Dawn Like Thunder (Annotated) (eBook)

THE CLEAR, LANGUID dawn of November 9, 1800 crept out of the Bosphorus and across the Sea of Marmora and revealed to early watchers along the shore a strange ship riding at anchor inside the Golden Horn [the primary inlet of the Bosphorus leading to the capital]. She had come up under darkness, at 10 o’clock on the night before, and now at daybreak she flew from her mizzenmast a novel flag of red and white stripes and white stars on a field of blue, colors unknown in these waters.

The American frigate George Washington, of 24 guns, Captain William Bainbridge commanding, out of Philadelphia, was calling on official business at the Sublime Porte [the government of the Ottoman Empire]. Across the city seated on its rolling hills sounded the long, singsong wails of the Muslim priests, calling plaintively from the rooftops, towers, and mosques, notifying the faithful that Allah had bequeathed a new day.

Scarcely were these morning supplications ended and faces turned from Mecca to matters close at hand, when a harbor patrol boat put out from the waterfront castle. Coming alongside the American ship, the captain of the harbor hailed the impertinent newcomer who had penetrated unannounced to the very heart of the Ottoman power, and now held beneath her guns the sacred mosque of Mohammed the Conqueror, Standard Bearer of the Prophet, and the art and treasures of the Muslim world.

Captain Bainbridge replied politely that the colors he flew were those of the United States of America. The inquiring officer wasted no time in conversation but turned his boat back toward the shore. Bainbridge had displayed considerable daring in venturing unheralded into the harbor of Constantinople and might expect to face any consequence, considering that the world was being torn apart by Napoleon’s wars, which had fallen with early fury on the Near East.

ANYWHERE IN THE LEVANT, unfamiliar elements might be looked on with suspicion. He had affected his passage of the Dardanelles, where it was the imperious rule of the Porte that all vessels must be inspected and those cleared be given the required passport before entering the Sea of Marmora, by a ruse characteristic of the resourcefulness of early American seamanship.

Never before, as long as memory, record, or tradition extended back into Constantinople history, to the year 1453 when the Ottomans overran the ancient seat of Greek and Roman power, had an armed foreign vessel entered the harbor of the Golden Horn without having first been granted leave at the Dardanelles way station, two powerful fortresses overlooking both sides of the narrows near the entrance to the historic strait.

What a visitor required was a firman, the distinctive passport of royal decree, issued by the Grand Seignior [lit. ‘Great Lord’] himself, the Sultan of the Turks.

But Bainbridge was concerned neither with inviolable precept nor Oriental form. He was on a mission which from the beginning had irked his sensibilities and galled his ardent patriotism and he wanted to be done with it with the least possible delay. He was justifiably apprehensive.

He had learned back in Algiers that he would probably be compelled to remain in the strait until word of his approach could be carried to Constantinople and the willingness of the government to receive him ascertained. He was taking no chances that his ship might not be cleared and that his long, tedious voyage thus would be rendered fruitless.

As he approached the towering citadel which guarded his side of the passage of the Dardanelles, he directed his crew to scurry across the decks and give evidence that they were taking in sail, indicating that the George Washington would heave to and inquire the pleasure of the Turkish commander.

Then he began firing a salute; of eight guns, according to the ship’s log. Quickly the fort returned the salute. Bainbridge counted six guns, but they were enough that both ship and fort were soon enveloped in heavy billowing smoke. Under this screen, undetected by the shore batteries, unsuspected by the Turkish captain, the American commander had his seamen hurriedly load on canvas and speed the frigate forward.

Thus, behind the smoke clouds, the George Washington moved fleetingly and gracefully out of range. She had already doubled a protecting promontory before the perplexed Turkish commander understood the wily American’s stratagem.

Bainbridge had a notation entered in his log that the castles “have the Outward appearance of Being very Strong,” with eight tiers of guns, the lowest tier being on the water’s edge. They were reputed at the time to throw the largest shot in the world, even to cannonballs with a diameter of three feet!

Midshipman Benjamin Page, of Providence, Rhode Island, who kept the log, either was a student of the classics or else he had a translation of Homer on board, for he was entranced with landmarks of the great conflict of Greek against Trojan as he went through the Aegean and Dardanelles.

He took note during the voyage of Tenedos, “opposite which stood famous Troy,” of Mount Ida, “where the Gods assembled to view the Battle,” and of the island of Lemnos, “where they fed their horses of nectar and ambrosia; the island where Vulcan hit when he fell from Heaven and established his forge.”

Now that the George Washington was securely in the harbor, how the Turkish government would receive her was any sailor’s guess. Soon the dispatch boat returned with the startling message for Captain Bainbridge that neither his flag nor the nation of the United States of which he spoke had ever been heard of by the Turkish government before. He was directed to be more specific in explaining whence he came. All that the captain could do was append to his earlier communication a short lesson in history and geography.

He said he and his vessel were from the New World which Christopher Columbus long since had discovered far across the seas. Several hours passed. All aboard the George Washington waited patiently in the lower harbor.

Finally, the dispatch boat put out again and this time the harbor captain, serving as emissary for the Sublime Porte, deigned to set foot on freshly scrubbed New World timber, while behind him came porters bearing to the frigate’s deck the symbolic gifts of a lamb and a bouquet of flowers, the first offered as a token of peace, the second an expression of welcome.

Obviously someone had been found in Constantinople, and perhaps it was the Sultan himself, who had heard something about George Washington, Christopher Columbus, and the United States of America.

By order of the Sultan, the captain of the harbor was to conduct the frigate to the upper bay, and this he did at considerable leisure several days later. Bainbridge, in evidence of his appreciation, fired the recognized international salute of twenty-one guns as he sailed past the royal palace, an act for which the Sultan later made known his gratification.

The ship moved about a mile up the harbor and was moored at 3:00 p.m., on November 15. Thus for the first time in history, by chance rather than orders, without diplomatic exchanges or prearrangement, without the assent of either of the governments involved, an American warship visited the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, and gave visible notice to the Islamic world of the birth of the Western republic.

The George Washington (and what name could have been more appropriate for such a pioneering event?) stood at the meeting place of East and West, the crossroads of the ages, inside the great harbor of the Golden Horn, five miles wide, big enough to accommodate all the frigates of both the Old World and the New.

She was peacefully at anchor in front of this vast city of Muslims, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews: the ancient Byzantium of the Greeks; a city reared to world splendor by the Vision of the Flaming Cross; mother of law and of the concept of society founded on a code of equal justice. Justice! A word synonymous with an era of her imperial past.

Nursemaid of learning, theology, and the arts. City of the impregnable citadel, held in turn throughout the centuries for Zeus, Jupiter, God, and Allah, but fortress indeed for any god, where a few might hope to stand off a million, guarded by the moat of the Bosphorus in front and the natural bastions of looming hills behind. Bainbridge could well note that almost from the beginning all adventurers had come this way.

HERE JASON PASSED IN the first war galley, the Argos, created by Athena for the seekers of the Golden Fleece. Here dwelt the Harpies who harassed blind King Phineus. Here, much more securely recorded, [Greek soldier turned historian] Xenophon led [under the command of Cyrus the Younger] his ten thousand Greeks. Here and along the Dardanelles (the Hellespont of the Greeks, the crossing place of Helle, daughter of the cloud goddess) the phantasies of antiquity gave way to the accepted versions of history; legend merged into reality, myth yielded to history, the recited narrative became the written word. Here [Roman Emperor] Constantine conquered,...