Is that a Pirate?
One of the greatest pains in life is the sense that you have been betrayed. You put your hopes, dreams and energies into something or someone. You trust them. You believe in them. You develop a real sense of partnership with them. Then they just leave you high and dry.
The disappointment and hurt you feel is beyond description. Your thoughts seem not to be able to travel anywhere else. It feels like a part of you dies in that moment, too. Its scars never truly seem to heal. You vow to never again to let your trust be so gullible. Although, you eventually heal, in a real sense, your soul is never truly able to completely trust someone again. At least, not until a great deal of proof is given that your trust will not be broken again.
It was a cloudless night and there must have been a million stars in that sky. The sands were blowing across the barren desert. There were four hundred of them and they were very focused on the mission ahead. As they travelled across the hot sands, the temperatures sometimes reached one hundred degrees. But here, at night, it was near freezing.
William Eaton was leading the charge. For many years he pushed for this mission and now here he was leading the parade. No one had ever attempted to deal with the situation in the manner they were now doing. Every other attempt at peace had failed, so now they would try things his way.
Let’s take a few steps back to see how we got here. We were a very young nation at the time and no one really respected us. We had just knocked off the world’s super power and gained our independence. We really didn’t have a Navy, but we did have a lot of ships sailing across the Atlantic in the name of commerce. We especially liked trading with the Europeans.
To get to most European nations required entering the Mediterranean Sea. The real problem was the narrow passage between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The ships had to slide in between Gibraltar and Tangier. Once a ship made it past that, they would slide across the North African Coast more commonly called the Barbary Coast. The countries along that coast belonged to the Ottoman Empire.
The Barbary Coast consisted of the nations of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Since they were part of the Ottoman Empire they were Muslim kingdoms. These nations also produced much feared pirates. The pirate ships were very fast ships, not really battleships. The pirates would use their speed to catch the slower moving merchant ships.
Once the pirates caught the merchant ships, they rammed into the boats. Then most of the pirates would jump aboard the merchant ship with their weapons and would start killing everyone who tried to stop them. Once the pirates gained control of the ships, they would take the ship to their home port. Once at port, they would unload the ship of its cargo. They would parade the passengers through the streets and then turn them into slaves until their home country would pay a ransom for them. The pirates would then outfit the ship to fit their needs.
Several of the European countries reached agreements with these countries. They would pay the countries a tribute and the Barbary nations would then leave those ships alone. Those tributes weren’t negotiable and they were extremely high.
When you are a new nation, like America was at the time, you just didn’t have any money to pay a tribute. That presented a real problem, especially for those people being held as slaves.
The young nation was at a lost as to what they should do. Most thought we should follow the example of the European nations and try to negotiate a “reasonable” tribute. Like I said before, the Barbary nations set their tributes and they were nonnegotiable. The Secretary of State was one of only a few who thought we should show force in dealing with these barbarians.
One of the reasons most opposed the show of forces is we really didn’t have a Navy that could show force. We also didn’t have any money to build a Navy. A few Navy ships were built anyway. It was about this time when the Secretary of State would step down and retire to his home.
He was a Biblical character who truly loved God. He truly loved his wife, too. Let’s add in that he truly loved kids. He wanted kids, kids, and more kids. In his conversations with God, he must have felt great comfort when God told him he would honor his request for a lot of kids.
Year after year went by and our Biblical character still had no kids to call his own. He and his wife were becoming very discouraged. I’m sure he was starting to question his conversation with God. He might have even started feeling a little betrayed, too. He had done everything God asked him to do. He believed and had faith in God, but here he sat with one of his biggest life’s dreams totally unfulfilled.
Unsatisfied with God’s pace, the man turned to his wife’s suggestion. His wife also wanted children really bad. Her frustration at God’s pace lead her to try to “make” God’s promise happen. She suggested that her husband sleep with her maid. At least, this way, he would have a direct descendant.
When the maid produced a son, they were all very happy. This “child of God” had been born and His promised fulfilled. Soon this perfect dream began to unravel. His wife, instead of being the “mother” of the child, soon received taunts from the maid. “You are a barren, old lady, who cannot ever become a real mom,” were probably what the wife was hearing. The wife would become very sad and depressed.
One day the Secretary of State became President himself. He decided this pirate thing had been going on long enough. He decided we would build a few more Navy ships and we would have those ships escort the merchant ships through the danger zones. His hope was these Navy ships would strike fear into the pirates and then the pirates would leave the merchant ships alone.
