of leave europe to the europeans and also we'll just be taking panama now thanks yeah kind of like too long didn't read version yeah it was like yeah i don't want to get

involved in a land war between like france and germany but also hey let's invade the philippines or whatever you know i think the the isolationist period is certainly termed as isolationist simply because we weren't shooting other white people uh which is unfortunate um okay that makes sense i personally i think it's a lot of undercurrent that survives from early history study. It desperately needs a... Kick in the ass, one might say. It needs to be updated. Sure.

Absolutely. And actually, this is a good example of one of the things. Though, this is definitely not an imperial ambition. There was no conquering going on here because we were talking about the first barbarae war all i know about this is uh we got mad at pirates and jefferson sent in the boys and we and we did some more that's literally all i know i know the 15 second version you nailed it kind of so i everybody go shop at our teespring store fuck Rick Snyder

and we'll see you next week that motherfucker it's interesting because for such a short pointless war it carries a lot of mythos over to the modern day in American military history from the halls of Montezuma to the modern day in american military history from the halls of montezuma toward the shores of tripoli yeah that's where that comes from for a battle that meant

literally nothing yeah uh but we will of course talk about the battle of dirna which is where that comes from this war was like i said uh you know only about 20 years after the american revolution uh before anybody could mistake the United States as a world military power or even really a regional military power. It involved sending the brand new US Navy clear across the globe,

landing some fucking Marines in North Africa and technically fighting an undeclared war against the Ottoman Empire which... Yeah, I always support that. fighting an undeclared war against the Ottoman Empire, which... Hey. Yeah, I always support that. Take your 1800s AUMF and shove it up your ass. So the First Barbary War had a lot... There's a lot more leading to it than war itself.

And to get to that point, we have to talk about something generally known as the Barbary States. So this is not an actual unified political entity, though it kind of functionally was. Joe is in a pirate colony? No, I wish. It's not that cool. Break my heart, Joe. So they were kind of, sort of, but not really independent Ottoman provinces of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli

and the fully independent Sultanate of Morocco who was also very influenced by the Ottoman Empire. Technically, the Ottomans were in control of all of them, though How? I mean, that's a pretty, that's a not

insignificant distance. The Ottoman Empire was fucking huge. Yeah, I know that, but I'm thinking as my time pretty, that's a not insignificant distance. Oh, the Ottoman Empire was fucking huge. Oh, yeah, I know that. But I'm thinking, as my time went off, that I'm thinking by 1800, the Ottoman Empire is starting to show cracks pretty hard. Oh, before then, you could argue that the 1700s were truly when, like, it was in terminal decline, solidly sticking, maybe their whole foot past their toes into the sick man of europe pool uh but even really in the best of times they were not the best at centralizing government rule or control um which is probably why for the longest time this empire worked if you paid your taxes and levied conscripts when i asked they just fucked off and let you were

good to go baby got it now of course your experience may vary if you're an ethnic minority ask millions of families but if you were not an ethnic minority um and you had money and influence and paid your shit on time and and towed the caliphate line you're good to go they did not give a shit I mean it was two parts one they didn't give a shit that these states were conducting

international piracy which reflected badly on the Ottoman Empire but also they were also making money from that on top of they didn't really have the ability. Are we talking privateers? Are we talking straight up no-holds-barred piracy? We're talking both.

Okay. This is why between Morocco and the Ottomans, nobody really cared when the main economic driving force and by proxy in local politics in the region became this weird combination of protection rackets, widespread kidnapping and ransom, and a bustling slave trade. Got to tell you, I never want to hear the phrase bustling slave trade. Oh boy, the biggest outside of the Western world by far. Great.

Of course, there's a difference difference here we'll talk about the kind of slavery um this is a little different than the kind being practiced in north america at the time and also what the rest of europe really um now of course if you are doing you know comparatively billions of dollars in piracy and slavery that will benefit the ottoman empire and it's not like that shit was illegal there either uh so they didn't care if you were snatching slaves from let's say eastern anatolia or from a passing ship they did not give a fuck um this is often framed as they didn't care because the people they were targeting were not Muslim. That's also not true. They were totally fine enslaving Muslims, too.

However, it's often framed that way for politics. I can't believe the slavers were morally bankrupt, Joe. Right. Shocking. It's often said that the Ottomans used religion to do some really fucked up shit, namely slavery and genocide. And that's true. Like they were one of the reasons that they enslaved people off of captured ships from like, you know, the United States, France or England was like, well, you're Christians. We can do whatever we want with you.

Sure. However, they're also enslaving a shitload of Muslims. Way more Muslims were enslaved by the Ottoman Empire than Christians by like three to one. So like the political or religious acts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not great. It's not good. Generally, whenever a, you know, a theocracy flicks their religion to do awful things,

the main target of those awful things are their own people. Ten times out of ten. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's almost like own people. 10 times out of 10. Oh yeah, absolutely. It's almost like theocracy is a bad form of government. Huh? That's crazy. I know.

Yeah. Hmm. Well, luckily we don't have to worry about anything like that, Joe. Nope. No. Oh God,

this is going to age badly. I'm not saying shit. Whenever I say anything, it comes true. I'm not doing it anymore. I'm turning the lathe back in. Now, just because that the Ottoman Empire was cool with that did not mean that piracy

was not a huge fucking problem in the Mediterranean because the Mediterranean was a very large shipping route because, yeah, of course it was. That's why there's pirates there in the first place. It's not like I don't know, pirates hang out the local river when no shipping comes through. Like, they hang out in an area for a reason uh does the phrase death canoe mean anything i'm just envisioning

someone sitting up a pirate fleet in like lake superior or something like all the shipping i have a song for you joe it's called the last saskatchewan pirate you should listen to it after we're done recording this i thought you're were going to go with Gordon Lightfoot's Ballad of the Edmund Fitzgerald. No, obviously Certified Hood Classic, but no. It's a banger. Slaps. I had to sing it in school.

Did you really? Yeah, and I'm nowhere near superior. Not even remotely close. If you can track down the video of joe kasabian singing the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald for school i will pay you 500 us dollars and i can say in good authority it exists because i remember i got suspended for it well i i need to hear that story we were being recorded this is oh boy oh boy, mid-90s, mid to late 90s.

So I'm old. Leave me alone. I was wearing a very ill-fitting shirt because I wore my brother's hand-me-downs. And at the end of our singing, the teacher instructed all the men to bow and all the women to curtsy. And I curtsied because I thought it was funny. And I got suspended. That's a pretty weak justification. And also, very on brand for me, quite honestly.

Yeah, I was going to say. Now, in the beginning, the pirates from the Barbary Coast would launch out of ports from Algiers, I think it's called Soleil, and tunis and or triply aboard really small boats known as dows now these were like shore boats like they're not going to go out and pirate in the open ocean or anything however that would change because you know with these small dows they would eventually catch you know one or two or three of larger boats, which they could then put guns on and then go into the open ocean.

Oh, sure. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Really picking yourself up by your pirate straps here. Hear me out. What we do is we take Johnny's boat and we take Mike's boat and we glue them together. And then what we do is we put a gun on it. Ultra boat.

That's right. I mean, this is just the uh the megazord but for pirate ships which again that would rock that would rock pretty hard yeah i'd watch that yep uh disney call me these larger ships would also like they're pirates they're not it's not a navy um it's a lot like we talked about before where it's like they're doing things that are tactically sound for them. They're not going to go slug it out with a well-armed ship and a convoy or something. It's fucking stupid.

So if your ship drifted away from the rest of the herd, much like watching the Discovery Channel, the weak one would get picked off and dragged in. Eaten by sharks. Yeah. Now, if you happen to be an officer on the ship, like a captain or some important business guy, you'd get ransomed off because you're worth a lot of money. Oh, of course. If you were, say, you or me, slavery, baby. Ten times out of ten.

