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A review by buermann
The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 by Richard Zacks
5.0
With a fresh look at the primary documentation and an important addition to it -- discovering the papers of Antoine Zuchet, ambassador of Holland under Napoleon to Tripoli -- Zack's does a superb job of re-evaluating the history of the First Barbary War. A number of other books were published on its bicentennial little different from those written a century before. This is an exception.
Just to pick one example, take Joseph Wheelan's account in Jefferson's War of the loss of the USS Philadelphia to Zack's:
https://books.google.com/books?id=JAs9slvO0ysC&pg=PA159&q
https://books.google.com/books?id=xSmZAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT18&q
Wheelan piles on scathing indictments of Turkish savagery, which seems to exist in a total vacuum, and Commodore Bainbridge comes across as just an unlucky competent, largely by way of his own self-serving apologia to his superiors.
Zacks meanwhile meanders through a wide array of primary sources, sort of collecting points of view and fun anecdotes, not just from Bainbridge's contemporaries and underlings (whose life in the Navy deserves not a small share of its own scathing indictment) but passers-by and the Turks themselves, who almost exist in their own social context here in a way that you might vaguely make them out to be something resembling human beings. But mostly what comes through is that Bainbridge is a kiss up kick down kind of incompetent and it's obvious to everybody but himself.
Wheelan: "Now added to the American's misery was the tormenting realization that had Bainbridge held out forty hours, they could have sailed away."
Zacks: "Bainbridge ... would contend in numerous letters that the Philadelphia did not float free until forty hours after beaching. Private Ray, who talked to local sailors, disagreed. Until now, an independent account has been available. ... The National Archives of Amsterdam have recently yielded ... consul in Tripoli ... diary of events.... 'What further verifies the misconduct of the Americans is that the frigate during that same night floated free without any rescue efforts. Panic must have blinded these people.'"
Wheelan goes on to say that a "wind" raised the sea level to free the frigate, which is an odd explanation, where Zacks refers to a mysterious nautical phenomenon called "the tides".
Just to pick one example, take Joseph Wheelan's account in Jefferson's War of the loss of the USS Philadelphia to Zack's:
https://books.google.com/books?id=JAs9slvO0ysC&pg=PA159&q
https://books.google.com/books?id=xSmZAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT18&q
Wheelan piles on scathing indictments of Turkish savagery, which seems to exist in a total vacuum, and Commodore Bainbridge comes across as just an unlucky competent, largely by way of his own self-serving apologia to his superiors.
Zacks meanwhile meanders through a wide array of primary sources, sort of collecting points of view and fun anecdotes, not just from Bainbridge's contemporaries and underlings (whose life in the Navy deserves not a small share of its own scathing indictment) but passers-by and the Turks themselves, who almost exist in their own social context here in a way that you might vaguely make them out to be something resembling human beings. But mostly what comes through is that Bainbridge is a kiss up kick down kind of incompetent and it's obvious to everybody but himself.
Wheelan: "Now added to the American's misery was the tormenting realization that had Bainbridge held out forty hours, they could have sailed away."
Zacks: "Bainbridge ... would contend in numerous letters that the Philadelphia did not float free until forty hours after beaching. Private Ray, who talked to local sailors, disagreed. Until now, an independent account has been available. ... The National Archives of Amsterdam have recently yielded ... consul in Tripoli ... diary of events.... 'What further verifies the misconduct of the Americans is that the frigate during that same night floated free without any rescue efforts. Panic must have blinded these people.'"
Wheelan goes on to say that a "wind" raised the sea level to free the frigate, which is an odd explanation, where Zacks refers to a mysterious nautical phenomenon called "the tides".