Combat· West Indies Anti-Piracy Campaign
USS Peacock vs pirate schooner off Cuba
A routine capture during the Peacock's busy spring on the Cuban coast.
A week after the landing east of Havana, the sloop took a pirate schooner off Cuba, the Marine guard providing the boarding party. The action was bloodless, one of the steady stream of seizures that filled the squadron's days in 1823, the most intense year of the campaign. The Peacock, working both as an independent cruiser and as the anchor for Porter's barge operations, was among the hardest-used ships on the station. Captures like this, individually unremarkable, were the cumulative means by which the pirate fleet was whittled down. The real enemy that season was less the pirates than the climate; yellow fever ravaged the squadron and killed far more Americans than the raiders ever did, including, before the year was out, many of the men who crewed these very ships.
Record no. 280