He didn’t know it at the time, but standing on the deck of a ship in Tripoli Harbor on the afternoon of October 31, 1803, Salvadore Catalano watched a scene unfold before him that changed the course of his life.
Across the harbor, an American frigate had run aground on the reef that protected the approach to Tripoli Harbor. There was no question for Catalano that the ship was hard aground. A pilot from nearby Sicily, the 32-year-old Catalano had been into Tripoli many times before and knew the harbor in detail.
He watched as the Americans struggled to refloat their ship to no avail. Then he watched as a small ship sitting at the dock rallied a large armed crew and set out across the harbor under a Tripolitan flag. By that evening, Catalano would later testify, the ship he identified as the Mastico under the command of Mustapha Rais had seized the grounded American frigate, USS Philadelphia. The American captain, William Bainbridge, and his crew were taken ashore as prisoners.
Sailing out of Tripoli shortly after the capture, Catalano’s involvement may have easily ended with no more than a story to tell friends and family back in Palermo. But within two months of the incident, he took a new job that would change his life forever. He was hired in Sicily on January 24, 1804 as a pilot for USS Constitution.
Catalano’s detailed knowledge of the harbor, fluency in Arabic, and familiarity with the Mastico itself would make him a key figure in Commodore Edward Preble’s dramatic plan to destroy the captured Philadelphia. The success of the raid became one of the U.S. Navy’s most famous stories and eventually led Catalano to a new life in the United States, serving in the Navy at the Washington Navy Yard for the next 40 years.
Putting the Pieces in Place
Commodore Edward Preble arrived in the Mediterranean in September 1803 on board Constitution to take charge as the flagship of the squadron. Already set on more aggressively prosecuting the war against the Barbary corsairs, Preble now had to also prevent the Tripolitans from refitting Philadelphia, which they managed to refloat and move into the inner harbor. If Philadelphia joined the Tripolitan fleet, it stood to dramatically shift the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean.
On December 23, Constitution chased down a ketch sailing out of Tripoli and heading west along the coast. Preble did not realize it at the time, but the ship was the Mastico. When Constitution’s crew boarded, they found a Turkish captain and officer, but also a number of Tripolitan soldiers on board. An Italian doctor sailing on board Constitution had been in Tripoli in October and identified the men as having been involved in imprisoning Bainbridge’s crew. Preble seized the ship.
While the United States was officially at war with Tripoli, it was not at war with the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which held nominal sway over the Barbary States. The complexity of the politics and law meant Preble would have to argue a legal claim to the Turkish-flagged Mastico in order to keep it as a prize. The arrival of Catalano on board Constitution in January 1804 recast Preble’s plans. Catalano’s eyewitness account of Mastico’s capture of Philadelphia while flying a Tripolitan flag the previous October helped make Preble’s case in a vice-admiralty court in Syracuse. Rather than returning Mastico to the Turks, Preble was able to keep it as a prize. He renamed it USS Intrepid.
The Deception and Raid
With Catalano on deck, Intrepid sailed into Tripoli Harbor on the evening of February 16, 1804. Alongside him was Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, and below deck a large contingent of U.S. sailors and Marines waited to spring into action. Mastico was a familiar sight in Tripoli and the planned deception depended on none of the Tripolitans on Philadelphia knowing that the Americans had taken the ketch. Calling out to the men on Philadelphia, Catalano claimed the ship had lost its anchors in a storm and asked to come alongside. Seeming perfectly at home in Tripoli Harbor aboard a well-known local ship, Catalano had no difficulty convincing them to let the ketch come alongside. Once adjacent to Philadelphia, the Americans hidden on Intrepid leaped out and boarded the captured frigate.
After quickly defeating the Tripolitans on board Philadelphia, Decatur immediately ordered his crew to begin setting explosive charges to burn the ship. Catalano later testified that he argued for saving the ship. The Sicilian pilot believed Philadelphia could be successfully sailed out of the harbor, but Decatur feared it would take too long and risk capture of Intrepid and recapture of the frigate.
