USS Intrepid (1798)

A copy of an engraving of the destruction of the Fire Ship Intrepid
History
Name:	USS Intrepid
Cost:	$1,800 purchased
Launched:	1798
Acquired:	by capture, 23 December 1803
Fate:	Destroyed in action, 4 September 1804
General characteristics
Type:	Bomb ketch, used as an Explosion ship
Tonnage:	64
Length:	60 ft (18 m)
Beam:	12 ft (3.7 m)
Propulsion:	Sail
Complement:	70 officers and enlisted
Armament:	4 guns

The first USS Intrepid was a captured ketch in the United States Navy during the First Barbary War.

Intrepid was built in France in 1798 for Napoleon's Egyptian expedition. She was subsequently sold to Tripoli, whom she served as Mastico. The bomb ketch was one of several Tripolitan vessels which captured the Philadelphia on 31 October 1803 after the American frigate had run fast aground on uncharted Kaliusa reef some five miles east of Tripoli.

USS Enterprise, a schooner with Lt. Stephen Decatur in command, captured Mastico on 23 December 1803 as it was sailing from Tripoli to Constantinople under Turkish colors and without passports. After a time-consuming search for a translator, the ketch's papers and the testimony of an English ship master who had been in Tripoli to witness her role in operations against Philadelphia convinced the commander of the American squadron, Commodore Edward Preble, that Mastico was a legitimate prize. He took her into the U.S. Navy and renamed her Intrepid.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia lay in Tripoli Harbor threatening to become Tripoli's largest and most powerful corsair. Preble decided that he must destroy the frigate before the enemy could fit her out for action against his squadron. In order to take the Tripolitans by surprise, he assigned the task to the only ship which could be sure of passing as a North African vessel, Intrepid. He appointed Lieutenant Stephen Decatur captain of the ketch on 31 January 1804 and ordered him to prepare her for a month's cruise to Tripoli in company with Syren. Preble's orders directed Decatur to slip into harbor at night, to board and burn the frigate, and make good his retreat in Intrepid, unless it then seemed feasible to use her as a fire ship against other shipping in the harbor. In the latter case, he was to escape in boats to Syren which would await just outside the harbor.