Horrors of Slavery: Or, The American Tars in Tripoli (Subterranean Lives)

241 Pages·2008·1.25 MB·English

by  William Ray

Horrors of Slavery
z
subterranean lives
Chronicles of Alternative America
Bradford Verter, series editor
Subterranean Livesreprints first-person accounts from the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries by members of oppositional or stigmatized subcultures; memoirs
by men and women who lived, whether by circumstance, inclination, or design,
outside of the bounds of normative bourgeois experience. They include tramps,
sex workers, cultists, criminals, drug addicts, physically disabled people, sexual
minorities, bohemians, revolutionaries, and other individuals who have survived
on the margins, within the interstices, and across the boundaries of American
society. Each volume presents either a book-length memoir or a selection of
shorter texts in their entirety, together with an introduction and notes.
Autobiography of an Androgyne, Ralph Werther
Scott Herring, editor
The Hasheesh Eater: Being Passages from the Life of a Pythagorean,
Fitz Hugh Ludlow
Stephen Rachman, editor
Horrors of Slavery: or, The American Tars in Tripoli, William Ray
Hester Blum, editor
The Road, Jack London
Todd DePastino, editor
With the Weathermen: The Personal Journal of a Revolutionary Woman,
Susan Stern
Laura Browder, editor
Horrors of Slavery
z
or,
The American Tars in Tripoli
William Ray
Edited and with an Introduction by Hester Blum
rutgers university press
new brunswick, new jersey, and london
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ray, William.
Horrors of slavery, or, the American tars in Tripoli / William Ray ; edited and with an
introduction by Hester Blum.
p. cm. — (Subterranean lives)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN978-0-8135-4412-0(hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8135-4413-7 (pbk. : alk.
paper)
1. Ray, William. 2. United States. Navy—History—Tripolitan War, 1801–1805—Personal
narratives. 3. Slavery—Africa, North. 4. Philadelphia (Frigate) I. Blum, Hester.
II. Title. III. Title: Horrors of slavery. IV. Title: American tars in Tripoli.
E335.R39 2008
973.4'7092—dc22
[B]
2008007763
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
Horrors of Slaverywas first published by Oliver Lyon in Troy, New York in 1808.
Introduction to this edition and scholarly apparatus copyright © 2008by Hester Blum
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permis-
sion from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue,
Piscataway, NJ 08854-8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by
U.S. copyright law.
Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Chronology xxxi
A Note on the Text xxxv
Horrors of Slavery; or, The American Tars in Tripoli
Exordium 3
I. Introductory Remarks 15
II. Commencement of Service 19
III. A Sketch of Biography 26
IV. Suicide Attempted 31
V. Embarkation—Celebration of Independence—
Exemplary Punishment, &c. 37
VI. A Voyage 43
VII. Exercising Ship 49
VIII. Remarks on Dr. Cowdery’s Journal 56
IX. A Petition 70
X. Commodore Preble’s Engagement with
the Tripolitans 82
XI. Elegy 97
XII. Description of the Place 109
XIII. Manners, Customs, &c. of the Tripolitans 119
v
vi contents
XIV. Public Transactions of the United States with the Regency
of Tripoli; Including General Eaton’s Expedition 125
XV. Sketch of General Eaton’s Expedition 164
XVI. Return Home 181
Poetry, Published in The Albany Register, during the
summer of 1807 183
Explanatory Notes 197
Further Reading 201
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the American Antiquarian Society, particularly Joanne Chaison
and Caroline Sloat; Sandy Stelts of the Penn State Special Collections Library, who
secured a copy of William Ray’s Poems for me; and the Library Company of
Philadelphia, where I first read Horrors of Slavery. Brad Verter invited me to pro-
pose an edition of a Barbary captivity narrative, and I am grateful for his guidance
in the early stages of this project. I thank Kendra Boileau as well for her initial help
with the edition. I also owe thanks to my fellow speakers on a panel addressing
piracy at the 2006 American Historical Association Conference: Gillian Weiss,
Larry Peskin, and especially Isaac Land, the panel’s organizer; this edition is the
indirect result of that panel. Samantha Guss transcribed Horrors of Slaveryin its
entirety, and I am lucky to have had her invaluable assistance. The English Depart-
ment at Penn State University provided research support to make this edition pos-
sible, and I thank my terrific colleagues and students.
I am very grateful to Leslie Mitchner for her expertise and insight, and thank
Rutgers University Press for its willingness to publish noncanonical works of lit-
erature.
I am most thankful, as ever, to my daughter Adelaide and to Jonathan Eburne,
whose own occasional rhymes have all of William Ray’s wit and none of his
venom.
vii

Introduction
In Horrors of Slavery (1808) William Ray describes his experience as a captive
American sailor in North Africa during the Tripolitan War (1801–1805), the first
military encounter of the United States with the Islamic world. Ray had been a
schoolteacher and a failed shopkeeper in New York State in the 1790s. In poverty
and near-suicidal desperation after his hopes of securing a newspaper editorship
in Philadelphia were frustrated, he enlisted on a U.S. frigate bound for the
Mediterranean in 1803. Along with more than three hundred crewmates, he spent
nineteen bitter months in captivity after his ship, the Philadelphia, ran aground in
the harbor of Tripoli and was captured. Imprisoned and consigned to hard labor,
Ray witnessed—and chronicled—many of the signal moments of America’s mil-
itary engagements with Tripoli and the other North African Barbary states. This
conflict came at a late moment in the broader, centuries-long struggle between the
Barbary states and Europe. His narrative describes the trauma of his enslavement,
focusing on the poor conditions the American prisoners faced, as well as how their
captivity registered within the broader context of the Tripolitan economy and
society. But Ray’s complaints are not solely with the Tripolitan Pasha, or the
Bashaw, as he calls him (this introduction follows Ray’s usage), or with Barbary
piracy more generally. His account details the abuses inherent in the American
naval system of discipline and hierarchy as well. Throughout his captivity narra-
tive, and in his post-captivity writings, Ray decries injustice in all forms. Horrors
of Slaverybrings to light a little-known yet crucial episode in the early history of
American relations with Islamic states, and provides a searing condemnation of
tyranny, whether practiced by Barbary pirates, American naval officers, or socie-
tal and political institutions more broadly.
Ray came to terms with the “horrors” of his captivity by writing about his expe-
rience while still incarcerated in Tripoli, in modern Libya. He would continue to
write, in a variety of media and on a variety of topics, upon his return to New York
State after his redemption. Horrors of Slaveryis unusual, both in its tone and in its
ix