Not only is the Tripoli Monument one of the oldest Annapolis monuments, but it’s one of the oldest military memorials in the country—and the first to honor the U.S. Navy. The Tripoli Monument memorializes six U.S. naval officers who perished in the first Barbary War (also known as the Tripolitan War) in 1804 while battling the Barbary Coast pirates in the dangerous fighting that ravaged the city of Tripoli, one of the Barbary states in North Africa.