Stephen Decatur burns the USS Philadelphia at Tripoli
- When
- 1804
- Where
- Tripoli harbor
- Episodes
- 1
On February 16, 1804, Captain Stephen Decatur led a raid to burn the captured frigate USS Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor. The vessel had been seized by Tripolitan forces in October 1803 after running aground. Decatur used the ketch Intrepid to approach the ship under cover of night, boarding and destroying it to prevent its use by the enemy.
Episodes
Background and detail
The Raid. Decatur commanded the captured Tripolitan ketch, renamed Intrepid, to approach the Philadelphia under the guise of a ship in distress. On the night of February 16, 1804, he sailed close enough to board the frigate. A small detachment of United States Marines accompanied him, deceiving the guards to allow the boarding party to reach the ship.
Aftermath. Shortly after the recapture and destruction of the Philadelphia, Decatur was given command of the frigate Constitution, a post he held from October 28 to November 9, 1804. The conflict's later stages saw the pasha receive $60,000 as ransom for the Philadelphia prisoners under the 1805 Treaty with Tripoli.
People involved
- Stephen Decatur · led the raid
- Commodore Bainbridge · prisoner held since October 1803
- Yusuf Karamanli · Pasha of Tripoli
Sources
- First Barbary War Wikipedia
- USS Philadelphia (1799) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-07
- Stephen Decatur Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-14
- Tripoli, Libya Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-27
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.