Combat· Mexican-American War
USS Dale captures Cochon
A small mainland action in the war's closing weeks.
On 30 January 1848 a landing party of Marines and seamen from the sloop USS Dale went ashore on the Sonora coast and took the town of Cochón. It was a minor operation, one of the many brief landings by which the Pacific Squadron asserted control over the points along the Mexican Pacific coast in the last phase of the war, and it met no serious resistance. No casualties resulted. The Dale, with its very small Marine guard, had spent the war ranging the gulf and the coast on exactly this kind of duty, capturing small ports, raising the flag, and skirmishing with local forces. The seizure of Cochón added another point to the squadron's tally on a coast where the United States held the sea but could spare little strength to hold the land for long.
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Record no. 345