Oh, no. That's not where I want to go. I've seen thoroughly modern Millie, man. Yeah. If you were just a random crewman on the ship, man, that's a ticket to slave town. Now, some of these guys were impressed into the slaver crews, not in like, ah, we like the cut of your jib.

When you sword fought us on the deck or whatever, you'd go row in the fucking galleys, which is one of the worst jobs in history. One day we'll have to do a whole episode on how awful being on an old ship was. I would really like to do that. But being a rower in the galley, you literally got rowed to death.

No, like certain death. Other people were sold into other slave markets. Then obviously the weapons and the ships themselves were stolen, though sometimes they sold those as well, depending if they needed them. Over their couple years of operation, their were stolen though sometimes they sold those as well depending if they needed them um over like their couple years of operation their their slave trade was huge according to robert davis who is a

phd in pre-modern mediterranean history john opkins over 1 million people were taken by slaves by the barbary states alone between the 16th and the 19th centuries did you say a fucking million yeah yeah a million people that is like several times their own population in the same time it's pretty impressive um if you're gonna you don't have to hand it to slavers but like i guess go big or go home but at some point are you not worried about mouths to feed no of course not these fucking people yeah good point they'll get more slaves obviously no i need to talk a little about the slave system here um obviously at the same time the united states had a massive slave economy as well uh but this was not chattel slavery like we had in the

united states um these people were not born and bred into slavery um they were not considered a um a lower class uh there wasn't a race system in place in this it didn't matter if you're black brown white was it the same thing like your your um descendants were enslaved too or is that different or it depended there there was no solid slave law here oh god okay okay it was you could get your freedom um you could like literally you could get money while you were enslaved save your money and buy your own freedom your freedom could be awarded to you it was actually i'm not saying this is a good thing slavery in all forms is you know evil as shit as shit. Thanks for clarifying, Joe. You can't be too safe here, all right?

It was more akin to Roman slavery, where some of these slaves worked their way up pretty fucking high into local government and were free. So it was really weird. Though, obviously, this is not a universal thing. Just like all slavery is is even worse than regular slavery if you have like a really shitty slave owner um so sure sure you know it's not uh it's not a monolith by donkeys joe rationalizes slavery that's right like we don't know

like we don't know all these guys on these boats some of those guys may have deserved it um but like it was it was a different kind of slavery which matters because we're going to talk about shit that happens that really does not make sense because when you say obviously as two americans with american-centric points of view when we think of slavery we think of our slave history which is significantly different than most places so like when like later on for instance like these slaves were not only allowed to but encouraged to send letters back home why and they were not censored like the ottoman authorities encouraged them like no tell them how bad being a slave is what why because

they wanted they wanted a ransom it was worth more money oh yeah no i just i was totally confused with that because i i just had i mean that was just so baffling me okay yeah when you compare it to like american slavery history it's it's obviously way different and also it's ironic that we go to war over this slavery when you know we have a country based on slavery we're a nation of liberators we're the city on the hill joe uh a nation of liberators your experience may vary now the algiers pirates eventually amassed a navy of around a hundred ships and ten thousand men now of course, of course, the term Navy, and I'll call this a sea militia

because the Navy imparts some kind of organization training and whatever, but you know, at least 25% of the entire population of the city was directly involved in the piracy industry.

Did you say fucking 25%? Yeah, it was a lot. Oh my God. Oh my God. What's the city's population again? It's pretty high. It's not a small town. Talking like 100,000 maybe?

Less? More? I think a couple more. Okay. That's very fucking alarming. Yeah, yeah. Not to mention that means that functionally the entire local economy is based on piracy. You can't have 25% of people employed in an industry. I played Assassin's Creed Black Flag, Joe.

I know what I'm doing. This is literally just the auto industry, but Algiers is pirates. It's like the Motor City of piracy. And also, I assume, not doing great, like the Motor City of piracy. And also, I assume not doing great, like the Motor City of Motor City. Now, other cities had thousands of their own pirates and dozens, if not hundreds of their own ships as well. Collectively, their navy was larger than the Ottoman Empire's. So that's kind of fun, which also goes to explain that there could be no possible enforcement here. They've rapidly outgrown any enforcement ability at all.

That explains why they're running rampant. Yeah. And also, I need to point out, significantly bigger than the United States Navy, which simply did not exist yet. Yeah, we have a sea militia. We truly have a sea militia. Yeah. These fishermen are also good with muskets. Yeah. yeah we were like these fishermen are also good with muskets yeah this is uh this is mike and this is his friend mike and and this is their farmer cousin john and that's our navy i found

a large colony of these people in boston i think we should arm them and give them like an arm their crabbing vessels just screaming at some 18th century pirate ghost celtics talking about how tom brady was wrong was wrongfully uh fucked over by the league so it's some like canon year from the 1700s explaining to people why the balls weren't really deflated first oh no we'll get into that off no no no fuck you we're moving okay uh actually you see uh muhammad dickhead Fuck you. Remove your cloth. Okay. Actually, you see Muhammad... The guy I've captured while at war in North Africa.

It's fine when the owner of my football team uses sexual slavery because he's successful. Eventually, some states kind of saw the use for these pirates, like you kind of talked about,ers you get letters of mark during you know times of war to attack your enemies and then you know leave me alone

even the Ottomans did this like their own ships were not free of being preyed on by these guys because again 25% of Algiers is employed on a pirate ship no I don't know Greeks floated by well Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire too.

I don't know. French people floated by recently. I guess we got to pirate those dudes. They didn't give a shit. So people had to try to find ways around this because you could not... If you wanted to make money in trade, you were going to go through the Mediterranean. So you had to find a way to get these guys to leave you the fuck alone your guns your guns you would think that um now pirates were quite pragmatic they were obviously better at i don't know foreign policy than a lot of people at the time

uh which is why their biggest moneymaker wasn't any of the stuff that we've talked about it wasn't ransoming it wasn't kidnapping it wasn't even slavery it wasn't pirating it was threatening people with piracy oh yeah and then they say okay would you like some of our money and the pirates say yes please and then they go away and that that money that they're gonna get uh is going to be significantly more than anything they're getting in any other way uh now the the British figured this out all the way back in the 1600s that it'd be a lot cheaper to pay these assholes off than to deal with the cost of lost shipping, boats,

ransoms, and whatever else they had to deal with. Other European countries quickly followed suit, signing... The Europeans fell into a classic pitfall here. They signed treaties like they were dealing with independent states and not literally gangs of pirates.

And then they would be repeatedly shocked when the pirates were like, well, fuck it. Let's go rob that British ship despite the fact we have this treaty because they didn't give a shit. They're pirates. By definition, they don't care. But the European powers had signed

treaties with them and through the Barbary states as well, effectively creating an incredibly lucrative legal protection racket. However, this didn't always work out. Yes. Where the Europeans and eventually Americans saw these as legal treaties, like they were signing a treaty with the Barbary state of Algiers or whatever. They considered it the same as signing a treaty with the Barbary state of Algiers or whatever. They considered it the same as signing a treaty with England. But the Barbary states and the pirate gangs themselves did not see these as binding in any kind of way at all. This went double if the nation happened to be Christian.

They did prey on those more, and they were happy to tell them to fuck off a bit quicker than, say, the Ottomans themselves. And I think that's because proximity is being a problem. But they could also always explain themselves to the Ottoman government. Because remember, the Ottoman government has relations with all these powers as well. So when the Barbary states piss off, say, France or whatever, it was, at this point, pretty intense. I'm not going to say close relationship with the Ottomans, but, you know, because they're doing weird shit there, too. Would you say that they're friends with benefits?

