Porter Saga

Tea and taxes are quickly cited as the reason colonial America broke away from England. It was the cause of 'Free Trade and Sailors Rights' which sustained an infant force of iron men, who gladly served aboard the few wooden ships, of the Continental Navy. Davy Porter, in a lifetime of fights and feuds, shares the courage of ancestors who earned their name during the Holy Crusades, with warriors of the New World.

One Halloween the US Navy would like to forget, played a terrible trick on LIEUTENANT DAVID PORTER, in 1803. He, along with 306 other shipmates aboard the 38-gun frigate USS Philadelphia, including Captain William Bainbridge, were caught by pirates at Tripoli It took guile and courage to free them from their 18-month slavery in the grip of a murderous, despotic Pasha, and a renegade Scot-turned-Turk pirate. Plus the politicking of a President, Emperor and Pope. It also introduced the United States Marine Corps onto the world stage of battle and bravery. A handful of leathernecks with a raggle-taggle army of camel-drivers and mercenaries, under determined leadership, routed the best the Barbary Coast Pirates could muster. They helped free their comrades, after they marched across a desert, quelled mutinies and meted out frontier justice.