Combat· West Indies Anti-Piracy Campaign
USS Alligator vs pirates at Matanzas
A bloody fight that cost the Navy one of its promising young officers.
Learning that pirates near Matanzas were holding captured merchantmen for ransom, Lieutenant William Howard Allen took the schooner USS Alligator to the scene. The water was too shallow for the schooner, so Allen led his boats in against the pirate vessels, with the Alligator's Marines among the boarding force. In the close fighting the Americans drove the pirates from the schooner Revenge and recovered the ransomed ships, but the raiders fought their way clear and inflicted serious loss: four Americans killed and three wounded, Allen himself mortally wounded leading the attack. The casualties fell among the Navy boat crews rather than the Marine detachment specifically. Allen's death made the action one of the most costly and most remembered of the West Indies campaign, a reminder that the "routine" pirate hunt could turn lethal.
Record no. 278