You said not close. No, they weren't friends. This is definitely that time where the West and Russia is picking them apart piece by piece because of foreign. And this would go on for, you know, until 1801. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks. But they had a very intense diplomatic mission there.

So, like, if France was like, hey, what the fuck? And then the Ottomans in turn turned to Algiers and was like, hey, what the fuck? Like, well, they're Christian. We're technically allowed to do that. And they'd be like, well okay well all right it was an empty diplomatic thing it didn't actually mean anything because like i pointed out they didn't discriminate all that much how the u.s got involved in all this is actually uh pretty simple um once upon a time i'm stealing your shit could you could you not please uh you know back when the u.s was still just 13 colonies their ships

were snagged by pirates quite a few times and uh the first time was probably sometime the 1640s but remember they were a colony of england uh so when england bribed them this included the united states or the colonies at the time.

However, fast forward to the Revolutionary War, we don't have those protections anymore. Suddenly, the U.S. does not have the protection of the most powerful navy on Earth anymore. Nope, we've got three Mikes and Steve. Yeah, we got six Sullys, a couple dudes in the Great Lakes with their fishing vessels. Ah, see, Joe, the friendship between our people. six sullies um a couple dudes in the great lakes with their fishing vessels ah see joe the friendship between our people don't red winds joe and now you say go bruins joe now you say it why would i say that i said go wings you say it joe in the interest of peace between our people joe say it you made a mistake here and thinking that i wanted peace between our people. All right, well, fuck you, man.

Of course, without a Navy at all to send, the pirates knew pretty well, they're like, hey, we see the guys at this... We can just do whatever we want. Yeah, at that circle of stars or whatever, we can fuck those guys relentlessly and they can't do anything. So this became a problem, especially because you need some kind of...

I mean, shipping was quite restricted and everything. So when things come in, you desperately need them for this whole revolution thing you're trying to do. But thankfully for the US at the time, they had a very powerful friend by the name of the Kingdom of France, who signed a treaty with them in 1778. This is a defensive alliance that amongst many other things led to, of course, America winning. First of all, that doesn't happen without France. Yes, I point that out to people quite a bit. It also meant that any attack on US shipping would be an attack on France.

So the pirates were like, ooh boy, okay, don't want to fuck with that too much. So they were safe for a couple of years. However, that Alliance only lasted until the end of the war in 1783. Right. Um, so suddenly anyone flying the, uh,

the old stars and stripes is once again, free game for all the open market. And we don't have France to back us up at 1800 because of the X, Y, Z affair. I want to say, maybe I'm getting my timeline confused. Well, I mean, on the open market and we don't have france to back us up in 1800 because of the xyz affair i want to say maybe i'm getting my timeline confused well i mean we also do the whole phony war and oh yeah sorry the pseudo war pseudo war there we go yeah there was a and you know france also really wanted our help uh during the french revolution and we were like we're gonna sift this one out boys uh and then you know we get it we're going to sift this one out, boys.

And then we get curb stomped by the British in the War of 1812. We were not a military power for a very long time. Now, of course, when word got out of this expiration of French protection, the kidnapping started once again. They started snatching American ships, grabbing two within the first two years, which I know doesn't sound like a lot, but we're also not sending a ton of ships out there in the first place. Through the U.S. Minister of France at the time, who was Thomas Jefferson, who was joined by Secretary of Foreign Affairs John Jay, the pirates kind of sort of declared war on the United States. of declared war on the united states it's obvious that like the jefferson and jay and every normal uh politician like the they're seeing these guys again as like a sovereign nation declaring war but really it's like a gang of pirates telling them to go fuck themselves like uh jefferson himself was kind of speechless that someone would declare war on someone for no reason

but why would you do this? We don't even know each other. I thought we were cool. And he met with Tripoli's envoy, a guy named Sidi Haji Rahman Aja to ask, hey, come on. We're like poor. We're fucking poor.

Leave us alone. I'm just a little guy. Come on. You wouldn't hit the birthday boy, would you? The US is despondently poor at this point of history um like the envoy pretty much said it was well within the right to do whatever they wanted uh to any american they found because they were christian um again i as i need to point out that was an excuse. He's playing Ottoman kayfabe, if you will. Having no experience with this kind of thing whatsoever, Jefferson and Jay weren't really sure how to handle a power like the pirates.

They were completely divorced from what you consider international norms of diplomacy. These two guys barely really had any idea of what a Muslim was, These two guys barely really had any idea of what a Muslim was, let alone being kind of dragged into what is being framed as a religious war. They're like, I'm sorry, run that by me one more time. Why are we doing this? Oh, okay. Those are you guys just one of me pals? You guys?

You guys? They knew vaguely that Islam existed, but I wouldn't consider these guys well versed in the tenets of islam at all you know now jefferson eventually cut a deal with morocco who remember was its own thing and the deal said morocco would leave them alone um but uh you know they had to kind of say like you know we can't control anybody else we're not in control of those other states also part of the deal was uh um like if any americans ended up in morocco they would give them back to america um so that that's kind of something i suppose they didn't do that exactly but they'd said they would um now the rest of the pirates demanded ransoms of over a half million dollars a piece uh at the time jefferson was given money to like try to

bribe these guys to fuck off but it was only collectively sixty thousand dollars because i need to point out here that's all the government had we have no money we got farmers and we can make whiskey and we own slaves and that's all we got they couldn't even tax anybody yet potatoes you want some potatoes just like waving it in front of a barberry pie like oh but you never seen one of these before huh potato i will give you an empty glass bottle full of unknown brown liquid that was distilled in my tub um this is 1785 so this is before the constitution would go into effect they're're still operating on like old Confederation rules on taxation for the federal government, which were notoriously broken and did not work. Which is, you know, one of the reasons that led to the crisis in the first place.

Joe, did you say Articles of Confederation? Yes, I did. Joe, do you know where that was signed, Joe? Where was that signed? My hometown, York, Pennsylvania. And how'd that work out? Can you play the air horn for me, please? No.

Oh. Fine. Thanks, Joe. It's cool that you're celebrating something that failed so miserably. That's Central Pennsylvania, boy. That's all we got. Fair enough. I'll give you that.

Also, most northerly town held by the Confederacy. We surrendered without a fight. Well done. That means you have something in common with Texas. Good job. Yeah, that's not what I want to hear. So, like, obviously, the U.S. had just gotten done tearing itself apart via, you know, the revolution. So that cost them a ton of money.

It imploded their economy. They were swimming in debt. This is still mineral-based, precious metal-based currency. They couldn't just print more. So they're like, we have $60,000. And potatoes. I will give you $60,000 and all of the potatoes that you can have. This is Mr. Brown look what I found in my thumb.

What's kind of surprising here is he didn't like offer to give them slaves. Would they have been considered too valuable? I think they would have been considered worthless because like, because they had like a million of them already. They did already have a ton of them. And remember like the Ottomans wanted to ransom people off. Like you, you can't just deliver

them chattel slaves and like okay what am i gonna do with this because they would see it as as pointless right yeah they can't ransom them nobody nobody's gonna buy them except other slave owners i guess this is my infinite money printing slavery machine don't ask how it works jefferson calmly uh explaining to the algiers government like look we don't have an economy, but what we do have is tens of thousands of slaves. Can we get hundreds of thousands of slaves, I should say? Can I give you some of those instead? We have more of those than money. the government of the United States that pretty rightly, I should point out, that

look, guys, if we give these dudes money, they're going to eventually just start snatching our ships again and then ask for more money, knowing we can't stop them. He pointed out that what they should do is tell them to fuck off and then build a Navy.

