Combat· West Indies Anti-Piracy Campaign
USS Enterprise vs 5 pirate vessels at Cape Antonio
One of the largest single-day hauls of the West Indies campaign.
Cabo de San Antonio, the western tip of Cuba, was a notorious pirate lair, and Lieutenant Lawrence Kearny brought the schooner USS Enterprise against it. In the action Kearny's men took five pirate vessels at once, the Marines forming part of the boarding parties that secured each prize, and Kearny followed up by going ashore to break up the pirates' camp. The raid was bloodless on the American side. Striking at Cape Antonio itself, rather than merely chasing pirates at sea, marked a more aggressive turn in the campaign: the Navy and Marines were now landing on foreign soil to root the raiders out of their bases. Kearny's Cape Antonio operations are often cited as among the first instances of American forces going ashore abroad to suppress piracy.
Record no. 272