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The Action of 1 January 1800 was a naval battle of the Quasi-War that took place off the coast of present-day Haiti, near the island of Gonâve in the Bight of Léogâne. The battle was fought between an American convoy of four merchant vessels escorted by the United States naval schooner , and a squadron of armed barges manned by Haitians known as picaroons. A French-aligned Haitian general, André Rigaud, had instructed his forces to attack all foreign shipping within their range of operations. Accordingly, once ''Experiment'' and her convoy of merchant ships neared Gonâve, the picaroons attacked them, capturing two of the American merchant ships before withdrawing. ''Experiment'' managed to save the other two ships in her convoy, and escorted them to a friendly port. On the American side, only the captain of the schooner ''Mary'' was killed. Though the picaroons took heavy losses during this engagement, they remained strong enough to continue wreaking havoc among American shipping in the region. Only after Rigaud was forced out of power by the forces of Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader of the 1791 Haitian Revolution, did the picaroon attacks cease. ==Background== With the dawn of the Haitian Revolution in 1791, a successful slave rebellion on the French colony, then known as Saint-Domingue, allowed the local population to gain control over the government. Despite their success in removing the French colonial authorities, the various political factions that had seized control of the colony were fractious, and fighting soon broke out among them. By 1800, the War of Knives between the pro-French André Rigaud and the pro-autonomy Toussaint L'Ouverture was in full swing and Saint-Domingue was divided in two. Rigaud controlled part of the southern portion of Saint-Domingue while L'Ouverture controlled the rest of the French colony. In need of supplies and materiel, Rigaud's forces attacked any non-French ship that passed them. Concurrently with the War of Knives, the United States and France were engaged in a bout of limited naval warfare in the Caribbean as part of the Quasi-War. In late December 1799 the American armed schooner ''Experiment'' was escorting under convoy the brig ''Daniel and Mary'' and the schooners ''Sea Flower'', ''Mary'', and ''Washington'' to prevent their capture by French privateers. On 1 January 1800, the convoy was caught in a dead calm off the north side of the present-day Haitian island of Gonâve, in the Bight of Leogane. Seeing the convoy becalmed, Rigaud sent eleven armed barges out to attack and seize the American vessels. The crews of the American merchant vessels possessed only small arms, but their escort, ''Experiment'', was a much more powerful vessel. Commanded by William Maley, the 135-ton ''Experiment'' was armed with 12 six-pounder guns and had a complement of 70 men. In comparison, Rigaud's initial attack force consisted of eleven barges crewed by 40 to 50 men each in the smaller ones, and 60 or 70 in the larger vessels. These barges were primarily propelled by oars, with 26 per vessel. The Haitian craft were each equipped with a mix of swivel guns and four-pounder cannon, with most vessels armed with two or three guns as well as small arms. In addition to the vessels that set out to attack the convoy, there were more barges and men nearby that the Haitians could call upon if reinforcements were needed. In total some 37 barges and 1500 men were at Rigaud's immediate disposal, though the Americans did not know this during the attack. Individually the Haitian barges presented only a small threat to the convoy, but when attacking ''en masse'' they could easily overwhelm and capture the American ships if they managed to board them. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Action of 1 January 1800」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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