Now, someone who did agree with him was the president, Washington, who pointed out also... My money fucking did. Yeah. He pointed out also that, okay, but building a Navy is going to take us some time. We need to buy ourselves time. And the only way to buy time is with money. Because the idea of fighting a war on the other side of the world was completely foreign to them. So they had to buy buy time according to washington

and eventually in 1794 congress approved a tribute to the barbary states that would when adjusted for inflation account for literally tens of millions of dollars and cost the equivalent of 10 of the yearly gdp of the united states of america about to get hated like holy shit um i mean not to mention that just shows how horribly poor the u.s was at the time but it is funny these guys fleece the united states for 10 of the annual budget good on you i mean fuck you but good on you i respect you i would respect your hustle a lot more if you weren't literally slavers. Even after paying them this, large-scale

slave raiding, in-raiding in general, continued to happen. And the cost of tributes got to the point where President John Adams founded the Department of the Navy in 1798. Now, even so, Adams was in the belief that he could use the new Navy that was under construction to protect shipping rather than end piracy.

Where Thomas Jefferson was like, no, fuck them. We need to invade North Africa. Like, we need to fuck them up to the point. With who? He's doing some backwards planning here. Start an invasion and work back and how the fuck to do that. You know how in Jewish tradition, every Jew who has ever been born or will ever be born received the Torah at Sinai. Is that the plan? Every American who's ever been born will receive a ship.

Yes. Jefferson was under the belief that the only thing these guys would understand is violence, which I guess clearly doing diplomacy didn't work. Maybe because like... They fuck them up a little bit, sure. Yeah, not using the Mediterranean at all is not an option. So Jefferson was under the idea

that like, no, no, no, we need to build a navy to shoot them in the face. And it just so happened that these two would run against one another in the 1800 election which was a rematch of the election before that in 1796 now the piracy of american ships wasn't even that big of a deal over the course of the campaign uh there's a lot more of other important shit going on at the world at the time they call each other uh whores a lot there's some really sordid stuff in that election yeah it's it's truly the the creation of

modern american politics was it adams uh had as a favor to the czar procured like a young american virgin or something uh there's some really if you if you ever get bored enough to read about uh early american campaigning that one is a mind fuck that in uh 1828 or 1824 i i honestly i'm not like i'm not sure but also jefferson was a weird fucking guy so maybe um and i don't want to commit to that one yes or no um but you know the french revolution was very nearly dragging the u.s into a war that would implode Europe for the next, a long time. Um, there was also,

uh, you know, it turned into a slanderous shit show full of lies. And even honestly, whores for the czar, man, some of the earliest version of what we would recognize as culture war. Um,

for instance, Jefferson's democratic Republican party, which has to be the most deeply cursed name of a political party that the United States has had, um, outside of like, I don't know, the American Nazi Party, was accused of being atheists. Like, how dare you? You guys own people. Let's all calm down. Everybody owned everybody at this point.

There was no good or bad guy. Adams was an abolitionist. Was he? Yeah, you don't remember. OK, fair enough. enough okay there was one good guy here and he fucking lost but I'll show you John Adams was not a good guy but he is is the most interesting president

to me and I have this weird little soft spot for John Adams it's like whenever you find an abolitionist from like the revolution they're like no man should ever be bound into slavery like oh so some of her founding fathers were good people. And then it's like,

it always turns back to, and we should send them all back to Africa. Like, God damn it. I can believe that. Yeah, he did. Uh,

I mean, that's why Liberia became a thing. There's a lot of bad stuff here. Namely Jefferson's running mate was Aaron Burr, uh, who was a fucking crazy person. Oh, yeah. He's probably more famous for shooting his political opponents than anything else he's ever done, which is always a good sign. Do you want me to sing from the musical, Joe?

What musical? Hamilton. Are you fucking serious? Never heard of it. Yes, you have. Yes, you have. Yes, you have. Unfamiliar to me. No, no. Please explain it to me number one hamilton fan you're gonna i'm gonna need you to explain

this to me i don't want to have to explain it to you i don't want to have to be reminded that lib manuel miranda exists who thank you joe honestly my favorite part of the burr saga is when he went west and was going to declare his own country and then invade the United States. That one's a banger. That's ambitious. I will give him that. Yeah, somehow he didn't end up getting executed for that. But anyway, Jefferson won.

Long story short, or not a very long story that I've failed miserably at making short. A very long story that I've failed miserably at making short. And he finally had the power to do what he wanted to do since 1785, which at this point, there had been enough pressure from kidnappings and stuff where the American public was getting kind of mad. It was happening at enough of a clip that the newspapers were picking it up. It was making people mad. And for the first time in a long, illustrious history in American press,

they managed to make a lot of people mad at a country they could not locate on a map. So good for you. They didn't have maps, man. I mean, they did have maps, but like, come on. They had maps. I mean, not every person, sure. Hey, if there's one thing I've learned from period pieces is every rich

uppity guy has a globe in their office all right i want a globe bar so fucking bad joe a globe bar yeah where the top where the northern hemisphere comes off and then it's just a bar oh it's a little liquor cart you know what i'm talking about that's fun it's like your our drinking problem is also spy stuff sophisticated yeah it's like um one time uh for christmas probably like i don't know years and years and years ago i think it was like my uncle gave me like a decanter set and i was like why the fuck am i gonna use this i don't i need to make like first of all i'm not pouring my plastic bottle whiskey into a decanter like that's not gonna do me any favors old crow reserve that's right so there's a there's a lot of problems uh happening and jefferson wanted to solve them all with the navy uh so congress is getting pretty tired of also setting aside a pretty large portion of their

budget aside every fucking year to paying off pirates on the other side of the world um fuck it let's invade it's all the once and for all this seems operation cannot possibly go wrong and not to mention every time they paid the pirates like okay well next time it's gonna be this much more you know they're they're trying to squeeze blood from a stone you know uh they were just they were american banks before americans were banks i don't fucking know now just before jefferson's inauguration in 1801 congress passed legislation that would provide the new department of the navy be given six frigates that quote shall be officered and man as the president of the united states may direct which is new because remember this is

definitely still solidly in that time where the united states government and its people were very wary of anything that could be considered a standing military uh you know we have and then we've let's the reason why we have weird ass amendments like you can't be forced to quarter soldiers like you know fucking shit the third amendment get out of my house i i really like the idea of a guy you know you have like first amendment and second amendment guys someone becoming like the third amendment uh advocacy center where every time there have been lawsuits filed against police departments for third amendment right violations and as far as i know they never win but it comes up very they're not soldiers right that's legally exactly exactly but the united states government has as far as i know forced people to house soldiers in times of war uh don't quote me on

that but i'm pretty certain and i'm pretty certain someone back in world war ii sued under the third amendment and lost because of basically an emergency war power declaration oh well that doesn't surprise me at all our amendments are written to be broken and interpreted at will yeah exactly that's a great country we live in yeah it's totally normal yeah everything's fine uh and now this was mostly seen this aversion to a standing military being seen as an army um because they were under the belief that the army could be used for political repression right of course and a navy has a harder time to do that so like people are much like you're not the navy just blockading voting booths justraldo-ing a Navy into D.C. for a coup or something.

Sailing sadly up the Potomac. The water's so gross. Sailing a Navy down the Detroit River and having it melt from the acid content. Yeah, so they green-lighted a comparatively very small Navy under the direct command of the president so then as if to underline why congress gave these powers of jefferson the first place the pasha of tripoli demanded a payment of 225 000 or three million dollars uh in today's money which also still doesn't seem like a whole lot we have eight dollars and potatoes yeah like it still doesn't seem like a whole lot but but then you have to realize

again that it's federal government. Again, $8 and some potatoes and some Joe Kasabian private stash bathtub brown liquor of ill-reviewed... Hell yeah, baby. It's mostly piss. Damn you. But, yeah, again, the

US is desperately poor. And this wasn't one of their payments. This was like a good faith payment from the incoming Jefferson administration because Yusef Karaman, Lady Pasha, claimed that this was a tradition for new governments to pay him to ensure that they would continue with the old agreements. Now, you don't need to point out this is, in fact, the only transition of government that he has had as Pasha. So that just meant that Adams had paid him. And this is not some ancient tradition of some kind. This is just bribery.

