Reuben James - Career

Career

Born in Delaware around 1776, James joined the United States Navy and served on several ships, including the frigate USS Constellation. During the First Barbary War, the American frigate Philadelphia was captured by the Barbary pirates when it ran aground in the city of Tripoli, on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, along with a group of volunteers that included Reuben James, entered the harbor of Tripoli under the cover of darkness in an attempt to burn the Philadelphia so that the pirates could not use her.

The volunteers boarded the Philadelphia on 16 February 1804 and were met by Barbary pirates who were guarding their prize. In the ensuing hand-to-hand combat, Reuben James, with both of his hands already wounded, positioned himself between Lieutenant Decatur and a sword-wielding pirate. Willing to give his life for his captain, James took a blow from the sword but survived.

James continued his Naval career, serving many years with Decatur. He was forced to retire in January 1836 because of ill health. He died in 1838 at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Washington, DC.

Read more about this topic:  Reuben James

Famous quotes containing the word career:

    In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.
    Barbara Dale (b. 1940)

    Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)

    He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)