The story begins with Captain William Eaton, who at 16 had enlisted in the Continental Army in 1780, just as the war neared its dramatic conclusion in favor of the Americans. Eaton married Eliza, the widow of General Timothy Danielson, in 1792. His marriage to a general's widow led to his appointment as U.S. Consul at Tunis on July 11, 1797, under President John Adams. Eaton's main duty was to negotiate a trade agreement, which is fancy, diplomatic talk for settling on a price for the amount of tribute the United States would pay to keep Muslim pirates from pilfering their cargo ships. As colonies, the British had protected American ships, but once the United States was independent, its merchant ships were unprotected. Presidents Washington and Adams adopted the policy of paying the Barbary states off.
However, Eaton became involved in the intrigue of Tripoli's politics. He decided that Americans could get a better deal if they restored Hamet Carmelli as pasha of Tripoli, after his brother, Yusef Carmelli, dethroned Hamet. After Eaton's plan failed, Tunis expelled Eaton, and Hamet fled to Egypt.
Thomas Jefferson was elected president in 1800 and under Jefferson, the United States was willing to go to war with the Barbary States over this extortion. Billions for defense, but not one cent tribute, became the battle cry of everyone except the merchants who owned the ships that were being seized. The First Barbary War was on.
Eaton returned to the Barbary Coast in 1804, after Tripoli declared war on the United States, which to be fair was triggered when United States warships tried to blockade the nation-state, which is now the capital of Libya. Eaton tracked down Hamet Carmelli in Alexandria, and recruited him for the overthrow of Tripoli's government, with the understanding that Hamet would be installed as pasha. Eaton had a contingency of eight Marines and two Navy midshipmen, all led by Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon.
Born sometime in 1776, he was the son of a captain in the Continental Army and a grandson on his mother's side of General Joseph Neville.
O'Bannon grew up in Fauquier County, Virginia. In 1801, at age 25, O'Bannon joined the Marines. He did a tour of duty in the Mediterranean aboard the USS Adams, returning in 1803. The USS President carried him and his men to Egypt in 1805, where Eaton and O'Bannon, flush with money, recruited 500 Greek, Arab, Berber and Levantine mercenaries. The men he recruited were so tough that Chesty Puller would have liked them. Eaton and O'Bannon hatched a plan that would have made Mad Anthony smile. Instead of attacking Tripoli in a beach landing in its well-fortified harbor, the Americans went by land -- which meant an arduous, 45-day, 600-mile march through the Sahara Desert.
However, the journey should have been completed in two weeks. Instead, O'Bannon had to deal with preventing Muslims from plundering Christians, as well as numerous revolts by the camel drivers. Several times he had to prod the Arab chiefs to continue their travel. These delays stretched food rations, and occasionally exhausted water supplies. O'Bannon and his Marines acted as U.S. Marines have always acted: with courage and dignity.
"There was no escape from the broiling African sun. Even in the thin shade of the kneeling camels and the shelter tents, sweat dripped steadily from the squad of Marines standing guard over the sacks of dried food and goatskins of water. They were in dress blues too, with the mercury at over 100, for the Lieutenant had early discovered that the slippery, treacherous minds of the natives were impressed as much by the bold colors of the uniforms as by the proven fighting ability of the men who wore them," historian F.O. Cooke wrote in Leatherneck magazine in August 1942.
After completing that journey, this motley crew had to then go into battle.
They were supposed to rendezvous with the USS Argus for re-supply, but when they arrived at the Gulf of Bomba on April 15, 1805, there were no American ships. Twelve days later, the ships and the supplies arrived. Re-supplied, the Marines and their mercenaries went to battle on April 27, 1805. O'Bannon led the charge as the battalion attacked and took the city of Derne, and captured the harbor fort of Ras del Matarix. Commodore Isaac Hull, captain of the USS Argus, and the rest of an American squadron off shore observed as the battle unfolded.
“At 3:05 p.m., Marine Lieutenant O’Bannon, with one midshipman, one sergeant and six Marines, led a huge mob of Arabs down to the harbor sweeping aside, like chaff, the defending force, which evacuated the entire eastern portion of Derne and took refuge in the western part of the city, which was ringed by its own inner wall. O’Bannon, although powder-streaked, appeared to be in a festive mood, and when he saw me watching him, raised his sword to me. I immediately returned the gallant officer’s salute,” Hull wrote.
In the the most important Marine flag-raising until Iwo Jima, O’Bannon raised the Stars and Stripes for the first time over a conquered city. Hamet Carmelli, a mameluke, gave O’Bannon a tribal sword as a token of respect for his bravery, and the mameluke sword remains a part of the dress uniform of all Marine officers to this day.
Twice, Yusef Carmelli's forces tried to regain the city, only to be repelled. Eaton thought he could march on and take Tripoli, however the first Marine to raise our flag over a foreign city was about to learn the sad truth: Americans win wars and lose the peace. U.S. Consul-General Tobias Lear negotiated peace with Yusef Carmelli, which returned Derne to Tripoli on June 4, 1805, and agreed to pay Tripoli $60,000 for the release of the crew of the USS Philadelphia, which had run aground in Tripoli in 1803 and had been destroyed by Lieutenant Steve Decatur in a daring mission.
Eaton and O'Bannon received the hero's welcomes when they returned to their nation. O'Bannon resigned from the Marine Corps on March 6, 1807. He married the daughter of Major James Heard, who was on her mother's side a grand-daughter of General Daniel Morgan, the hero of Saratoga as well as Cowpens. The O'Bannons lived in Russellville, Kentucky, where he died at on September 12, 1850, at age 74.
The peace Tobia Lear negotiated didn't last. There was a Second Barbary War, which finally ended the practice of paying extortion to tyrants in Tripoli. Had Lear unleashed O'Bannon, all that would have been unnecessary. The Shores of Tripoli were a lesson applied 40 years later when we did not give away the Halls of Montezuma without extracting our price: Texas and California.
Presley Neville O'Bannon is not merely an exceptional American, but he is an exceptional Marine.
