Remember the Intrepid: Old Protestant Cemetery

New free Libyan Flags fly above Tripoli's Old Protestant Cemetery where the graves of American Naval Heroes are located.

The Old Protestant Cemetery before the recent restoration. It is located just across the road from Tripoli Harbor, about two miles east of the old castle fort and Martyrs Square. The walls were built by the British in 1830 around some preexisting graves believed to be American navy sailors killed in 1804.

Based on the research of a local Libyan, Triopli harbor master Mustapha Burchis, the United States ambassador and U.S. Navy officially recognized five crypts at the Old Protestant Cemetery as those of the men of the USS Intrepid. The captain of the USS Spokane and the mayor of Tripoli Yousef Karamanli participated in a ceremony that also included the British Army and a Scottish regiment of bagpipers. The mayor was a direct descendant and namesake of the Tripoli prince of the pirates who was the first to declare war against the United States by chopping down the flagpole outside the residence of the American counsel. He did so because the United States had ceased paying tribute to stop the piracy. At that ceremony they raised an American flag and a placed an historical marker before each grave that reads:

HERE LIES AN AMERICAN SAILOR
WHO GAVE HIS LIFE IN THE
EXPLOSION OF THE USS SHIP INTREPID
IN TRIPOLI HARBOR
SEPTEMBER 2, 1804
(Sic Actual date: Sept. 4)

United States Ambassador Mr. Gene Cretz and US Military Attache Brian Linvill place American flags at the graves of American naval heroes at Old Protestant Cemetery on recent Memorial Day.

From 1950 until 1969 the cemetery was maintained by the Officers Wives Club of nearby Wheelus Air Force base. Neglected under the Gadhafi regime, it fell into disrepair and was overgrown with weeds when discovered by two New Jersey tourists in 1977.

Their reports led to an earlier effort to repatriate the remains of the Intrepid crew.