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To: Tell It Right
In the early 1800's, President Thomas Jefferson sent the Navy and the Marines to vanquish the Tripoli pirates, who had been terrorizing the Mediterranean and forcing shippers to pay "tribute" (i.e. extortion money).

The Americans were also paying tribute for a while, but when Jefferson announced we were no longer paying extortion money, the pirates sacked the U.S. embassy in Tripoli. It wasn't easy, but the Navy and Marines wiped them out and forever rid the world of that scourge. This victory is immortalized in the Marine Corp hymn... "to the shores of Tripoli".

Having a mighty Navy ship named after the victory at Tripoli is indeed appropriate and worthy.
12 posted on 05/03/2022 9:58:49 AM PDT by Dan in Wichita
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To: Dan in Wichita
I'm familiar with the history, the Barbary Wars, Stephen Decatur, William Eaton, etc.

I just can't think of a time when we named a ship after an old enemy. For example, our first USS Enterprise was the captured HMS George during the American Revolution. Obviously we didn't want to sail on a ship named after our most hated enemy (at the time) so we named it the same thing France (Le Enterprize) and England (HMS Enterprise) had named some of their ships as our way of saying we've arrived as a naval power.

Plus, the Enterprise name was our way of telling England that we can capture enemy ships too -- because the first British ship named HMS Enterprise was the the one captured from the French. So we obviously had a reason to go with the name Enterprise in the late 18th century (this was before 1799 Enterprise's many glories during the Barbary Wars in the 19th century, and way before the very storied WW2 Enterprise aircraft carrier in the 20th century).

Back to building a ship and naming it Tripoli. What next? Are the British so proud of their role in beating Germany in WW2 that they're going to name their next ship the HMS Nazi? Maybe we ought to name our next ship the USS Alqaeda. That's what naming a ship after our first foreign enemy seems like to me.

20 posted on 05/03/2022 10:12:27 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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