Combat· East Asia Operations
Formosa Expedition
A punitive landing on the wild southeastern coast of Formosa in reprisal for the murder of shipwrecked Americans.
After the bark Rover was wrecked off the island and her survivors killed by the aboriginal people of the coast, a naval landing force of Marines and sailors went ashore in June 1867 to punish those responsible. The expedition met a frustrating enemy: the aborigines fought from ambush in the dense growth, striking and vanishing, while the punishing tropical heat felled men with sunstroke as surely as the enemy's fire. One officer, Lieutenant Commander Alexander Mackenzie, was killed in the fighting, and the Marine detachment lost one killed and three wounded. The force could not bring the elusive enemy to a decisive action and withdrew. The Formosa expedition was a hard, inconclusive little operation, an early lesson in the difficulty of punitive landings against an enemy who would not stand and fight in the open.
Record no. 28