Yeah, at least he's being honest about it, right? Like, yeah, say what you will about Ottoman corruption. Everybody saw it from a mile away. Now, Jefferson had always been against paying them anything not to mention according to the book of the tripletanian war the u.s federal reserve at the time only had 10 million dollars in it we didn't even have a federal reserve we would have had nothing really yeah and by Federal Reserve, I mean at this point, like literally the Treasury. I don't mean the literal Federal Reserve.

At this point, it's just some guys. It's under Jefferson's mattress. Just beating Martha away like, hey, I need that to pay my bribes. Nobody go near the president's mattress. He gets weird about it you get your nails done next week now jefferson refused to pay and in turn the barbary state of triply declared war again not officially but functionally by marching into the u.s consulate and cutting down its flagstaff which was like how they declared war i guess guess. Tellingly, Algiers and Tunis did not follow suit.

They're like, oh, you're on your own, homie. This left them completely on their own. And Morocco... Boto a bolto, our four guys with boats, let's do this. We have six whole boats, and we are several thousand miles away. You're going to pay for this. And Morocco, at this point, was openly like,

we have nothing to do with this. So this is something of Jefferson's trap card. The congressional legislation that gave him that navy only gave him the power to deploy it for war in response to a Barbary declaration of war. So he got that by refusing to pay the bribe which gave him the freedom to send in his boats uh so the pasha kind of played directly into jefferson's hand okay interesting now this was put in place uh i guess you could say to stop the president from having too much power over the military and using it for funsies which you, you know, thankfully that doesn't happen anymore. You know, no,

no, no, don't worry about it. Yeah, certainly doesn't happen all the time. Actually, I, and on today's episode of lions led by donkeys,

we defend operation just cause. Oh God, you got to pick that one. Don't you? Yeah. Cause it's cause it basically writes its own jokes. Operation just because come on, man,

that's a good one. And a hearty chuckle at that. You couldn't hear it. I figured you just kind of glared at your monitor and then I laughed to myself knowing that I had made you upset. I have to admit, when you said Operation Just Cause,

despite the fact I know what Operation Just Cause is, my mind immediately jumped to the video game. Great game. Great game. Just Cause 2. Oh, man, I sunk a lot of hours into just cause tail. You can parachute off of everything. It's fun.

Dude, there's so many grapple hooks. Yeah. No. So this was 1801 and you know, news traveled slow as hell. And before Jefferson knew that Tripoli had declared war on the U S he had actually already sent a naval squadron of three frigates and one schooner

schooner. Is it schooner? Sch frigates and one schooner. Schooner? Is it schooner? Schooner boats. Schooner. Schooner. I knew that. Not a boat guy. Tank guy.

I have never once claimed to be a boat guy. I'm not a boat guy. We have a resident boat guy, and he's busy. I apologize. You have Kasabian syndrome. That's just called the TBI. No, that's what happens when you've seen a word written but never spoken aloud and you're just fucking up fucking pronouncing it in the

worst way possible i do the same exact thing i really like that i do that so so often that there's a syndrome named after me that's fun you know it's like uh uh luke garrick's disease i'm sure he's really happy about that being named after him. You don't have ALS Joe, Jesus Christ. Now, uh, he,

uh, he already deployed these guys that are the command of Commodore Richard Dale. Uh, and, but he had deployed them to smooth things over. His name, his name is Dale. His name is Dick Dale.

I just realized that. God damn it. Uh, he wanted to... He sent these guys over there to tell them, look, we aren't going to pay you shit, but we will give you some money. He did send Dick Dale over there with a significantly

smaller amount of money. Just not as much as they wanted. And also with that, he was showing them, look, we have a fucking Navy now. Take this or we're going to shoot at you. We're a real country. Yeah, it was a little bit of sweet with your sour, but not chicken boats. So, yeah, that was kind of how he made that work.

And this is actually for you. One of the ships in the squadron was a USS Philadelphia go birds go birds the cannons shoot batteries that only hit Santa now

it had 36 guns and a displacement of 1200 tons and it actually you want to know how this was built? It was crowdfunded. Yeah, dude. We were the city of brotherly love and also cannons. It's the city of brotherly love or else. Sailing into battle on my 1801 warship with fuck the cowboys painted on the side.

my 1801 warship with fuck the Cowboys painted on the side. Yeah, I really should have gone with the USS Philly Special or whatever the fuck that stupid play is called. I don't know. I don't know enough about Philly football history. It's called the Philly Special or Philly Philly if you prefer. I know you don't know what it's like to experience success. Is the Philly Special

just a beef sandwich with a needle in the middle of it? Wow, you're from Detroit, Joee let's all calm down at least our teams win things hey that's why it's still punching up baby it's not punching up it's punching sideways motherfucker we have tensing pin it's more like a vigorous slap laterally i do like the idea of us having to defend our respective shithole cities i never defend detroit that's why i'm not moving back there i defend the red wings that's all i defend yeah go wings whatever she won't say go bruins back so i don't know what to do no because i

hate the bruins how can you hate the bruins brad marshand is a perfectly nice guy and as i feel the podcast disconnecting and joe's hand force choking me from hawaii i'm going to buy a plane ticket on my way to armenia just to go to philly and kick you in the dick you have to actually you have to be uh my groomsman at some point so you really do have to come to philly you're inviting me over to kick you in the dick you won't kick me in the dick oh new patreon goal yeah actually if you get if you if you uh donate ten dollars or more a month and then all the money goes to liam i'll be kicked in the dick i'll be modified whatever dude i've been kicked in the dick before i don't care yeah we've all been kicked in the dick before it's like concussions you get like six freebies and in fact i think most men who have had a dumb childhood,

like not a hundred percent of people has probably been kicked in the dick for money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've been kicked in the deck for money. Yeah. Speaking of dicks,

there's Dick Dale, Dick Dale, and the USS Philadelphia. It was bigger than any ship that the, this crowdfunding ship. That's right. I bet it was, motherfucker. Cradle of Liberty, baby. It was much bigger than any ship the pirates could muster. That's right.

It was definitely a flex. Now, what's unfortunate is the pirates could not understand any of the slurs coming from it. Fly, eagles fly, but played on cannons. Now, but Jefferson kind of ran into a wall nobody was entirely sure legally that is of what the ships could actually do they didn't declare war the constitution said war could only happen with the agreement of congress which and nobody was really 100 certain what the full scope of the war Powers Clause was because it had never been used. Right. However, Congress got around

that whole thing by never declaring war. 1801 AUMF. Yeah, baby, it's an AUMF. That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what it is because Congress authorized the president to use the Navy to attack and seize anything controlled personally by the Pasha of

Tripoli, which, you guessed it, is anything in Tripoli. Yeah, it was an AUMF. Ye olde babies first, AUMF. Ye olde AUMF, baby. It also just so happened the U.S. found itself a weird friend in the middle of all of this, not really known for being a traditional ally of the United States until very recently when they are going to join NATO Sweden the kingdom

of Sweden had been at war against Tripoli for the same reasons for the last year and when the US showed up Sweden's like come on over like we're already parked out here just candidate after candidate.