With fires set on Philadelphia, Intrepid fled into the night, guided out of the dark harbor by Catalano. Philadelphia burst into an inferno.
Catalano’s fundamental contributions to the raid’s success were acknowledged in numerous accounts by the crew. In his report to Preble on the raid, Decatur wrote, “It would be injustice in me, were I to pass over the important services rendered by Mr Salvador the Pilot, on whose good conduct the success of the Enterprize in the greatest degree depended. he gave me entire satisfaction.”1
Catalano continued to serve as a pilot on USS Constitution until November 8, when he was discharged at Syracuse. On November 24, the U.S. Congress approved an award of two-weeks’ pay for all the crew involved in the raid. Having already been discharged, it appears Catalano did not collect.
Despite the approved bonus pay, Catalano and the crew of the USS Intrepid never received prize money for capturing and destroying USS Philadelphia. Following Stephen Decatur’s death in 1820, his widow, Susan, appealed to the Navy and to Congress to provide her a both pension and prize money for Decatur’s role in leading the Philadelphia raid.
Congress eventually granted her a pension in 1837, but continued to debate the issue of prize money for the crew of Intrepid. For nearly 40 years, bills were regularly presented but never managed to pass both the House and Senate. At dispute was the amount to be appropriated as well as what the payment would represent. Initially, some in Congress feared that paying out a prize on the willful destruction of property already owned by the United States made no sense. As the decades passed and the number of surviving crew members dwindled, the effort to acknowledge their feat faded. The last mention of it in the Congressional records appears to be a decision in 1862 by the Senate Claims Committee to indefinitely postpone consideration of a claim for prize money.
The Washington Navy Yard
In November 1805, Catalano, on board USS Constellation, reached out to the Secretary of the Navy, Robert Smith, in hope of some recognition for his previous service: “…I now consider myself a Citizen of the U, S,” he wrote, “and trust I shall be protected as Such as I shall always hold myself ready to assist in protecting the government against any nation whatever…”2
Smith immediately replied, dispatching Catalano to the Washington Navy Yard, and ordering the yard’s superintendent, Captain Thomas Tingey, to “assign him such duties as he may be capable of discharging. He is to be paid for his services the rate of $30 pr month & 2 rations per day.”
Catalano received a warrant as a sailing master on August 9, 1809, but took on the role of gunner at the Navy Yard to fill the role of another gunner who had died. Catalano remained in the job after earning his warrant, becoming the Navy Yard’s master gunner. Among his duties was testing the quality of gunpowder coming from private contractors and going to Navy ships. During the War of 1812, the job embroiled him in a dispute over bad powder that the Navy was eventually forced to recall. Catalano insisted the tests of the powder showed it was not up to safe standards, but the well-connected contractor complained to the Navy and the president about Catalano’s competence and his nationality. Catalano was called to the White House to explain his position directly to President James Madison, who immediately had the powder recalled.
Family
In 1813, Catalano married Martha Carbery in Washington, D.C. They lived with Catalano’s son Antonio Catalano, who migrated from Sicily to the United States after Salvadore. Antonio worked as a joiner in Washington Navy Yard alongside his father in the 1820s.
Catalano died on January 4, 1846 at his home near the Navy Yard, having spent 41 years in the United States. In obituaries published around the nation, he was celebrated for his role in the burning of USS Philadelphia. Perhaps more significant to Catalano himself was the unimagined life that opened up to him after watching Philadelphia run aground that day in the harbor he knew so well.
1 Lt. Stephen Decatur, Jr. to Capt. Edward Preble, February 17, 1804, in Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers, vol. 3, Sept. 1803-Mar.1804 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939), p. 414-415.
2 Salvatore Catalano, Pilot, to Secretary of Navy, November 26, 1805. In Naval Documents Related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers, vol. 3, Sept. 1803-Mar.1804 (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1939), p. 311.
The Author(s)
Carl Herzog
Public Historian, USS Constitution Museum
Carl Herzog is the Public Historian at the USS Constitution Museum.
