THE UNITED STATES.

The depredations committed on American commerce in the Mediterranean,
by the piratical corsairs of the Barbary powers, induced Congress, in
1794, to authorize the formation of a naval force for its protection.
Four ships of forty-four guns each and two of thirty-six were ordered
to be built.--Captain Thomas Truxton was one of the first six captains
appointed by the President, at the organization of the naval
establishment, in 1794. He was appointed to the command of the
Constellation of thirty-six guns, and ordered to protect the commerce
of the United States in the West Indies, from the ravages of the
French. On the ninth of February, 1799, he captured the French frigate
Insurgente, of which twenty-nine of the crew were killed and
forty-four wounded. The Constellation had but one man killed and two
wounded.

In 1800, the Constellation engaged with the French frigate Vengeance
of fifty-four guns, near Guadaloupe; but owing to the darkness of the
night the latter escaped, after having thrice struck her colors and
lost one hundred and sixty men in the engagement.

The same year, the United States frigate Boston captured the French
national corvette Le Berceau.

In the month of August, 1801, Captain Sterrett of the United States
schooner Enterprize, of twelve guns and ninety men, fell in, off
Malta, with a Tripolitan cruiser of fourteen guns and eighty-five men.
In this action the Tripolitans thrice hauled down her colors, and
thrice perfidiously renewed the conflict. Fifty of her men were killed
and wounded. The Enterprize did not lose a man.

Captain Sterrett's instructions not permitting him to make a prize of
the cruiser, he ordered her crew to throw overboard all their guns and
powder, and to go and tell their countrymen the treatment they might
expect from a nation, determined to pay tribute only in powder and
ball. On her arrival at Tripoli, so great was the terror produced,
that the sailors abandoned the cruisers then fitting out, and not a
man could be procured to navigate them.

The Tripolitan cruisers continuing to harass the vessels of the United
States, Congress determined in 1803, to fit out a fleet that should
chastise their insolence. The squadron consisted of the Constitution,
44 guns; the Philadelphia, 44; the Argus, 18; the Siren, 16; the
Nautilus, 16; the Vixen, 16; and the Enterprize, 14. Commodore Preble
was appointed to the command of this squadron, in May 1803, and on th