Her-ga-derg-a-derg. Just follow the chef noises until you get to Tripoli. Follow the chef noises, followed by the loudest goddamn broadside you've ever heard in your life. Just wet packets of snuff slapping against Tripoli. But tonight it sounds like, hey, good-ding-a-derg-it. That's how you're eating. So they just pulled up alongside them and Sweden is like,

all right, we're bros. We're working on this together now. Now, the first real battle for the American War, if you want to consider that, happened in August 1st of 1801 when the USS Enterprise, I assume sponsored by the rental car company, was on a provisioning mission trying to find food and water or or whatever sure um and in order to avoid pirates the american crew was

actually flying a british flag which is quite funny uh because the british had previously you know paid them off operation they'll never suspect it pirates saw the ship with a british flag and scooted up next to it was like like, hey, have you guys seen any Americans? No. Yeah, and so the US crew being upstanding naval gentlemen quickly struck the British flag and raised the American one and shot

them at point-blank range. Which is kind of funny. Yeah, it's kind of funny. uh the americans were actually outnumbered and outgunned because this is just one ship all on its own out on a provisioning mission they weren't like preparing for war or anything uh they weren't like getting ready for battle however the pirates don't fight you know pitched sea battles So they immediately tried to get the fuck out of there. And after a couple of broadsides from the Enterprise, one of the pirate ships decided to run up a white flag of surrender. The American ship accepted their surrender and put it up alongside them to accept it like captain to captain, which led to the pirates point blanking the american

ship you motherfuckers only we could do that you dicks this process actually happened three more times oh wow that's yeah finally the americans like you know what fuck this we're not accepting their surrender and they started shooting at the water line uh trying to just sink it they were there like we're not going to capture the ship. We're just going to sink this fucker. Most of the pirate crew was killed in this exchange of gunfire. And the captain was quite worried that he was going to die. Right. And he also realized that he did a whole lot of the boy who cries wolf in this scenario. So he could not fly up a white flag and expect the Americans to list it.

So he actually stood up on the deck, flew the Tripoli flag back and forth, and then tossed it into the ocean to show that he had finally surrendered. I really did at this time. The American captain was so fucking pissed off at this point. He accepted their surrender, but did not leave them any provisions or any way to escape and simply left them sinking there in their dead ship.

Yeah, I had humamugs dust, you know. Yeah, you'll find a way back, you know. According to the book Jefferson's War, the entire crew of the Enterprise got a whole month's worth of salary up front as a bonus, while the pirate captain was demoted, covered in

sheep guts, and then had his feet whipped. That's, uh, that sucks. Fuck around, Get your feet whipped. Don't like that. I'm willing to bet someone somewhere would. We were already being gross before

we started. We're an hour in. Podcast madness has taken over. However, by 1802, piracy still hadn't stopped. So a new squadron commander, Commodore Edward Preble, cut a deal with King Ferdinand IV of Naples to base his ship instead of Naples, Syracuse, and Palermo, as well as Messina. That meant that they had a much closer resupply point. So they could just rotate the Navy through constantly to tripoli and keep

it in place sure sure while in tripoli the pasha took over the american consulate and turned into a prison for any americans that got their hands on meanwhile the u.s and sweden remain virtually unchallenged at sea uh because wouldn't you know it pirates don't want to fight a navy it's not what they're in they're in the this business for sure exactly though uh sweden would decide to throw in the towel realize this is all pointless and expensive and go home in 1802 leaving uh now they fought the mostly pointless first battle of tripoli uh first battle of tripoli harbor which did did virtually nothing um and the u.s. would be left on its own to kind of float around and look for an enemy that wouldn't show up talk about your time in afghanistan oh if they didn't

show up i wouldn't be disabled so shout out to the taliban baby oh i feel bad more and more of the new u.s navy was sent over as Jefferson wasn't really sure what his next move was. He assumed, like many others, he would simply send the Navy in. Conquer Libya. He assumed that the Navy would show up, blow up some pirate ships

and the pirates would be like, oh, please stop, and then Jefferson would go home. There wasn't exactly a lot of planning involved and there there wasn't like any long-term mission objective plan i'm not really good at that yeah it's weird how that keeps happening oh well certainly won't pop up again in the meantime the u.s was left to try to enforce a blockade on its own now that sweden was gone which they just did not have the ships for so piracyacy continued around the U.S. Navy.

The battle between the Enterprise and the pirate ship, the Tripoli, which was the first ship that they fought, had made things a lot harder for the pirates within the city because they watched their local captain get doused in innards and get his feet beaten up. So it made other captains not so willing to actually throw down with the American Navy for fear that they get the foot treatment. It also hurt recruitment for the rank and file pirates because most of the crew died. That's going to hurt recruitment.

Yeah, that's not war-winning good looks. Yeah. Then in 1803, the U.S. tripped over their own dicks and lost the USS Philadelphia in the dumbest way possible. Wouldn't be us if it weren't the dumbest way possible. Yeah. Now, while patrolling Tripoli Harbor looking for outgoing pirate ships, they simply ran aground at a previously unknown reef two miles from shore. Whoops. Attaboy.

As pirate boats rushed out to capture the stranded filly, the American crew just tried to scuttle the ship, but they didn't act quite fast enough. And the whole crew and ship was captured. The crew was thrown into the U.S. consulate, which was, remember, now the jail. And meanwhile, pirates strapped the filly to a bunch of other boats, pulled it off the reef, and brought it into port,

renaming it the Gift of Allah, which is what I will now call the City of Philadelphia. Yeah, it is a gift. It is a gift in heaven, Joe. Settle down there, Detroit. Hey, I didn't say we were a gift from Allah. You're welcome. How about I cut your handshakes for you?

Is that what you want? Now, the frigate became the largest and most powerful ship in the entire pirate fleet, and it would have been and most powerful ship in the entire pirate fleet and it would have been the most powerful ship in the entire ottoman empire if the pirates could fix it because remember i just ran to a fucking reef that's gonna do some damage um also the crew did a number on it they weren't able to destroy it completely but they had done a lot of damage good good look at a philly asshole it's just the crew was waiting on board to hit him with a brick had done a lot of damage. Good. Good. Welcome to Philly, asshole. It's just the crew was waiting on board

to hit him with a brick or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a ye olde battery. The pirates rush aboard like, I do not understand. Why are all the crewmen eating shit off of the floor? Why am I being

stabbed with syringes? Commodore Preble, who was the commander of the entire... Not as cool as Commodore Dick Dale. Yeah, Dick Dale. We'll never forget you. Now, Preble was commanding the entire theater from aboard the USS Constitution,

and when he heard that the Philly had been captured by pirates, he knew he had to do something to get it back, to either save his pride, but probably also his career. They probably could really fuck some of the American fleet up with or without training if they got the Philly up and running. So he was worried that if he made a run at it, remember it's in the port, in a defended bay, that if he made a run at it, cause remember it's in the port in a defended Bay, uh, that it would be,

uh, a pretty costly battle. Uh, so it turned out for him, uh, luckily that he had a spy, uh, that could see the ship's condition and,

and the, uh, the improvements that the pirates were making on it. That was the former captain, captain Bainbridge. Now he was in prison in the consulate and could see the captured ship from his window uh he's like no it's still broken and remember how i told you that they could write letters right right right so the pasha was encouraging the prisoners

to send mail out of course the reason for this is he wanted to ransom these officers and the crew back to the US government. So he was expecting them to write letters about, oh, this jail sucks or whatever. And instead, Bainbridge is just writing like, hey, the Philly is still busted to hell. So you could probably make a move on it. They're not fixing it. Steal it back, steal it back, steal it back. Now, this also told Preble that he wasn't going to just be able to jump a whole bunch of dudes back onto the boat and sail it away because it was so damaged. And he wasn't sure if he'd be able to tow it either because it would take so long that by the time they strap it up to another ship, the pirates are going to be able to get a whole bunch of guys with guns and make their day a living hell. So Captain Stephen Decatur came up with a plan a group of sappers marines and sicilian mercenaries

would blow it up in port oh jesus christ okay never uh never challenge a sicilian when blowing up a boat is on the line that's some silly shit. Though the plan was considered so crazy that the commander would not accept people who were told to take part in it. He would only accept volunteers on this mission that he was pretty sure was a suicide mission. Now, they boarded the USS

