The Tripoli Monument at Annapolis had previously been located at the Washington Naval Yard, until it was damaged by the British, and then moved to Capitol Hill before finding its place at Annapolis.
Commissioned and paid for by the officers and men who served in the War against the Barbary Pirates, the Tripoli Monument is made of marble and fashioned by an Italian artist who engraved the names of the officers who died at Tripoli, also mistakenly saying they were buried there, as it was anticipated to be a gravestone.
They say there were only some 38 American casualities in the war, thirteen of them from the USS Intrepid, which exploded in Tripoli Harbor on September 4, 1804.
The remains of the three officers, Lt. Richard Somers, Commander, Lt. Henry Wadsworth, Midshipmen C. Israel and ten able bodied seamen were recovered and buried a few hundred yards east of the Old Castle Fort, in what is now known as Green Square.
In the 1930s, an Italian Army road crew uncovered the remains of five of the men, and they were reburried nearby at Old Protestant Cemetery, where they remain today.
See: Photos of Old Protestant Cemetery.
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