The opening · free to read
The road cleft by early American ships into the Mediterranean Sea has become a well-traveled one. On errands of commerce, punishment or relief, our skippers have laid an ever-broadening way into the Orient.
Yet who, in the bustle of the present, recalls the pioneer American captains and sailors who once suffered slavery and torture to make the Mediterranean a safe sea for Yankee vessels? Who remembers the Americans who lay for nine years in Turkish prisons? Who recalls General William Eaton, who led a little band of Americans and Greeks on a desperate venture across the North African desert to release the imprisoned crew of the Philadelphia from Turkish bondage, and who, for the first time, raised the United States flag over a fort of the old world?
It is to make this period and its heroic characters live again in the mind of America that this volume has been written. To link the several campaigns against the Turks of Barbary, extending over a period of fifteen years, the author has adopted the method he followed in his book "Boone of the Wilderness," and introduced characters and episodes of fiction. The material is largely derived from original sources.
Permit us, then, without further ado, to present and commend to your interest the young sailor David Forsyth, who is at times the hero of the yarn, but quite as often a spectator and historian of the deeds of the brave men under whom he was privileged to serve. Do not hold his youth against him. Nelson went to sea at twelve; Drake was scarcely more than a boy when he fought on the Spanish Main; and Decatur and many other gallant American officers under whom David served were mere striplings. Youth was foremost on the sea in those days, and it is hoped that its ardent spirit flames in this volume, though a century's dust covers our heroes.
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