Henry Demond's Reviews > The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines & the Secret Mission of 1805

If you gave my podcast a listen a-ways back, I mentioned something about a recent book about Pirates (Ladies: that’s Pirates, not Pilates) that I thought was going to be really cool, but it was such a rattling combination of dry academia, Poast-Modernizm bias and mis-appropriated details that I had to put the book down. I won’t reveal the name (or publisher) so as to not create unwarranted consternation among industry chums.

But I will say that the owner of Blackland Prairie Books and Collectibles, within the same week, handed me a copy of a reduced-price volume by Richard Zacks entitled The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines and the Secret Mission of 1805 (doesn’t it just make you want to say “Arrrrgh!”?).

Actually, I think the title is a little mis-leading. There aren’t any Traditional Lily-Livered Walking Scurvy Machines in the European “Shiver Me Timbers” style at all. The few occurrences of Pirates are actually Tripolitan (i.e., from the Kingdom of Tripoli) and they’re mostly—if not somewhat—Moslem. The Marines aren’t really Marines as we know them now, and Thomas Jefferson makes cameo appearances in the very beginning and very end of the book. The subtitle is not completely off-base, though: the book is essentially about The Secret Mission (perhaps a title like Operation Minaret or Eaton Sand would have been more marketable).

TITLE ASIDE, this book, unlike the first Pirate book I alluded to in Paragraph 1, is a total page-turner—which is saying a lot when we’re essentially talking about the Post-Louisiana Purchase Ho-Hum Days of the Jefferson Administration. But Zacks, with even-keel, keeps a(n) historical perspective yet weaves a fine storyline centered around William Eaton, the Marine/General/Covert Ops Dude fluctuating between his own personal mission, the “mission” from Jefferson and a hastily-organized American Naval Military Operation.

The goal is ultimately to release 50+ American sailors held in captive slavery by a Tripoli monarch named Yussef. The secondary goal is to establish favorable relations with Yussef’s less-oppressive-yet-less-intestinal brother, Hamet, so that Yussef can get his oppressive hiney overthrown. Foreign Policy was something really new in 1805, so the United States was still in the process of shaping it. Subsequently, with vast gaps between ships and ports and civilizations, a lot of foreign policy was performed “on the fly,” often in the midst of a battle or a march to a rendezvous.

One would think that the trip to Tripoli would be a tough row to hoe. It was. But Eaton, the Conquering Hero, faces, at times, more formidable nemeses than Yussef himself. There’s a dirty sub-plot based on a treaty by a man named Lear that will make your teeth turn cold.

While I linger luxuriously over the history in this book, I also understand that I can’t give too much away. But I will say that the chapters that take place in Washington City (a.k.a., D.C.) will make you blush because IT WAS THEN VERY MUCH LIKE IT IS TODAY. Congress then, like today, spent its money on silly things like diplomatic trinkets while foreign interests with US sympathies languored in Chinese finger traps with no funding at all.

If you’ve ever wondered why the Marine Hymn makes mention of “the shores of Tripoli,” why Libya is such a Cluster-[expletive] of a Nation, or why the militarily-indolent Jefferson went Big Stick on the Barbary Coasters, this book answers those questions in 380 easy pages.

If it’s still Pirates you’re looking for, Hallowe’en is just around the corner. I’m sure if you live in the right neighborhood, several of the Shiver-Me-Timbers variety will come to your door seeking tribute.