Decatur

Decatur, STEPHEN, American naval commander, was born in Sinnepuxent, Maryland, 5th January 1779, of French descent, and obtained a midshipman's warrant in 1798. He saw some service against the French, and was commissioned lieutenant in the following year; and at the close of the French war in 1801 he was one of the thirty-six officers of that rank retained in the reduced strength of the navy. In the war with Tripoli (1801-5) he gained great distinction; his brilliant achievement of boarding and burning the captured Philadelphia in the harbour of Tripoli, and then escaping under the fire of 141 guns, Nelson pronounced 'the most daring act of the age.' For this he received his commission as captain in 1804; in 1810 he was appointed commodore. In the war with England in 1812 he captured the frigate Macedonian, but in 1814 he was obliged to surrender, after a resistance that cost him a fourth of his crew, to four British frigates. In 1815 he chastised the Algerines for their piracy, and compelled the dey to declare the American flag inviolable; and he obtained indemnities for violating treaty stipulations from the bey of Tunis and the pasha of Tripoli. He was appointed a navy commissioner in 1816, and was killed in a duel by Commodore James Barron, near Bladensburg, Maryland, 22d March 1820.