Ellis Endicott

born 1779- 1821

Sam was the second child (and last son) of Samuel (1741-1782).

Sam served as a quarter gunner on the U.S.S. Enterprise (the first one) in the Barbary Wars.  A quarter gunner was a petty officer under the direction of the ship’s gunner, whose duty it was to assist the gunner in keeping the guns and their carriages in proper order,  filling the cartridges with powder, and furnishing whatever was necessary for keeping the guns in top condition.

The muster rolls for the 12 gun sloop-of-war USS Enterprise, shows that Samuel Endicott, Quarter Gunner, entered service on April 2, 1803, and joined the ship on April 4, 1803 under the command of Lieutenant Isaac Hull (who later commanded USS Constitution when she defeated HMS Guerriere).

The name Samuel Endicott appears on the list of volunteers from the Enterprise who then manned the small 64 ton ketch “Intrepid” when she burned the captured U.S.S. Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor to prevent her being used by the Barbary pirates. The Philadelphia was the second ship of that name in the US Navy and she was a 36-gun frigate.


A check signed by Sam Endicott in 1810

On October 31, 1803, the Philadelphia was chasing a Tripolitan ship of the xebec type a when Philadelphia ran onto the rocks off Tripoli, was unable to get off, and was captured along with her entire crew and officers.

American officials then decided that the only alternative was to set fire to the Philadelphia to prevent its use by Tripoli.

Ironically, the Intrepid was originally a Tripolitan ketch named the Mastico that  had been captured by the Enterprise on December 23, 1803.  But the Tripolitan garrison at Tripoli was unaware of this capture.

On the night of February 16, 1804, Stephen Decatur (who later played a major role in the development of the U.S. Navy) and a crew of 84 volunteers in the Intrepid, all that the ship would hold, entered Tripoli harbor and set fire to the Philadelphia.

In his 1938 book, “The Navy: A History”  Fletcher Pratt tells the story of how this happened:

The moon was young when they drifted in on the faintest of breezes, with Philadelphia looming black before them out of the tangle of masts.  She had two hundred men or more; her guns were loaded with double shot; the castle stood above her with 115 heavy cannon in it and lights along the embrasures to show the pirates kept watch.

Straight on came Intrepid.  As Philadelphia’s watch hailed, Sicilian born Salvador Catalano, posing as the captain, jabbered back in their own barbarous lingo that he was bringing in a blockade-runner with provisions from Malta.

The Philadelphia’s crew threw a rope; Intrepid was warped to the frigates side, with her hatch-combines rising cautiously.  At the last moment, someone on the frigate’s deck sighted a row of heads below bright steel. “Americano!” he yelled and at that same moment Decatur shouted “Board!” and the 84 piled across the bulwarks with their cutlasses swinging.

Midshipman Morris hacked down the first of the defenders and a seaman drove a boarding pike right through the man behind.  The rest broke for the forecastle with the Americans slashing at their backs.  In a moment it was all over; the two hundred Tripolitans dead or jumping through the portholes, while the demolition parties were carrying their combustibles aboard.

They worked so fast and the flames caught so well that Decatur had barely time to swing himself into the Intrepid rigging as the cables were cut, with smoke billowing all round and little tongues of flame beginning to dance up the tarry ropes (ropes coated with flammable tar -ed.)

The batteries were awake now; boom, boom, boom, they sounded out, throwing tall columns of rainbow spray between Intrepid and her victim as the little ketch picked up speed while the gunners were so excited they hit nothing.

Down the harbor and out to sea the adventurous argosy moved with every man safe, just as Philadelphia blew up.

None other than famed British Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson called it “the most bold and daring act of the age.”  Even the Pope weighed in.  Pope Pius VII publicly proclaimed that “the United States, though in their infancy, had done more to humble the anti-Christian barbarians on the African coast, than all the European states had done for a long period of time.”

Sam then went back to the Enterprise and his service there lasted to September 20, 1804, when he transferred to the 36-gun frigate, the U.S.S.  John Adams.  These ships were in the Mediterranean Squadron of Commodore Preble.

The remaining chapter of Sam’s life is vague.  We know only that he was lost on a later voyage of an “East Indian” vessel when he went ashore on one of the Aegean Islands.  No Endicotts are directly descended from Sam since he never married.

We do know, though, that on one of his numerous voyages to far eastern lands, Sam acquired a watch that he gave to his sister, Ann.  She in turn passed it on to her youngest nephew, George Washington Endicott (August 10, 1863 - November 10, 1918), from whom it was passed to Washington Allen Endicott of Chicago, Illinois.

On April 5, 1942, Samuel Endicott was honored when the destroyer, USS Endicott (DD-495) (see below) started down the ways at the Harbor Island Plant of the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation in Seattle, Washington.

During WWII, she sank a German merchantman and two German Corvettes in a pitched battle off of Southern France in 1944 and was one of the escort destroyers for President Roosevelt’s trip to Yalta.  She later served in the Korean War in which she is believed to have helped sink a Soviet submarine.  She was decommissioned on August 17, 1954.  To this day, her ship’s bell hangs in the chapel of the Presidential retreat at Camp David.   Camp David is a US Naval facility and traditionally important visitors are “piped aboard” and saluted by the ringing of the bell from the USS Endicott.