Combat· South America and Pacific Protective Operations
Montevideo protective landing
A protective landing across the estuary from Buenos Aires, on the Uruguayan side of the troubled Plate region.
Montevideo, like its neighbor, was repeatedly caught up in the civil conflicts and foreign rivalries that made the River Plate one of the most unstable corners of South America in the 1850s. When political disorder again threatened the foreign community there, Marines from the sloop USS Germantown went ashore to protect American lives and property until the danger passed. The duty was the familiar one of a ship's guard landed to stand watch over citizens and their interests in a city in turmoil, neither a battle nor a sustained occupation. No fighting and no casualties resulted. It was one of a string of such interventions the American squadron made on both banks of the Plate during the decade, wherever local violence put Americans and their commerce at risk.
Record no. 375