Combat· American Civil War
USS Santee versus CSS General Rusk and Royal Yacht
A small night cutting-out action off the Texas coast, typical of the early blockade.
A band of Marines led by a sergeant joined the bluejackets of the frigate USS Santee in a boat expedition to cross Galveston Bar and destroy the Confederate vessels there. When opposition developed and Lieutenant James Jouett, commanding the operation, judged that his men could not overpower the Texas defenders, he led the party aboard the schooner Royal Yacht, set her afire, and got his men away in their boats as she burned and sank. The raid cost the boarding party eight wounded, one of them mortally, in the close fighting before they withdrew. It was a characteristic small engagement of the 1861 blockade, a ship's boats slipping in by night to burn an enemy vessel under the guns of a hostile shore, neither a great victory nor a serious loss, but the constant petty warfare of the blockading squadrons.
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Record no. 406