Talk:William Eaton (soldier)

Untitled

The article says William Eaton's force included a small regiment of Marines. His force included only 8 Marines, Lieutenant O'Bannon, a Sergeant and 6 Privates.

I have created a timeline of the Barbary Wars that encapsulates Eaton's life. It's based on extensive research I've done, primarily books rather than primary resources at this point. I'm still working on it and adding to it as I come across additional information. I welcome any suggested corrections to it. Any objections? Here's the link: Barbary Wars timeline —Preceding unsigned comment added by Barrs (talk • contribs) 22:04, 23 April 2009 (UTC) --Barrs (talk) 21:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

section is undergoing re-write

I removed the following section, perhaps temporarily, as it lacks context and citations. As soon as I decipher it (within the context of Eaton's exploits) I may restore it, in whole or in part. Right now it makes no sense to someone who is not familiar with the events.

During the afternoon of Oct 11, 1800, William Eaton agreed to guarantee a six month loan for the release of captive Anna Maria Porcile who was to become a slave if no ransom was given. If at the end of the six months' Count Porcile/Count of Sant-Antioco of Settimo San Pietro, Sardinia, could not make payment, then Eaton was responsible to do so. However Eaton had no substantial funds of his own. So in June 1801 Eaton was told to pay the ransom. Which Eaton paid by borrowing the money from a Tunisian merchant named Unis ben Unis.

In Feb of 1803, Commodore Richard Morris and Captain John Rodgers arrived in Tunis with three heavily armed frigates. However, despite the presence of the fleet, Commodore Morris was arrested for Eaton's debt. The Commodore agreed to pay the debt which had ballooned to $22,000 and to replace Eaton. Eaton departed with the fleet on Mar 10, 1803 on the USS Chesapeake. Morris stated in his report: "Eaton appeared to be a man of lively imagination, rash, credulous. And by no means possessed of sound judgement." However, Eaton's observations of the Barbary ruler proved correct when on October 31, 1803, the USS Philadelphia (1799) was captured after it ran aground, and its crew made slaves or ransomed.

--Ishtar456 (talk) 22:58, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

The Barbary Regencies

Although I find this section to be fairly well written, It is entirely un-sourced. If you know the sources, and add the citations please replace it to the article. In the meantime I am going to try to re-write this information with the sources I have and add citations.

On 26 May 1804, because of his experience in the North African region, he was appointed Navy agent for the Barbary Regencies. He sailed to Alexandria, Egypt, where the former pasha of Tripoli, Hamet Karamanli, was rumored to be living. On landing, he learned that Hamet had fled Alexandria into the interior, where he'd taken up with a Mameluke rebel army in Minyeh, about 60 miles north of Cairo. Eaton's entire plan rested on forming an alliance with Hamet and marching with him on Tripoli so he set off to find the former pasha.

Egypt was suffering from a chaotic civil war following the French and British invasions. But Eaton managed to co-opt two armed boats and, with a handful of volunteers, sail up the Nile to Cairo. The local regent provided Hamet a pass through enemy lines and, after a series of exchanged letters and delays, the two united at Damanhur where they formed an official alliance.

From there, he established a group of about 20 Christian (eight of which were US Marines) and 100 Muslim mercenaries to begin the takeover of Tripoli starting with Derna. He managed to trek with a small detachment of Marines led by Presley O'Bannon and his mercenary force over 500 miles while stopping arguments, threats, and mutinies which originated from difference of opinion between his European and Arab soldiers, as well as the withholding of rations by the Christians at one point. Supported at sea by Isaac Hull, Captain of the USS Argus, in an effective "combined operation," Eaton led the attack in the Battle of Derna on 27 April 1805. The town's capture, and the threat of further advance on Tripoli, were strong influences toward peace, negotiated in June 1805 by Tobias Lear and Commodore John Rodgers with the Pasha of Tripoli.

Eaton and Hamet were disappointed by the treaty and the mercenaries and Marines were angry when they learned that Eaton had been forced to abandon the plan to capture Tripoli. Hamet was exiled to Syracuse.

General Eaton died in Brimfield, Massachusetts, 1 June 1811.

