Combat· Mexican-American War
First Tabasco Expedition
An early thrust into the river country of southeastern Mexico.
In the late summer and autumn of 1846, the Home Squadron mounted operations against the Tabasco River towns, and Captain Alvin Edson, the senior Marine officer of the Gulf Squadron and a veteran of more than two decades' service, organized the Marine landing parties for raids on Frontera and on Tabasco, the town of San Juan Bautista, well up the river. Marines and sailors pushed into the Tabasco River system and skirmished with the Mexican forces ashore. The expedition did not secure a lasting hold, but it tested the methods of riverine operation, working ships and boats up a narrow, defended river to strike inland towns, that the squadron would use on a far larger scale the next year. It was the prologue to Commodore Perry's much bigger second Tabasco expedition of 1847.
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Record no. 351