It is difficult to-day to realize that there was a time when the United States paid tribute to anybody, more especially to a power so insignificant as the Barbary States. Yet such was the fact. Lying along the north coast of Africa were the half-civilized states of Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, and most of their income was from piracy. All merchantmen were their prey; they divided the loot and sold the crews into slavery. Many nations, to secure immunity from these outrages, paid a stated sum yearly to these powers, and the United States was one of them. Why the nations did not join together and wipe the pirates out of existence is difficult to understand, but so it was. On one occasion, Congress actually revoked an order for some new ships for the navy, and used the appropriation to buy off the Barbary powers. The fund was known as the "Mediterranean Fund," and was intrusted to the secretary of state to expend as might be necessary. But after a while, the Barbary powers became so outrageous in their demands, that it occurred to the State Department that there might be another way of dealing with them, and a squadron under Commodore Preble was sent to the Mediterranean for the purpose. Shortly before he reached there, the U.S. frigate Philadelphia, commanded by Captain Bainbridge, had gone upon a reef just outside the harbor of Tripoli and had been surrounded and captured, with all her crew, by the Tripolitan gunboats. The Tripolitans got her off the rocks, towed her into the harbor, and anchored her close under the guns of their forts. They also strengthened her batteries, and prepared her for a cruise, which could not but have been disastrous to our shipping. It was evident that she must be destroyed before she got out of the harbor, and Stephen Decatur volunteered to lead a party into the harbor on this desperate mission. Commodore Preble hesitated to accept Decatur's offer, for he knew how greatly against success the odds were, but finally, in January, 1804, he told him to go ahead. A small vessel known as a ketch had recently been captured from the Tripolitans, and Decatur selected this in which to make the venture. He took seventy men from his own vessel, and, on the night of February 15, sailed boldly into the harbor of Tripoli. Let us pause for a minute to consider the odds against him. First there was the Philadelphia with her forty guns double-shotted and ready to fire; half a gunshot away was the Bashaw's castle, the mole and crown batteries, while within range were ten other batteries, mounting, all told, a hundred and fifteen guns. Between the Philadelphia and the shore lay a number of Tripolitan cruisers, galleys and gunboats. Into this hornet's nest, Decatur steered his little vessel of sixty tons, carrying four small guns, and having a crew of only seventy men.