Foxardo Affair (cont.)

                                 27 OCTOBER-14 NOVEMBER 1824                                          FOXARDO AFFAIR (cont.) So often in history, the similar actions of separate individuals are interpreted quite differently in light of the background circumstances.  In 1818, GEN Andrew Jackson invaded Spanish Florida with US forces, capturing a Spanish Read More

Foxardo Affair

                                 27 OCTOBER-14 NOVEMBER 1824                                               FOXARDO AFFAIR With a splash, the anchor of USS BEAGLE hit the water of Foxardo harbor (modern Fajardo), Spanish Puerto Rico.  The 3-gun US Navy schooner and her commander, LT Charles T. Platt, were in search of Read More

Medill’s Wild-West Chase

                                               25 OCTOBER 1862                                     MEDILL’S WILD-WEST CHASE Acting RADM David Dixon Porter decried enemy guerrilla actions along the Mississippi during the Civil War.  From Mississippi Squadron headquarters in Cairo, Illinois, he wrote Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles that commercial river traffic Read More

USS WEASEL vs. Gallago Segunda (cont. from 22 JUL)

                                            200th ANNIVERSARY                                                  3 AUGUST 1823                 USS WEASEL vs. GALLAGO SEGUNDA (cont. from 22 JUL) Continental and US Navy warships had been cruising the Caribbean Sea since the earliest days of our Revolutionary War.  Their initial mission was to suppress British Read More

USS BEAGLE and GREYHOUND (cont. from 11 JUL)

                                                   200th ANNIVERSARY                                                  21-22 JULY 1823                     USS BEAGLE AND GREYHOUND (cont. from 11 JUL) The demise of Diabolito ten days earlier did not bring piracy along the coast of Spanish Cuba to an end.  Far from it.  Piracy remained rampant Read More

(James) Farragut Birthday

                                                              5 JULY 1801                   DAVID (JAMES) GLASGOW FARRAGUT BIRTHDAY Jordi Farragut Mesquida was a Minorcan-born sea captain sailing Spanish merchant ships between Vera Cruz, New Orleans, and Havana in the 1770s.  With the outbreak of our Revolutionary War, Mesquida anglicized his Read More

Death of LT Cocke

                                                  6 MARCH 1823                                            DEATH OF LT COCKE Piracy was rampant in the Caribbean of the early 19th century.  Independence movements in several Spanish New World colonies created the problem, as these new nations often sanctioned privateering against their former Spanish overlords.  Read More