Combat· American Revolutionary War
Capture of Manchac
In February 1778, during James Willing's expedition down the Mississippi, an advance party of about eighteen Continental Marines under Lieutenants McIntire and Harrison struck the British settlement at Manchac.
Moving ahead of the main force, the Marines surprised and captured the British sixteen-gun sloop Rebecca lying in the river and paroled the inhabitants of the settlement, seizing stores and disrupting British commerce along the lower Mississippi. The raid was one of the deepest inland reaches of Continental Marine activity in the war, far from the coastal and shipboard service that defined the Corps. Willing's descent inflamed tensions along the river and helped set the conditions for the Spanish offensive under Gálvez that would clear the British from West Florida the following year.
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Record no. 142