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4 unusual facts about Stephen Decatur


Lewis Heermann

On 16 February 1804, during the War with the Barbary States, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur left Heermann in command of the bomb ketch Intrepid while he and a fearless band of American seamen boarded the captured frigate Philadelphia in Tripoli Harbor, swept her Barbary captors' crew overboard, and set the frigate ablaze.

Maryland Route 611

MD 611 is named for Stephen Decatur, the U.S. naval officer of the early 19th century who was born in nearby Berlin.

Newton, New Jersey

Thomas Oakley Anderson (1783-1844), American naval officer, involved in the raiding party, led by Stephen Decatur on February 16, 1804, to destroy the U.S. frigate Philadelphia which ran aground in Tripoli harbor during the First Barbary War.

Stephen Decatur

Oren, Michael B. Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.


Decatur, Tennessee

Decatur is named after Commodore Stephen Decatur, Jr., an early 19th-century American naval officer renowned for his exploits in the First Barbary War and the Second Barbary War and the War of 1812.

Westville, New Jersey

Stephen Decatur (1779–1820), naval officer notable for his heroism in the First Barbary War and the Second Barbary War and in the War of 1812.


see also

National Watch and Clock Museum

Other highlights include an exhibit of the pioneering automated machinery developed by the American Waltham Watch Company, allowing for the first time to mass-produce watches using interchangeable parts, a large selection of American pocket watches (including Railroad watches), and the "Engel Clock", a complicated "monument" clock built by Stephen Decatur Engel of Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

Stephen Decatur Engle

Stephen Decatur Engle (December 18, 1837 – January 24, 1921) of Sybertsville, Pennsylvania was an American inventor best known as the creator of the Engle Monumental Clock, a clockwork described at the time as The 8th Wonder of The World.