Intrepid, which had also previously been a pirate ship that the US had captured and repurposed. And it was also horribly infestive with rats because life on a ship in the you know yeah it's 1803 dude of course there's fucking rats yeah it would be weird if there was no rats uh there's no evidence that the rats were recruited for the mission like a really weird secret squirrel red wall tiny tiny tiny bomb shot to a tiny rat like you go make them proud buddy that's right going to rat paradise

baby uh now the ship along with the uss siren had sicilian mercenaries on board mostly because they didn't have that many infantry like naval infantry which are what marines are they didn't have that many of them but also because the sicilian spoke arabic um so they could like kind of the Sicilians spoke Arabic. So they could like kind of undercover, make their way past security. They also dressed like what was described as quote to Barbary civilians, which I'm going to assume at brown face. Like they dressed up in clothes,

but they're still white guys. Right. So like, and this is not just the Sicilians. This is everybody. So yeah, they put on brown face, jumped in some civilian clothes, and snuck into the harbor. Now, it took eight days to get from Syracuse to Tripoli because they kept getting hit by storms. And also the siren had its mast break and couldn't go very fast because obviously it's a sailboat.

So they had to leave it behind because it was going too slow. But when these ships finally snuck through all of the defenses, they pulled up alongside the filly and surprised the pirate guards that were pulling guard duty. And the Americans and Sicilians didn't want to have guns because guns, you know, muskets make a lot of fucking noise. Yeah. And they're not exactly portable either. So they descended out of these boats armed with hatchets and swords so they could hack everybody to death. Yes. Welcome to Philly, asshole.

Go birds. Then so they boarded the Philly, set it on fire uh set a whole bunch of exploit like timed explosives as well for good measure jumped into their boat and then the wind died uh they they could not make a glorious getaway because because the wind died uh well you can't have everything right including your limbs or life that's. So while still getting shot at by pirates, they jumped into rowboats, strapped themselves to their boat, and then paddled away all while everybody was shooting

at them. I'm totally paddling away. Just doggy paddling my way to glory, baby. It's impossible to look respectable as your warship is being pulled away by a gang of angry rowboats uh now because of how slow information traveled in the 1800s this same telegram or

message that reached jefferson about the philly being seized by the pirates also included the message about the insane operation that destroyed it without a hitch. I mean, they left out all the hitches, but, you know. The caterer was promoted. He was given a ceremonial sword, and everybody that took part was given a full month's salary as a bonus, which I assume at the time was like $3. I don't know. Yeah, $3 and a potato from earlier.

$3, some potato, and a tub full of piss whiskey. Piss whiskey. Pisky. Pisky. some potato and a tub full of piss whiskey this led directly to the second battle of Tripoli Harbor a few months later as the USS Intrepid which remember it was the pirate ship they captured redub

the USS Intrepid and then used it to sneak in again but this time they turned into a fire ship cool and then it blew up sneak in again but this time they turned into a fire ship um cool and then it blew up early and killed everybody less good so yep accidental american suicide bombing yeah they uh head of the game baby yeah american innovation after that american gunboats backed by the constitution the uss constitution so the one that can actually do something uh bombed and burned anything that the pirate fleet had in the harbor uh though this battle was more like a flare-up in the blockade because like again the pirate just kind of settled

back um there's never an outright victory that american commanders were looking for because whenever the navy showed up i think that's the only time i've ever heard of that happening yeah that's right we would only win if they would fight us yeah bet you would you fucking idiot um yeah and it wasn't the the victory that they were hoping would crush the backbone of the pirates um however as soon as said bombers and sicilian sword raids weren't the only ideas being flowed around as everybody tried to pitch ideas that might actually bring an end to the war uh like you know i don't like the world's worst writer's room or something um enter william

eaton who was the u.s consul in tunis remember they're actually they're not taking part in this right right they're part of the you're on your own squad yeah they realize this is a supremely bad idea um sure now eaton theorized that the pirates would just come back if they didn't get rid of the pasha that was empowering them which sure i suppose but he devised the plan to find the pasha's exile brother hametet, arm him, and then march him across the Libyan desert to take Tripoli by land. This doesn't sound like it's going to work out. Plop this idiot brother on the throne as an American

client and then force him to end piracy. This got approval. Come on, man. I mean, at this point, Jefferson's like, sure, fuck it, why not? Throw enough hemets to the wall see what sticks sure uh so he went to egypt where he was in exile and found hemet now ethan was under the impression by his other diplomats that this exile brother who had

previously challenged the pasha for uh control um was in Egypt, biding his time, building his forces. He was this important guy with influence. I bet. Yep. This all sounds like it's going to check out. Yeah. He spent most of his time getting really drunk and high and surrounded by a very large harem of hookers. Yeah.

It's word. Yeah. He only had like 90 followers oh which yeah it's like his inner circle i wouldn't even consider this like followers per se these are all people that depended on him for their continued survival mostly because like this is like an entourage situation you know hem it's paying for their their drugs and sex workers and shit. Right. So this wasn't enough to discourage Eaton, right? But 90 guys is not enough to assault over land and take a city. So he had to hire a mixed-match group of Bedouin, Greek, and Arab mercenaries to reinforce it.

And then enter First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon, who was the commander of nine whole Marines, who was like, we'll go. Hey, idiots, guess what? We're doing it on Sunday. I assume Bannon was very bored. Now, at this point, Eaton had

a lot of very big ideas of himself, and he started calling himself the commander in chief of this army. Wrong, wrong. Wrong. They do not have that many people. Now, in case you're wondering, this is the group of Marines where we get the whole Shores of Tripoli

lyric from and the Marine Corps song. That's it. Nine guys. Oh, okay. No, Joe, they were heroically outnumbered but fought until the last man. And then what they did is they went home and ate some crayons. I'm not saying that what happens next isn't impressive because they do, again, march across the Libyan desert

and assault the city. But there's only nine of them. That's fewer people to worry about, you know? After assembling a force, they went on a 500-mile overland march across the desert. Fuck that. Fuck all of that. Exactly. Yeah. Shit sucks. I would die. If I was one

of those nine brains like we have to do what? I'm going to fucking shoot myself. Guess who's deserting? Liam is, baby. Guess who was blowing off his foot with his musket? This guy. Things came apart at the seams pretty quickly. Now, when Eaton hired the mercenaries,

he apparently told them that they'd only be marching some of the way and then they'd get picked up by a ship. This did not happen. So they began like, okay, we'll continue marching with you, but they jacked up their price a bit more. But that was more money than Eaton actually had on him. So when they rendezvoused with a supply ship on the coast, Eaton had to ask the

captain if he had any spare money uh so he could pay the mercenaries jesus yeah lest the entire plan go to shit and one of the mercenaries almost certainly shoots him in the face for being an asshole now this led to the only large-scale ground combat in the entire war with the Battle of Derna. Eaton got to the gates of the city of Derna and demanded its surrender. Mustafa Bey, the city's administrator, refused, telling him to go away. The Navy, in the form of the U.S. Argus, was brought in to give the attacking force fire support. And then it did something that I assumed could only happen in acme cartoons oh boy now they begin bombarding the city uh but you know this isn't a very big gun ship not like there's rotating turrets and easy ways to fix things it's the 1800s so this ship one of the

crewmen loaded the cannons and then fired the ramrod clear into the city. All right. This happened to be one of two ramrods, it seems, that the ship had. Oh. Didn't need it anyway. We got a backup. I would like to assume this metal rod flew through the city and just impaled some guy out of a cartoon, but that's probably just cartwheeled off into the distance. What a hell of a way to die.