--Ishtar456 (talk) 20:54, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:William Eaton (soldier)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Canadian Paul 20:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I will be reviewing this article in the near future, most likely tomorrow. Canadian Paul 20:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, here it is:

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Some comments:

1. I'm not certain that the third external link is valid per Wikipedia:External links, which states that "Links to blogs, personal web pages and most fansites, except those written by a recognized authority", and I don't see any evidence that this one qualifies as an exception DONE
2. The image requires a better caption than "William Eaton", which is implied from its presence in the infobox of the William Eaton article. Perhaps more detail like "William Eaton circa year X, painted by Mr. Y" or whatever is available on the picture. DONE
3. Under "Early life", first paragraph, "In 1790, he graduated from Dartmouth College" is uncited DONE
4. In the second paragraph of "Tunis (1799-1803)", "John Barlow" leads to a disambiguation page instead of an article - this needs to be fixed. DONE (there is no article on him) He is also referred to as the/a "American Commissioner" - the average reader may not know what is meant by that title. DONE Could it be Wikilinked or briefly explained in a bracketed/commaed-off section (similar as to what is done with the "Bey" term later on)?
5. Per [{WP:OBVIOUS]] what was Adams' full name at what was he president of? Yes, most people will know the answer, but this is the first time it is encountered in this article and it should be something along the lines of "United States President John Adams" for the first usage. DONE
6. Also, per the same reasoning, this should be applied again in the following paragraph "When he became president..." Also, we cannot assume that everyone who reads this article will know who Thomas Jefferson is - again per WP:OBVIOUS, it would be beneficial to add "United States Vice-President beforehand" - that way, you can probably stick with just "When he became President..." afterwards and it makes sense. DONE
7. All direct quotes need to have citations at the end of the quotation marks or, at the very latest, at the end of the sentence discussing the quote. This is most problematic in the third paragraph of "Tunis (1799-1803)", where you write "A source more contemporary to the time period, however, called the belief that the United States was the first to refuse tribute to the Barbary pirates a "patriotic delusion"", but then don't quote the source! Same with the next quotation. [Both quotes are from the same source, which is not only mentioned in the text, but cited at the end of the discussion, but per your suggested, will be cited at every turn (seems like overkill to me)]
8. Same paragraph, "In any case..." is not very encyclopedic language, and that sentence is unsourced as well. DONE
9. There's lots of prose-related issues that need to be fixed that, although I would normally tidy them up myself, are too many in number for me to consider them minor fixes - most notably, citations should come after punctuation,DONE (I found two) not before, names of states should never be abbreviated (first paragraph)DONE, WP:NAMES (particularly WP:SURNAME; you should never refer to Hamel Caramanli as merely "Hamel" - it should always be Caramanli, unless there's a case where it's not obvious whether the reference is to him or his brother, in which case it should be his full name used)DONE needs to be better followed, and overall the prose does not flow well, as it's often chopped off by excessive comma statements and short sentences that could easily be combined to increase flow, among other concerns. Also, as indicated by some of my comments above, the article assumes some basic knowledge about the United States that may not be clear to people who are not from the country - a lot of these issues could be cleared up by Wikilinking important terms, which the article does only sporadically.[Every link possible has been included. There are no articles for everything I would have linked]
10. Those two large quotes could be easily shortened, paraphrasing the rest, per Wikipedia:Quotations. DONE
11. Third paragraph of "The Trial of Aaron Burr", the last sentence is uncited. DONE
12. Another problem with this article is that it reads more like a series of things that happened to him or that he was involved in, rather than a biographical description of his life - a notable absence is the lack of a "personal life" section (and, considering the first reference, I would suspect that that information is available), but overall you get a sketch of his early life,[everything known about his early life, from the current sources, has been included] and then three events that discuss the event and then relate it back to Eaton. [When I read the article, as it was before I began to edit, there was no historical context to it at all. At that point there was only mention of events that Eaton was involved it and I could not understand at all what had happened, because I did not have the context. Before discussing Eaton's role in each event I gave some brief explanation of the the context, then I explained Eaton's role in each. Per your comments, I went back and began each section with a brief statement of Eaton's involvement (before the historical context portion. I am hoping that that clears up this issue] makes the whole article somewhat disjointed.

Overall, I feel that the problems with the prose (as well as the other issues above) prevent the article from achieving Good Article status at this time, thus I am failing the article at this time, as I feel that a seven-day hold would not be sufficient to carefully and properly remedy these issues. Also, I believe that a second review and a second pair of eyes would be very beneficial to this article, and with the GA Backlog Elimination drive in effect, I suspect that this article would get a quick review if it were to be renominated. Thank you for your work thus far. Once these concerns have been addressed, the article may be renominated. If you feel that this assessment was in error, you may take it to WP:GAR. Canadian Paul 03:21, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Not a Marine

Eaton, was actually a diplomat who led a mixed group on soldiers and mercenaries into battle. Five of those with him were Marines, thus "to the shores of Tripoli" as was at one time, anyway, explained in the article. The title of General was sort of honorary. --Ishtar456 (talk) 11:21, 13 January 2014 (UTC)