The Tripoli Monument: Commemorating Our Forgotten Past Gene Allen Smith, Texas Christian University
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The Tripoli Monument: Commemorating Our Forgotten Past Gene Allen Smith, Texas Christian University Gene Allen Smith1 Published online: 5 August 2020 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Completed in 1806 by the famed sculptor Giacinto Micali in Livorno, Italy, the white, Carrara marble Tripoli Monument began a precarious journey to the USA aboard the USS Constitution. The memorial traveled from Italy to Newport, Rhode Island, and was then shipped south to Washington, D.C., where it remained in crates until money could be raised to assemble and erect it. After much debate, the Tripoli Monument found a home at the Washington Navy Yard. Damaged in 1814 when the Navy Yard was torched to prevent its capture by the British, the monument was not repaired until it was moved to the US Capitol grounds in 1831. It remained on the west side of the Capitol until 1860 when it was moved to the US Naval Academy. Since its arrival in Annapolis, MD the monument has moved around campus to its current location in front of the Academy’s Officers’ and Faculty Club. Though well positioned, it is virtually overlooked on a historic campus and military installation with many other noteworthy historical monuments. Keywords Barbary War Tripoli Monument US Naval Academy
Historical Monuments are more than representations of the past; they are also expressions in which artists try to convey a discrete meaning. Some monuments highlight a person or event, while others commemorate the sacrifice made against foreign enemies in the name of the USA. The Tripoli Monument on the grounds of the US Naval Academy, the oldest US military monument and memorial to those killed in combat, was erected to commemorate the memory of six sailors who died in one of the country’s earliest wars. Presently, it sits quietly in Annapolis, Maryland, on the Naval Academy grounds, slowly deteriorating (Fig. 1).
The Barbary War, 1801–1805 Neither scholars nor the public paid scant attention to the Barbary Wars prior to September 11, 2001. Our knowledge and understanding of the conflict came from a very few books that covered the conflict. Gardner Allen’s naval history of the conflict, published in the & Gene Allen Smith [email protected] 1
Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, USA
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Journal of Maritime Archaeology (2020) 15:291–305
Fig. 1 Tripoli Monument, the oldest military monument in the USA, was carved in Livorno, Italy, in 1806 and brought to the USA on board the USS Constitution. From its original installation in the Washington Navy Yard in 1808, it was moved to the west terrace of the US Capitol in 1831 and finally to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1860 Photograph taken by the author
centennial year of the war’s conclusion, offered a rousing patriotic description of the struggle against the ‘‘barbarians’’ (1905:363). Tucker’s (1963) popular book, the first modern account, combines the history of American–Mediterranean relations with the naval history of the conflict and a his
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