The USS George Washington was the first battleship to escort merchant ships. As the battleship moved into the pirate waters, its commander, Captain Bainbridge, was told to offer the Algiers’ Dey, Bobba Mustapha, only a small portion of the tribute he demanded and then he was to demand that the Dey (the Muslim leader) release the captives from the captured merchant ships.
As the USS George Washington got close to Algiers, a few of the pirates came aboard to guide the ship to port so Bainbridge could deliver his message. When they got to port a bunch of pirates jumped on board the ship and took it over. The people on board were carried away as slaves. What an embarrassment to our young Navy.
Later, more battleships were sent. The USS Philadelphia was chasing a pirate ship when it ran aground. As the pirate ships approached, the captain ordered the cannons thrown into the sea. Again, the passengers were taken captive. Eventually, the pirates were able to free the Philadelphia. The cannons were in shallow water so they were also able to raise them and clean them up. Now the pirates had a first class battleship to use on us. There was another embarrassment.
Stephen Decatur was sent into the harbor to destroy the Philadelphia. The sneaky mission was a success. They would then fire their cannons at the village. Even with much bombardment, the pirates would refuse to yield on their ransom demands for the hostages. Another plan was needed. It would require a land mission and William Eaton was just the man to carry it out.
Abraham grew very old. He was ninety-nine years old. Although he had children, he still didn’t have a child with his true love, his wife Sarah. God came to him again and told him that he was now going to fulfill the promise he made to him. He was going to send him the son he promised. Old Abraham just laughed. He probably thought, “I heard this before. Now my wife and I are too old to have children and You’re going to give us a child. I’m sorry, but I’ve been down this road before and I’m not getting my hopes up again.”
It was a little less than a year later when there was a cry from Sarah’s tent. It wasn’t his Sarah’s cry, but a cry from their new son, Isaac. God had fulfilled his part of His promise, but what happened to the part of the story where Abraham and Sarah pushed their ideas on God’s plan: the “other son,” Ishmael?
Sarah would hear young Ishmael teasing Isaac. She would get quite upset and demand that Abraham banish Ishmael and his mother. In order to keep the peace, Abraham would honor Sarah’s request.
It is through Isaac’s line that Israel would come into being. It is through Ishmael that the Arab nations would come into being. They have been bitter enemies ever since.
Eaton’s plan was to restore the deposed Bashaw (another word for a Muslim leader), Hamet, back in power. He would find him in Egypt and with a few Marines (our new Navy branch) and some mercenaries they would head out to teach those pesky pirates a lesson. When Eaton and his men basically cakewalked over the larger force in Derne, President Jefferson’s chief diplomat, Tobias Lear, got a little jealous of all the attention Eaton was getting.
Lear rushed to the viceroy (the leader of the pirates or another name for a Muslim leader) with an opportunity for a peace deal. The viceroy was very scared of the American advances and probably didn’t need a deal to be forced into a peace agreement. The deal called for a small tribute to be paid and the Dey could stay in power. He quickly signed the deal.
Eaton was forced, despites his disagreements, to return home. In the middle of the night he gathered all his troops and they boarded a ship. The former Bashaw woke up with no Americans around to live up to their agreement that they would restore him to power. He was forced to return to exile.
President Thomas Jefferson knew that sometimes you have to stand up to what is wrong, no matter how tough it may be on you. That’s why he realized he had to send battleships by sea and Marines by land to right a wrong that had been done to our citizens and bring them home. Communications at that time in our history weren’t great, so many doubt Jefferson even knew of the deal Lear had struck until well after it had been signed. But Jefferson was a man of honor and if a deal had been made, then, by golly, he would honor it. I’m not exactly sure why the deal with the former Bashaw, Hamet, was not considered a deal worthy of such honor, too.
Because we didn’t put the pirates away, they would rise again. President Madison would have to deliver the final blow to them. Hamet, the former Bashaw, would die in exile.
I’m sure Hamet, the former Bashaw, felt a real betrayal from America. I’m sure Abraham felt God wasn’t living up to His promise, or at the very least, he felt he needed to be the one to make God’s promise happen. Betrayal has a very strange way of making you think you understand the situation better than anyone else.
But God is very clear: If you take that betrayal into your own hands, life, for not only you, but also for others, has a very huge chance of turning out worse than if you had patiently waited on God.
It is so hard to wait on God. Even the Bible giant, Abraham, had a hard time with it. When Abraham decided to deal with things the way he did, the future of the Mideast completely changed. When we abandoned Hamet, we still had to deal with the situation another day. In a very real sense, we are still probably dealing with it.
Prayer: Dear Mighty Father, Please guide me through those very tough times when I feel betrayed. Please guide my steps so I don’t walk in haste. Let my steps wait for You and Your direction. Amen.
