Capture of the Tripoli by the Enterprise

One of the most daring feats of the Barbary Wars is commemorated in this canvas: the night raid in which Lieutenant Stephen Decatur and his men burned the captured frigate Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor, denying it to the pirates. Thomas Birch, an English-born artist who settled in Philadelphia and learned marine painting from his father, painted it in 1806–12, giving the episode a dramatic moonlit stage — the dark hull of the ship, the first tongues of flame, and the crowded boats pulling away — while keeping the exact rigging and sea-marks of an eyewitness record. It is at once a proud chapter of early American naval history and a fine example of the young nation’s Romantic marine art. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.