But before hauling down his flag, Captain Bainbridge had the magazine drowned, holes bored in the ship’s bottom, the pumps choked, and every measure taken to insure her sinking.  Then the colors were lowered and the gunboats took possession, three hundred and fifteen prisoners being captured.  The officers were well treated by the bashaw of Tripoli, but an enormous ransom was demanded for them, and all signs of an inclination to peace disappeared.

Captain Bainbridge’s efforts to sink the Philadelphia proved ineffectual.  During a high wind the prize was got off the reef, her leaks stopped, and she taken in triumph to the city.  Her guns, anchors, and other articles were raised from the reef, the ship was moored about a quarter of a mile from the bashaw’s castle, and her injuries repaired, it being the intention to fit her for sea as a Tripolitan cruiser.

These were the events that preceded the daring attempt we have detailed.  Lieutenant Stephen Decatur had volunteered to make an effort to destroy the vessel, with the aid of a recently-captured ketch, called the Mastico.  This, renamed the Intrepid, manned with a crew of seventy-six men, had entered the harbor on the evening of February 3, 1804.  What followed, to the capture of the frigate, has been told.  The succeeding events remain to be detailed.

Doubtless Lieutenant Decatur would have attempted to carry off the prize had it been possible.  His orders, however, were to destroy it, and the fact that there was not a sail bent or a yard crossed left him no alternative.  The command was, therefore, at once given to pass up the combustibles from the ketch.  There was no time to be lost.  The swimming fugitives would quickly be in the town and the alarm given.  Every moment now was of value, for the place where they were was commanded by the guns of the forts and of several armed vessels anchored at no great distance, and they might look for an assault the instant their character was determined.

With all haste, then, officers and men went to work.  They had been divided into squads, each with its own duty to perform, and they acted with the utmost promptitude and disciplined exactness.  The men who descended with combustibles to the cockpit and after-store-rooms had need to haste, for fires were lighted over their heads before they were through with their task.  So rapidly did the flames catch and spread that some of those on board had to make their escape from between-decks by the forward ladders, the after-part of the ship being already filled with smoke.

In twenty minutes from the time the Americans had taken possession of the ship they were driven out of her by flames, so rapidly had they spread.  The vessel had become so dry under those tropical suns that she burned like pine.  By the time the party which had been engaged in the store-rooms reached the deck, most of the others were on board the Intrepid.  They joined them, and the order to cast off was given.  It was not an instant too soon, for the daring party were just then in the most risky situation they had been in that night.