On May 10, 1801, Tripoli declared war on the United States, hoping to coerce President Thomas Jefferson to increase tribute payments, but Jefferson felt the honor of the United States was at stake and he refused. Instead, Jefferson sent Commodore Richard Dale and a small fleet of American frigates to impose a blockade of Tripoli. In September 1803, to better prosecute the war, additional warships were sent to the Mediterranean under the command of Captain Edward Preble along with a star-studded cast of future naval heroes including Oliver Hazard Perry, Issac Hull, Stephen Decatur, and John Rodgers. But before Preble’s fleet was on station and aggressive action could be taken, one of the American ships, the frigate USS Philadelphia under Captain William Bainbridge, met with disaster.

For several centuries, the northern crescent of Africa had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire and consisted of several puppet states including Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli. Each of these Muslim provinces, known collectively as the Barbary States, derived their main revenue from seizing unarmed merchant ships, taking the crews prisoner, and offering to return them for a ransom payment, or, failing that, selling them into slavery. After the American Revolution, as American merchantmen began to ply the waters of the Mediterranean without the protection of the Royal Navy, they suffered the same fate.