Combat· Quasi-War with France
Experiment captures La Diane
The schooner USS Experiment, by this point in her cruise under Lieutenant Charles Stewart, captured the French La Diana off Bermuda on 1 October 1800, and in doing so bagged a far more important prize than the vessel itself.
Aboard was André Rigaud, the Haitian general whose forces had been the principal antagonist of American operations on Saint-Domingue, the same picaroons and barges that had swarmed the Experiment and other warships in Haitian waters all year. The Experiment's commanding officer reported with evident satisfaction that this was the man who had wrested millions from his countrymen and whose depredations, piracies, and murders against American citizens were only too well known. The ship's Marines took part in the boarding that secured the capture. Rigaud was landed at St. Kitts, removing a major military and political figure from the Caribbean theater, though he would return to Haiti the following year with General LeClerc's expedition.
Podcast episodes on Quasi-War with France
Record no. 187