Combat· Second Seminole War
McLaughlin's Florida Squadron Everglades expedition (December 1840)
The boldest of the riverine operations of the Seminole war, a deep penetration of country no organized force had crossed.
Lieutenant John McLaughlin, commanding the Florida Squadron of small craft, launched a major combined expedition of Marines and sailors, supported by the Army, into the heart of the Everglades. Moving in ships' boats and canoes through the trackless maze of water, sawgrass, and hammock, the naval brigade pushed into the southern interior where the surviving Seminoles had taken refuge, the goal being to carry the war into the one region the enemy thought unreachable. Several Marine officers served in the boat-and-canoe force. The expedition was an extraordinary feat of endurance through some of the most difficult terrain in North America, and though it produced no large battle and no casualties, it proved that even the Everglades could be entered, stripping the Seminoles of their last sense of sanctuary.
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Record no. 311