Episode 1 of 1
Burning of the USS Philadelphia
- When
- 16 February 1804
- Where
- Tripoli harbor
Decatur led a night raid aboard the ketch Intrepid to board and burn the captured frigate USS Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor.
On February 16, 1804, Decatur sailed the Intrepid next to the Philadelphia under the cover of night, pretending to be a ship in distress. He boarded the frigate with a small detachment of Marines, deceiving the guards, and set the ship on fire to deny its use to the Tripolitans.
Sources
- USS Philadelphia (1799) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-07
- First Barbary War Wikipedia
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.