Combat· Mexican-American War
Occupation of Yerba Buena (San Francisco)
The bloodless seizure of the future San Francisco, part of the swift American takeover of the California coast.
Two days after Commodore Sloat raised the flag at Monterey, a party of Marines and sailors from the sloop USS Portsmouth, under Lieutenant Missroon, went ashore at the small settlement of Yerba Buena on San Francisco Bay and raised the American flag there. No resistance was offered, and the place passed to the United States without a shot. The occupation, modest in itself, secured the finest harbor on the California coast and a key point on the bay around which Frémont and Gillespie had been operating. It was one link in the rapid chain of bloodless seizures, Monterey, Yerba Buena, Sonoma, and the southern ports, by which the Pacific Squadron brought California under American authority in the opening weeks of the war.
Podcast episodes on Mexican-American War
Record no. 327