Combat
Aegean Anti-Piracy Campaign 1827
A short, concentrated American naval effort against piracy in the Greek islands.
The chaos of the Greek War of Independence had broken down order in the Aegean, and pirates, some of them Greek irregulars turned freebooter, preyed on the merchant shipping of every nation, including the United States. In the autumn of 1827 the sloop USS Warren under Lawrence Kearny and the schooner USS Porpoise operated through the Cyclades, taking pirate vessels, chasing others ashore, and landing parties to destroy their refuges, including the burning of property at the pirate haunt of Mykonos. Marines provided the shipboard musketry and the shore parties for these operations. It was the first sustained American naval intervention in the Aegean, undertaken to protect American commerce in a region convulsed by war and revolution, and it prefigured the later, more regular operations of the Mediterranean Squadron in those waters.
Engagements in this conflict (6)
Record no. 265