USS Enterprise, a schooner with Lt. Stephen Decatur in command, captured the Tripolitan ketch Mastico on 23 December 1803 as she was sailing from Tripoli to Constantinople under Turkish colors and without passports. After a time-consuming search for a translator, the ketch's papers and the testimony of an English ship master who had been in Tripoli to witness her role in operations against Philadelphia convinced the commander of the American squadron, Commodore Edward Preble, that Mastico was a legitimate prize. He took her into the U.S. Navy and renamed her Intrepid.

The Intrepid was used in the destruction of the captured USS Philadelphia and later prematurely exploded while being used a fire ship in an attempt to destroy ships in a corsair fleet.