Combat· American Civil War
Cedar Keys raid
A small destructive raid on the Gulf coast of Florida in the war's first winter.
In January 1862 a landing party of Marines from the gunboat Hatteras went ashore at Cedar Keys, a little port on the Florida Gulf coast, and burned the Confederate stores gathered there. The raid was of a piece with the many small operations the blockading gunboats carried out along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, striking at the enemy's depots, shipping, and supplies wherever a landing party could reach them. It met no real resistance and cost no casualties. Such raids did no great damage individually, but in the aggregate they wore at the Confederacy's slender coastal logistics and kept its scattered ports under constant threat, the routine work of a blockade that was slowly tightening its grip on the Southern coast from Virginia to Texas.
Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 409