As part of Commodore Richard Dale's Mediterranean Squadron, Enterprise had been deployed with the American force blockading the Vilayet of Tripoli.

Tripoli put up a stubborn fight and perfidiously feigned surrender three times in an engagement lasting three hours before the polacca was finally captured by the Americans.

Following the recognition of the independence of the United States (US) in 1783, the new country's early administrations had elected to make tribute payments to the Vilayet of Tripoli to protect American commercial shipping interests in the Mediterranean Sea.

Tripoli, nominally a subject of the Ottoman Empire, was practically autonomous in conducting her foreign affairs, and would declare war on non-Muslim states whose ships sailed in the Mediterranean in order to extract tribute from them.

[3] As a result, Tripoli declared war on the United States, and its navy began to seize American ships and crews in an attempt to coerce the Jefferson administration into acceding to their demands.

When word of these attacks on American merchantmen reached Washington, D.C., the Jefferson administration gave the United States Navy the authority to conduct limited operations against Tripoli.

[6] In contrast, Tripoli, a lateen-rigged polacca with two masts, was crewed by 80 men under Admiral Rais Mahomet Rous and armed with 14 guns.

As the action continued, Rous perfidiously feigned a third surrender in an attempt to draw the American schooner within grappling range.

This time, Sterett kept his distance, and ordered Enterprise's guns to be lowered to aim at the polacca's waterline, a tactic that threatened to sink the enemy ship.

[11] With most of his crew dead or wounded, the injured Admiral Rous finally threw the Tripolitan flag into the sea to convince Sterett to end the action.

Stripped of his command, he was paraded through the streets draped in sheep's entrails while seated backwards on a jackass before suffering 500 bastinadoes.

[14] In the United States, the exact opposite occurred, with wild publicity surrounding the arrival of news that the Americans had won their first victory over the Tripolitans.

The American government gave a month's pay as a bonus to each of Enterprise's crew members, and honored Sterett by granting him a sword and calling for his promotion.