Combat· Aegean Anti-Piracy Campaign
USS Warren vs 2 pirate vessels in Cyclades
The opening action of the Aegean campaign.
Cruising through the Cyclades, the USS Warren under Lawrence Kearny, the same officer who had hunted pirates off Cuba, took two pirate vessels, the Marines aboard furnishing the boarding parties. The captures were bloodless. They were the first American anti-piracy seizures in the Aegean and set the pattern for the weeks that followed, as the Warren and her consorts worked through the islands intercepting the small craft that the breakdown of authority during the Greek revolution had loosed upon the sea lanes. Kearny's appearance in Greek waters extended to the Mediterranean the kind of relentless small-boat pirate-hunting he had practiced in the Caribbean, and his success here helped establish that American warships would protect their nation's commerce wherever it was threatened, even in the tangled politics of the Greek war.
Record no. 289