So the Argus' fire rate dropped drastically because they, you know, I don't know, acmed the fucking ramrod into the distance. Then the ground force began to assault the city of Derna. It turned out that mercenaries are not

a good way to build an army because they realize that this is not worth their paycheck because they're doing a frontal assault against an entrenched enemy had walls and cannons and shit. And one flank was the Marines with the Greeks Marines and friends.

The Greeks decided you guys go on about this by yourself. We're going to be back here and they just turned around and ran. Now, this probably would have ended with the triumphant murder of nine Marines if the Arab mercenaries did not save them because... You're welcome.

They looked at the flank of the city and realized that huh, everybody's just shooting at the Marines. Nobody's even looking over here. And they simply walked into the city unopposed. Well, thanks for the distraction, boys. The Arab mercenaries

effectively took the city. What told the Marine Corps that? Almost immediately, Tripoli heard about this and sent reinforcements. But by the time they had gotten there, the battle was already over because, you know, transmission of information is very slow. They dug in outside the town uh and they would eventually attempt an unsupported frontal assault onto the town themselves a few weeks later on may 13th which i do have to admit this

is quite ballsy because you know it's mercenaries and marines behind a defended city with their own cannons now uh so when they and not to mention the argus which had fixed the ramrod problem by now so they could pour full supporting fire onto the attacking tripoli reinforcements can i fairly call these guys pirates they're on land land pirates land pirates yeah land pirates uh so the the counter-attack was completely annihilated now with that the road to tripoli was wide open for decatur and eaton uh you know the commander-in-chief eaton to march through full on with naval fire support with a few professional soldiers and replace the pasha because again you know they were fighting a loose collection of pirates like they could probably do a lot of damage with this small army mostly with the fire support

as Eaton and his force were setting out to march from Derna to Tripoli someone rode up on a horse and told them hey man you can turn around the war's over war's over going home bye see ya now Jefferson seeing this war dragging on

for no fucking point and costing a ton of money mind you um that they still did not have and not really accomplishing anything send a diplomat named tobias lear who had actually previously been george washington's personal secretary um to go talk to the posh and end this whole thing. Right. It turned out the negotiating piece is very easy when nobody wants the war to go on. The U.S. offered the Pasha 60 grand, which, remember, was way back what they were originally going to offer him that he turned down.

He offered him $60,000, giving back all of his prisoners of war and some piss whiskey and potatoes to end the conflict, as well as all other tributes. And of course, they'd have to release the crew of the Philadelphia who was still in jail in the consulate.

Curly Rex carving out fuck the cowboys. The only counter offer to this that the Pasha had was like, okay, but you have to send my idiot brother back to Egypt. And they did. Yeah. Where do you want us to put them?

And Eaton spent pretty much the rest of his life pissed about this entire thing. And like insisting that Lear had robbed him of his military glory. Okay. Guy. Now on June 10th, 1805, the treaty would be signed and that would be it at least for 10 years.

And the start of this, and the start of the second Barbary war, because the same exact shit started again. And within two years, Algiers would be kidnapping Americans and stealing shit once again. The only reason why it took until 1815 for the second war to start is because America was a little busy getting their teeth kicked in during the War of 1812. We are going to burn Toronto to the ground. 1812. We are going to burn Toronto to the ground. Now, there has been a few urban legends that have sprung up from this

war, as you can imagine, mostly centering on the U.S. Marines. It's fun, though. It's a fun myth, though, so I'll give them that. They truly trace what you consider their modern lineage to the Battle of Derna. There's a little bit before then, but this is like

they made them forged in the Battle of Derna. There's a little bit before then, but this is like they made them forged in the Battle of Derna. For starters, there's one story that says Lieutenant O'Bannon was gifted a Mamluk sword from an Ottoman viceroy as a prize for being such a stalwart

and brave military leader. Obviously, you can already tell this is bullshit, right? Now, the story goes on that this sword was so famous that this is the sword that the Marines modeled their ceremonial swords for to this day. Small problem with this, though.

There's no fucking evidence this ever happened. Of course there's not, dude. The first mention I could find in anything was in 1917, which is over 100 years after the end of the war. Well, actually, the sword was at the Battle of Bellewood, Joe. Yeah, on its own. It was armed with a Tommy gun somehow.

A sentient sword with a Tommy gun. first historical mention I could find of this, which I found through the Marine Corps' own historical program, who now admits that this did not happen, was again in 1917 for a very small newspaper, the Louisville Courier. Now, I think that's because that's where O'Bannon was from. Sure.

According to the issue of Fortitude Dine, the official newsletter of the Marine Corps historical program dated summer of 1984, the sort of 4229, the official newsletter of the Marine Corps historical program dated summer of 1984, the sword of the Marines thought was the real sword, which was in a museum, was actually a Victorian-era forgery of an Ottoman sword.

That's fun, though. It's cool mythos building. Yeah, we have a mystical fucking sword, like Excalibur, but it's actually like a Victorian-era Bud K knife. We just got it from a guy. Now, what's much more likely to have happened here is that marine swords, if you look at them,

look an awful lot like every other kind of fucking military sword in Europe. And they said, let's use those. That's probably what happened. Yeah. Anyway, that's the end of the first Barbary War. There's no good way to end this one um but yeah it's we'll do the second barbary war later i thought about doing

them as a series and then i decided not to uh because again thank you for sparing me that one will also take only an episode uh it's not a lot to it it's actually not as dumb as this one um but it is still funny but yeah uh to the from the shores of tripoli and

and whatnot there's the first barbary war uh there you go liam we do a thing on the show called questions from the legion yes joe um if you would like to ask a question from the legion donate to the show uh and send me a message on patreon join the very large Patreon thread we have going on asking us questions from the Legion, or ask us on Discord, which you can also gain access to by donating to the show. Only a dollar, really.

But very cool community. Come and join it. But anyway, today's question is, if you were to form a government, I know exactly what the fuck caused this question, too. If you were to form a government, I know exactly what the fuck caused this question too. If you were to form a government based on your favorite sports team, what kind of government would it be? Uh,

Oh, it'd be bad. Uh, it'd be really bad. What we would do is, is raise children to fight constantly. Uh, the strongest children get to eat.

The weakest children die. From there, they would be sent into some sort of weird training camp where they'd just be beaten over the head until they developed some sort of CTE and then sent into the land to devour the cowboys.

I think that's how Dr. Oz got elected. Okay, first of all, he didn't get elected. Anyway, rewind this back when he went to primary and I could tell you, I tell the future. He went to primary or something. He did win the primary. Yeah.

Fuck. Mine would be some kind of like democratic Detroit Red Wings ism, which I think just means spending a lot of money to hire Europeans to do my job. Yeah. That's, that's working smarter, not harder.

Joe, Liam, America needs a captain, the captain vote. Steve Heiserman. Yeah. All right. Um,

anyway, Liam, plug your shows. Uh, yeah. Listen to, 10,000 losses. It's a left-wing Philly sports podcast. And listen to...

What's my other one called? Well, There's Your Problem. It's a left-wing engineering disasters podcast. And when you can't remember what it's called, it's What Is My Problem? What are many? Everybody, thank you for listening. If you like our show, consider joining us again.

Buy stuff from our Teespring store. Buy his books. Is that all? Yeah. Kind of ran out of juice there, Joe. I'm tired. Consider donating to the show or leaving us a review or both or neither. It's your free time and money.

Do with it what you wish. And until next time. Don't drink the piss whiskey. Drink the piss whiskey. Please don't.