William Bainbridge: Two Surrendered Ships, Then Victory on USS Constitution

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William Bainbridge was born in 1774 in Princeton, New Jersey, the son of Absalom Bainbridge, a loyalist surgeon to the British army who was convicted of high treason and fled to England. Raised by his maternal grandfather, Bainbridge learned seamanship on the Delaware River and in merchant service to Brazil and Europe. At 19, in Bordeaux in 1796, he helped put down a mutiny on a nearby ship, was wounded by exploding gunpowder, and was given command. Commissioned a lieutenant when the U.S. Navy organized in 1798, he took the schooner USS Retaliation to the West Indies during the Quasi-War, mistook two French frigates for British ships in November 1798, and surrendered without firing a shot, the first U.S. naval officer to give up a vessel to an enemy.

In 1800 he anchored the USS George Washington under the guns of the fort at Algiers, and the Dey forced him to carry an ambassador and tribute to Constantinople under the Algerian flag, a humiliation that pushed Thomas Jefferson toward force. In 1803 he ran the frigate USS Philadelphia onto an uncharted reef off Tripoli by ordering full sail, surrendered again, and spent 19 months in prison with more than 300 men. A court cleared him, and in the War of 1812 he commanded the USS Constitution against HMS Java off Brazil, winning despite two wounds and a destroyed wheel. He later served as Stephen Decatur's second in the fatal 1820 duel with James Barron, and died in Philadelphia in 1833.

• Taken aboard the French flagship as a prisoner, he exaggerated the strength of nearby American ships so the French held back and those ships escaped.
• To free the grounded Philadelphia his crew spent five hours throwing cannons overboard, pumping out drinking water and cutting away anchors.
• Stephen Decatur's night raid burned the captured Philadelphia, and William Eaton's 500-mile desert march on Derna inspired the Marines' Hymn line "to the shores of Tripoli."
• Against HMS Java, the Constitution was steered by shouted orders to crews working the rudder with block and tackle, and its live oak hull absorbed British shot.
• The destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96) responded to the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama and the rescue of Captain Phillips.