Combat· Central America Operations
Marines landed at Bay of Panama
A protective landing on the isthmus after a deadly riot threatened the vital transit route.
The Panama Railroad carried a heavy stream of American travelers between the oceans, and on 15 April 1856 a violent confrontation, the so-called Watermelon War, broke out between Americans crossing the isthmus and local residents, leaving more than a dozen Americans dead. In its wake, Marines and seamen from the sloop USS St. Mary's and the razee Independence went ashore at the Bay of Panama to protect American lives and property and to secure the railroad and its terminus. The landing came after the riot rather than in time to prevent it, but it steadied the situation and safeguarded the crossing for the American commerce that depended on it. The episode showed how the protection of the Panama transit, then on the soil of New Granada, had become a recurring call on American naval and Marine forces.
Record no. 383