Barbary Pirate | |
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Directed by | Lew Landers |
Written by | Robert Libott Frank Burt |
Produced by | Sam Katzman |
Starring | Trudy Marshall Donald Woods |
Cinematography | Ira H. Morgan |
Edited by | James Sweeney |
Production company | Sam Katzman Productions |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 65 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Barbary Pirate is a 1949 American adventure film directed by Lew Landers and starring Donald Woods and Trudy Marshall.
Major Tom Blake of the United States Army is assigned by the first United States Secretary of State - Thomas Jefferson to go undercover and discover who has been attacking American merchant ships after the American Revolutionary War has come to an end. Blake, calling himself "Brighton," boards a vessel and alienates two patriotic passengers, Anne Ridgeway and her brother Sam, who believe he possesses disloyal pro-British sentiments.
Men who serve Yusof, the Bey of Tripoli, of the Barbary states in North Africa are behind the raids at sea. Blake ingratiates himself by saving the Bey from an assassin's attack, then locates the knife thrower, Zoltah, and confides his true identity to her. To his surprise, Anne is taken captive by the Bey and offered to him as a personal servant, a reward for his heroism. Blake privately reassures Anne he will not take advantage of the situation.
Jefferson is later elected third President of the United States in 1800 and sends a second agent, Tobias Sharpe, to the scene, unaware that Sharpe is a traitor. Blake is captured and sentenced to death, but escapes in time to take part in a battle that eliminates the threat to America, winning the admiration and affection of Anne.
Writers Jack Pollexen and Aubrey Wisenberg later sued Katzman for $100,000 on the grounds of plagiarism, saying the film was based on a script they had submitted to him in 1948 called Pirate and the Slave Girl. [1]
The First Barbary War (1801–1805), also known as the Tripolitan War and the Barbary Coast War, was the first of two Barbary Wars, in which the United States and Sweden fought against the four North African states known collectively as the "Barbary States".
The Barbary Wars were a series of two wars fought by the United States, Sweden, and the Kingdom of Sicily against the Barbary states of North Africa in the early 19th century. Sweden had been at war with the Tripolitans since 1800 and was joined by the newly independent US. The First Barbary War extended from 10 May 1801 to 10 June 1805, with the Second Barbary War lasting only three days, ending on 19 June 1815.
The Second Barbary War (1815) or the U.S.–Algerian War was fought between the United States and the North African Barbary Coast states of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers. The war ended when the United States Senate ratified Commodore Stephen Decatur’s Algerian treaty on 5 December 1815. However, Dey Omar Agha of Algeria repudiated the US treaty, refused to accept the terms of peace that had been ratified by the Congress of Vienna, and threatened the lives of all Christian inhabitants of Algiers. William Shaler was the US commissioner in Algiers who had negotiated alongside Decatur, but he fled aboard British vessels during the Bombardment of Algiers (1816). He negotiated a new treaty in 1816 which was not ratified by the Senate until 11 February 1822, because of an oversight.
USS Philadelphia, a 1240-ton, 36-gun sailing frigate, was the second vessel of the United States Navy to be named for the city of Philadelphia. Originally named City of Philadelphia, she was built in 1798–1799 for the United States government by residents of that city. Funding for her construction was raised by a drive that collected $100,000 in one week, in June 1798. She was designed by Josiah Fox and built by Samuel Humphreys, Nathaniel Hutton and John Delavue. Her carved work was done by William Rush of Philadelphia. She was laid down about November 14, 1798, launched on November 28, 1799, and commissioned on April 5, 1800, with Captain Stephen Decatur, Sr. in command. She was captured by Barbary pirates in Tripoli with William Bainbridge in command. Stephen Decatur led a raid that burned her down, preventing her use by the pirates.
The Treaty of Tripoli was signed in 1796. It was the first treaty between the United States and Tripoli to secure commercial shipping rights and protect American ships in the Mediterranean Sea from local Barbary pirates.
William Eaton was a United States Army officer and the diplomatic officer Consul General to Tunis (1797–1803). He played an important diplomatic and military role in the First Barbary War between the United States and Tripoli (1801–1805). He led the first foreign United States military victory at the Battle of Derne by capturing the Tripoli subject city of Derne in support of the restoration of the pasha, Hamet Caramelli. William Eaton also gave testimony at the treason trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr. He served one term in the General Court of Massachusetts. Eaton died on June 1, 1811, at the age of forty-seven.
