Combat
Central America Operations
A series of American naval and Marine landings in Nicaragua and Panama to protect American lives, commerce, and the vital transit routes across the isthmus during a turbulent decade of regional instability and filibustering.
With the California gold rush driving heavy traffic across Central America, the United States kept warships on both coasts to safeguard the crossings and the American residents. The operations included repeated protective landings at San Juan del Norte, the Atlantic terminus known as Greytown, and reached their grimmest point in July 1854, when Commander Hollins of the USS Cyane bombarded and destroyed the town in reprisal for an insult to the American minister. Marines also guarded the Panama transit, then part of New Granada, landing at the Bay of Panama in 1856 and again during the Panama insurrection of 1860. Throughout, the Marines provided the landing parties that protected American interests on a chronically unstable isthmus.
Engagements in this conflict (3)
Record no. 362