The affair was in no way discreditable to the squadron. Morris had been recalled in disgrace for over-caution, and Bainbridge was required to be active. The Tripolitans gained nothing except the prisoners; for at Bainbridge’s suggestion Preble, some time afterward, ordered Stephen Decatur, a young lieutenant in command of the “Enterprise,” to take a captured Tripolitan craft re-named the “Intrepid,” and with a crew of seventy-five men to sail from Syracuse, enter the harbor of Tripoli by night, board the “Philadelphia,” and burn her under the castle guns. The order was literally obeyed. Decatur ran into the harbor at ten o’clock in the night of Feb. 16, 1804, boarded the frigate within half gun-shot of the Pacha’s castle, drove the Tripolitan crew overboard, set the ship on fire, remained alongside until the flames were beyond control, and then withdrew without losing a man, while the Tripolitan gunboats and batteries fired on him as rapidly as want of discipline and training would allow. Gallant and successful as the affair was, it proved only what was already well known, that the Tripolitans were no match for men like Decatur and his companions; and it left Preble, after losing in the “Philadelphia” nearly one third of his force, still strong enough to do the work that needed to be done. The frigate had been built by the citizens of Philadelphia, and given to the government in 1799. So far as the ship was concerned, the loss was not much regretted, for the Republicans when in opposition had strenuously opposed the building of frigates, and still considered them a danger rather than a defence. Although the “Philadelphia” was the newest ship in the service, a companion to the “Constellation,” the “Congress,” and the “Chesapeake,” she was never replaced; two 18-gun brigs, the “Hornet” and the “Wasp,” were constructed instead of one 38-gun frigate; and these were the last sea-going vessels built under Jefferson’s administration. The true annoyance was not that a frigate had been lost, but that the captivity and enslavement of the crew obliged Government to rescue them and to close the war, by a kind of expenditure which the Republican party disliked.