Friday, February 16, 2007
This Day in American History
On this day in 1804, the U.S. super frigate Philadelphia (a sister ship of the U.S.S. Constitution), which had run aground the previous October and been captured by Muslim pirates in Tripoli harbor during the undeclared war against the Barbary Pirates (Pelosi really should read some history), was quietly boarded, set afire and destroyed by a small group of men led by an early American hero Stephen Decatur. So we destroyed our own ship, not usually the stuff of myth, but for daring and successful audacity against long odds, it's hard to find a better example than Decatur reducing our losses (the Philadelphia was never after used against us) with a group of men going over the side of the captured ketch Intrepid armed with pistols and knives.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:53 AM 