The terms Barbary Coast, Barbary, Berbery or Berber Coast were used in English-language sources from the 16th century to the early 19th to refer to the coastal regions of North Africa or Maghreb, specifically the Ottoman borderlands consisting of the regencies in Algiers and Tripoli, as well as the Beylik of Tunis and the Sultanate of Morocco. The term originates from the name of the Berbers.
The Barbary pirates, or Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs, were Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Salé, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and Iceland. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture slaves for the Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Arab slavery market in North Africa and the Middle East. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.
Gertrude Madeline "Trudy" Marshall was an American actress and model.
Presley O'Bannon was a first lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, famous for his exploits in the First Barbary War (1801-1805). In recognition of his bravery, he was presented a sword for his part in attempting to restore Prince Hamet Karamanli to his throne as the Bey of Tripoli. This sword became the model for the Mameluke Sword, adopted in 1825 for Marine Corps officers, which is part of the formal uniform today.
The Battle of Derna at Derna, Cyrenaica, was the decisive victory in April–May 1805 of a mercenary army recruited and led by United States Marines under the command of U.S. Army Lieutenant William Eaton, diplomatic Consul to Tripoli, and U.S. Marine Corps First Lieutenant Presley Neville O'Bannon. The battle involved a forced 521-mile (839-km) march through the North African desert from Alexandria, Egypt, to the eastern port city of Derna, Libya, which was defended by a much larger force.
Sam Katzman was an American film producer and director. Katzman produced low-budget genre films, including serials, which had disproportionately high returns for the studios and his financial backers.
Thomas Jefferson served as the president of the United States from March 4, 1801, to March 4, 1809. Jefferson assumed the office after defeating incumbent John Adams in the 1800 presidential election. The election was a political realignment in which the Democratic-Republican Party swept the Federalist Party out of power, ushering in a generation of Jeffersonian Republican dominance in American politics. After serving two terms, Jefferson was succeeded by Secretary of State James Madison, also of the Democratic-Republican Party.
The Karamanli, Caramanli, Qaramanli, or al-Qaramanli dynasty was an early modern dynasty, independent or quasi-independent, which ruled from 1711 to 1835 in Ottoman Tripolitania. The territory comprised Tripoli and its surroundings in present-day Libya. At its peak, the Karamanli dynasty's influence reached Cyrenaica and Fezzan, covering most of Libya. The founder of the dynasty was Pasha Ahmed Karamanli, a descendant of the Karamanids. The most well-known Karamanli ruler was Yusuf ibn Ali Karamanli Pasha who reigned from 1795 to 1832, who fought a war with the United States in (1801–1805). Ali II Karamanli marked the end of the dynasty.
Yusuf Karamanli, Caramanli or Qaramanli or al-Qaramanli, was the longest-reigning Pasha of the Karamanli dynasty of Tripolitania. He is noted for his role in the Barbary Wars against the United States.
The coastal region of what is today Libya was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1912. First, from 1551 to 1864, as the Eyalet of Tripolitania or Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, later, from 1864 to 1912, as the Vilayet of Tripolitania. It was also known as the Kingdom of Tripoli, even though it was not technically a kingdom, but an Ottoman province ruled by pashas (governors). The Karamanli dynasty ruled the province as a de facto hereditary monarchy from 1711 to 1835, despite remaining under nominal Ottoman rule and suzerainty from Constantinople.
Donald Woods was a Canadian-American film and television actor whose career in Hollywood spanned six decades.
The Barbary slave trade involved slave markets on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which included the Ottoman states of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania and the independent sultanate of Morocco, between the 16th and 19th century. The Ottoman states in North Africa were nominally under Ottoman suzerainty.
Slave Girl is a 1947 American Technicolor adventure comedy film directed by Charles Lamont and starring Yvonne De Carlo and George Brent.
Tripoli is a 1950 American adventure film directed by Will Price and written by Winston Miller. The film is a fictionalized account of the Battle of Derna at Derna, a coastal town in modern eastern Libya in April 1805 against Tripoli, one of the four Barbary states in North Africa and stars John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, Howard Da Silva, Phillip Reed, Grant Withers, Lowell Gilmore and Connie Gilchrist. The film was released on November 9, 1950, by Paramount Pictures. The film was re-released by Citation Films Inc. and retitled The First Marines.