David Porter, Philadelphia & The Barbary Pirates: Lieutenant Porter on the Shores of Tripoli

One halloween the US Navy would like to forget, played a terrible trick on LIEUTENANT DAVID PORTER, in 1803. He, along with 306 other shipmates aboard the 38-gun frigate USS Philedelphia, including Captain William Bainbridge, were caught by pirates at Tripoli It took guile and courage to free them from their 18-month slavery in the grip of a murdurous, despotic Pasha, and a renegade Scot-turned-Turk pirate. Plus the politicing of a President, Emporer and Pope. It also introduced the United States Marine Corps onto the world stage of battle and bravery. A handful of leathernecks with a raggle-taggle army of camel-drivers and mercenaries, under determined leadership, routed the best the Barbary Coast Pirates could muster. They helped free their comrades, after they marched across a desert, quelled mutinies and meted out frontier justice.

Today will be history tomorrow. Half a century of reporting hard-news convinced writer Jack M.D. Owen yesterday’s facts can be as fascinating as fiction. The swashbuckling visual deeds of entertainers such as Johnny Depp’s movie portrayal of Jack Sparrow, or Ioan Gruffudd’s television reincarnation of Horatio Hornblower, can be matched in real time, by real people. The bloody pirate Henry ’Blackbeard’ Morgan and Admiral Horatio Nelson roamed the seas long before celluloid was invented. Unfortunately, most of those villains and heroes lay forgotten in dusty tomes or under tombstones. Fortunately, Owen has tasked himself to breath life back into those old stories, for his pleasure and your entertainment.