‘Commandos snatch civilians from desert nightmare,’ said the weekend’s headlines. ‘Special forces swoop on Libya.’ It’s not the first time – recent events recall another daring rescue, another troubled period in Libya’s past.

In 1801 the ruler of Tripoli, Yusuf Karamanli, became the first head of state in history to declare war on the United States. The root of the disagreement was the Tripolitans’ demand for a quarter of a million dollars in return for not robbing American merchant ships in the Mediterranean; and America’s reluctance to pay tribute to a foreign power.

For two years the war was pursued in a desultory fashion, with Tripoli preying on American vessels and the American navy mounting periodic blockades and punitive expeditions. Then, in October 1803, disaster struck for the United States. A brand-new frigate, the USS Philadelphia, chased a pirate ship which was trying to slip into Tripoli harbour - and ran aground on a submerged reef.

The crew cut the anchors, threw heavy lumber and even tossed some of the guns overboard, all the while taking fire from Tripolitan gunboats. But the ship wouldn’t budge. That afternoon she surrendered and her 307 officers and crew were taken ashore and imprisoned. Captain William Bainbridge’s distress – and the West’s attitude towards North Africa – was evident in the report he sent to the U. S. navy department the next day. ‘To yield to an uncivilised, barbarous enemy, who were objects of contempt’, he wailed, ‘was humiliating’. (Not every member of the Philadelphia’s crew shared his contempt, mind: five of them converted to Islam.)

Senior officers of the American navy in the Mediterranean considered attempting to rescue the Philadelphia, but decided it would be impossible to get her away from under the guns of the Tripolitan shore batteries. There was a chance, however, that a raiding party might set fire to her so preventing her from being used against American shipping. The mission was given to an enterprising young naval lieutenant from Maryland, Stephen Decatur. With a crew of volunteers and a Sicilian pilot, Decatur sailed a captured ketch into Tripoli harbour on the night of 16 February 1804. Then he and his men stormed aboard the Philadelphia, set fire to it and rowed out of the harbour and into the history books.

But the Philadelphia’s crew remained captive in Tripoli, and there was a second act to the drama. The Americans hatched a plan to to set up Yusuf’s exiled brother, Ahmad, as a puppet pasha, in the hope that this would provoke a popular uprising and topple Yusuf. William Eaton, the U.S.consul in Tunis, tracked Ahmad down in Egypt and persuaded him to join a motley expeditionary force of ten American marines, 300 Arabs, 38 Greeks and about fifty other soldiers of various nationalities.

This ragtag army marched nearly 500 miles across the Libyan desert from Egypt to Darnah, a Tripolitan outpost to the east of Cyrene. They had no water for days on end. Their horses had no food. Nevertheless, when they reached Darnah on 27 April 1805 at the end of a 50-day trek, they captured the town.

That achievement is remembered today in the opening lines of the official hymn of the US Marine Corps, ‘From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.’ But the popular rising Eaton expected didn’t materialise and his men struggled for six weeks to fight off Arab tribesmen and enemy forces sent from Tripoli. On 11 June the U.S.S. Constellation arrived off Darnah with the news that Tripoli had made peace with America and released US captives in return for a token payment of $60,000. Eaton had to pack up and go home.

It was left to the Washington-based National Intelligencer to have the last word. Since the United States was dealing with ‘barbarians... who made a practice of vending prisoners’, it declared, ‘the price demanded for our countrymen is very small. It amounts to about 233 dollars for each individual. This is not the value of a stout healthy negro.’

Adrian Tinniswood is the author of Pirates of Barbary, which has been called a "vastly enjoyable book" by The Sunday Times. A historian and educationalist, he regularly lectures in Britain and the US. He is also the author of eleven books of social and architectural history, most notably His Invention So Fertile, an acclaimed biography of Sir Christopher Wren and his most recent book, The Verneys, was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.