Editor's Note: Below is an edited excerpt from Decatur's Wake: The Fateful Rivalry Behind the Lightning Defeat of Barbary Terror (2016).
At midmorning on June 17, 1815, the 38-gun American frigate Constellation made out a large warship a mile off Cabo de Gata, where Spain's Mediterranean coast rounded up and away from Barbary shores toward the heart of Christendom.
The unidentified vessel was flying the Union Jack. But it was no British frigate.
The false flag was the trademark of the legendary Hamidou, who had risen by merit from shadowy origins to become ranking officer of the Algerian fleet. A master of tactical deception, he had captured a 36-gun Portuguese frigate in 1802 by stealing in close under British colors, only to hoist the Algiers crescent just before surprising his prey with a murderous assault. Credited with capturing thirty-one prizes in records dating to 1797, he, like Commodore Stephen Decatur himself, had won great fame and riches in his country's service, a status confirmed by the villa and lushly landscaped grounds he owned outside Algiers.
The sighted vessel was the Meshuda, on an errand from the dey of Algiers -- foremost of the dreaded Barbary powers -- to collect $500,000 from the Spanish government. The sum was protection money, the price extorted for immunity from Algerian attacks on Spanish shipping.
The Barbary pirates had been terrorizing the maritime trade of Christian Europe in the Mediterranean ever since North African power was driven from Spain. They operated under the aegis of the nominally Ottoman, functionally autonomous, North African regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and the independent kingdom of Morocco. Seizing vulnerable ships, confiscating and selling off cargo, enslaving and ransoming passengers and crew, they enforced a system of maritime protection rackets. Over three centuries, roughly 1500-1800, they enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Christians from Europe and North America. Barbary rapacity was driven mainly by economic avarice, but it was rationalized in terms of Koranic and traditional Islamic authority, and its targets were infidels.
The Constellation, commanded by Captain Charles Gordon, belonged to a squadron of ten American warships under the command of Commodore Stephen Decatur ordered to the Mediterranean by President James Madison to end once and for all Algerian piracy against the United States. Through negotiation, if possible. By force, if necessary.
"Enemy to the Southeast," the Constellation signaled to Guerriere, Decatur's flagship.
"Clear for action. Do nothing to excite suspicion," Decatur signaled back.
Instead, Gordon raised the Stars and Stripes and sprinted after the Meshuda, which until that moment "had no suspicion that we were enemies," Guerriere's flag captain William Lewis would report.
Tipped off by Gordon's pursuit, Hamidou immediately wore to the southeast and spread all sail in a dash for home, pulling away from Constellation. But with nine swift American warships in full pursuit, sails swelling with a westerly wind, it was a race Hamidou could not win.
Decatur's own Guerriere was on Meshuda's tail. Hamidou shifted course. In mirroring his maneuver, Guerriere lost ground. But in changing direction, Meshuda opened herself to fire from Constellation. From long range, Gordon's starboard battery riddled Meshuda, seriously injuring Hamidou. Unable to walk, unwilling to cede command, Hamidou, propped up on a chair elevated to afford him a view above the ship's rails, continued to command from a seated position.
Meshuda pivoted again, from a southeasterly to a northeasterly course. The sloop of war Ontario, commanded by Jesse Duncan Elliott, whizzed right by the Algerian vessel, managing to get off a damaging broadside on her way past.
Guerriere now closed on Hamidou's Meshuda. The two frigates, commanded by the preeminent officers in their respective fleets, were ranged alongside each other at point blank range. Here was the inflection point -- in the battle, in the U.S. naval war against Algiers, and in Christendom’s age-old struggle against Islamic foes.
