Combat· West Indies Anti-Piracy Campaign
USS Greyhound and Beagle landing at Cape Cruz
A genuine Marine shore action under a famous future commander.
Patrolling the southern coast of Cuba, the schooners USS Greyhound and USS Beagle, under Lieutenant Lawrence Kearny, came upon a pirate refuge near Cape Cruz. When Kearny's boats were fired on from ambush as they approached the shore, he sent in a landing party of Marines and sailors under Lieutenant David Farragut, the future Civil War admiral, to attack the pirate camp. The party drove the pirates off and destroyed their establishment ashore. No Marine casualties are recorded. The action is notable both as one of the campaign's clear instances of Marines landing to root pirates out of a fixed base, and for the presence of the young Farragut, then learning the inshore, amphibious style of fighting that the West Indies campaign demanded of the Navy's rising officers.
Record no. 282