Combat· West Indies Anti-Piracy Campaign
USS Grampus vs pirate sloop off Puerto Rico
A late action as the campaign neared its end.
By 1825 the worst of the Caribbean piracy had been broken, and the surviving raiders were fewer and more scattered. Off the southern coast of Puerto Rico, the schooner USS Grampus engaged and defeated a pirate sloop, the Marines aboard adding their gunfire. This was around the time and area of the final destruction of Roberto Cofresí, the last of the notorious West Indian pirate captains, whose career ended in a Puerto Rican action that spring. The Grampus, one of the most active ships of the whole campaign, was still doing the same work in 1825 that it had been doing three years earlier, but against a steadily diminishing enemy. Actions like this marked the closing phase, the mopping up of the remaining pirate craft as the Caribbean at last became reasonably safe for commerce.
Record no. 283