The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 (review)

This is an oft-told tale—of William Eaton's ragtag "army" and its march across the Egyptian desert to Derne, in an effort to restore Hamet Karamanli (more properly Ahmet Qaramanli) as bashaw in order to free the captured crew of the USS Philadelphia imprisoned in Tripoli. It is a tale filled with myth—the phrase "to the shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Hymn and the adoption of the Mameluke sword of the Marine Corps dress uniform arise from it. It has its heroes—Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon, USMC, its villains—Yussef Karamanli, the usurper of the bashawship, its connivers—Tobias Lear, American diplomat, its schemers—President Thomas Jefferson, and its victims—Hamet and Eaton. That is, if you believe free-lance-journalist-turned-historian Richard Zacks.

Zacks paints a picture largely in blacks and whites; shadings, irony, subtlety are not included in his depictions of the past. Eaton is a hero despite a shady career. He secured an appointment as consul to Tunis notwithstanding a total lack of either diplomatic experience or temperament. This "impetuous, hardheaded, argumentative" (p. 6) diplomat obligated the United States government to pay a $5,000 ransom for the twelve-year-old granddaughter of an impecunious Sardinian count. Soon the Tunisians upped the ante to $22,000 and Commodore Richard Morris paid it off after insisting Eaton assign all his real and personal property to the government as security. By now his Federalist patrons were out of power in Washington, the frugal Albert Gallatin was secretary of the treasury, and Thomas Jefferson saw little need to pay for Eaton's indiscretions. Desperate to recoup his fortune while not changing his political stripes, Eaton saw in the Philadelphia affair a chance to redeem his reputation.

Honor, that code in which both gentlemen and scoundrels wrap their motives, dominated Eaton's every move. Eaton knew the honorable thing was to return Hamet to the Tripoli throne despite his ineptitude. Jefferson determined the most honorable thing was the safe return of the captured sailors by whatever means available. Regime change was not the president's priority; to Eaton it became an obsession. How much Derne's capture affected Bashaw Yussef's negotiations with Tobias Lear is questionable. After paying ransom for the sailors, the United States abandoned ex-Bashaw Hamet and Eaton.

An outraged Eaton thought the president dishonored the United States by his betrayal of Hamet and thereafter associated himself with the most ardent Federalists—particularly Timothy (not "Thomas" as Zacks misnames him) Pickering. This was not a winning political hand. In the end, Zacks concludes, "hard liquor, a deck of cards, and a bitter heart" (p. 358) doomed the self-proclaimed "general." Pirate Coast is a lively written, error-filled volume that does not deserve to take up shelf space in academic libraries.