It was not until 1803 that the United States, a feeble nation with a little navy, resolved that these shameful indignities could no longer be endured. While Europe cynically looked on and forbore to lend a hand, Commodore Preble steered the _Constitution_ and the other ships of his squadron into the harbor of Tripoli, smashed its defenses, and compelled an honorable treaty of peace. Of all the wars in which the American Navy had won high distinction, there is none whose episodes are more brilliant than those of the bold adventure on the coast of Barbary. The spirit of it was typical of Preble, the fighting Yankee commodore, who fell in with a strange ship one black night in the Straits of Gibraltar. From the quarterdeck of the _Constitution_ he trumpeted a hail, but the response was evasive, and both ships promptly manœuvered for the weather gage. “I hail you for the last time. If you don’t answer, I’ll fire into you,” roared Preble. “What ship is that?” “His Britannic Majesty’s eighty-four gun ship-of-the-line _Donegal_,” came back the reply. “Send a boat on board.” Without an instant’s hesitation the commodore thundered from his Yankee frigate: “This is the United States forty-four-gun ship _Constitution_, Captain Edward Preble, and I’ll be damned if I send a boat aboard any ship. Blow your matches, boys!” Until the hordes of Moorish and Arab cutthroats and slavers were taught by force to respect the flag flown by American merchantmen, there was no fate so dreaded by mariners as shipwreck on the desert coast of northern Africa. For a hundred and fifty years they risked the dreadful peril of enslavement under taskmasters incredibly inhuman, who lashed and starved and slew them. In the seventeenth century it was no uncommon sight in the ports of Salem and Boston to see an honest sailor trudging from house to house to beg money enough to ransom or buy his shipmates held in Barbary. The old records note many such incidents, as that in 1700: Benjamin Alford and William Bowditch related that their friend Robert Carver was taken nine years before a captive into Sallee, that contributions had been made for his redemption, that the money was in the hands of a person here, and that if they had the disposal of it they could release Carver. The expansion of American trade in far-distant waters which swiftly followed the Revolution increased the number of disasters of this kind, and among the old narratives of the sea that were written about 1800 no theme is more frequent, and few so tragic, as the sufferings of the survivors of some gallant American ship which laid her bones among the breakers of the African coast. These personal experiences, simply and movingly written by some intelligent master or mate and printed as thin books or pamphlets, were among the “best sellers” of their day when the world of fact was as wildly romantic as the art of fiction was able to weave for later generations.