Enterprise fights a three-hour battle and dismasts the corsair Tripoli
Three months after Yusuf Karamanli cut down the American flagstaff in Tripoli and declared war, the United States Navy had its first chance to answer. On 1 August 1801, the schooner USS Enterprise, under Lieutenant Andrew Sterett, met the Tripolitan polacca Tripoli off the Libyan coast. The two ships fought for three hours; Enterprise came away without a single casualty, while Tripoli lost twenty men killed and thirty wounded before surrendering. Sterett dismasted the enemy ship, threw her guns overboard, and sent her back to port.
Jefferson had refused to pay tribute Europe had paid for decades, betting that a young navy barely reestablished in 1794 could back up the refusal. Enterprise's victory was the proof of concept: American ships, built and crewed under the new Department of the Navy, could win a fight thousands of miles from home. Congress marked the moment with a ceremonial sword for Sterett, an early ritual for a navy establishing its permanent traditions.
QWhy was Enterprise flying British colors when she first approached the Tripoli?
Sterett used a common maritime ruse of the era, hoisting British colors to close the distance without alarming the Tripolitan vessel. When the corsair's crew answered that they were out hunting Americans and regretted not finding any yet, Sterett struck the British flag, ran up the Stars and Stripes, and opened fire with muskets. The trick was standard practice among warships of every nation at the time, since flying false colors before an actual attack was not considered a violation of the laws of war, only firing under a false flag was. The deception gave Enterprise the first shot and forced Tripoli into a defensive posture from the opening minutes of the engagement.
QWhat happened to the crew of Enterprise's own supply barge in a separate incident during this deployment?
More than a year after the battle with Tripoli, on 16 October 1802 at Leghorn, Enterprise's supply barge capsized and sank, drowning a midshipman and three crewmen. The survivors were pulled from the water by a boat sent from USS Constellation, another American frigate stationed nearby. The loss had nothing to do with combat; it was an ordinary maritime accident during the tedious months of convoying merchantmen and running dispatches that made up most of Enterprise's Mediterranean service between major engagements. Sterett's dramatic three-hour victory over Tripoli was the exception in an otherwise grinding routine of escort duty, a reminder that even routine duty could be lethal.
QWhat lie did Admiral Rais Mahomet Rous tell after limping his battered ship back toward Tripoli?
Before reaching port, the dismasted Tripoli drifted near USS President, Commodore Richard Dale's flagship still blockading the harbor. Rous, badly wounded and desperate to avoid further scrutiny, claimed his vessel was Tunisian and that the damage came from a fight with a French 22-gun ship, not an American schooner. Dale suspected the story was false but chose not to press the matter, instead simply handing over a compass so the crippled ship could navigate home. That small act of restraint let Rous slip past the blockade and face his own government's punishment rather than further American guns, a quiet end to a violent encounter.
