In 1821, one captain sailed with his ship and crew into the waters off western Cuba intent on breakng a piratical stranglehold on merchant shipping.
To Americans living along the southeastern coastal shores in the early 19th century, the era's terrorists were the pirates who roamed channels of maritime commerce. Much of the piracy was an offshoot of revolutions in Latin America, where newly proclaimed republics recruited privateers to attack commerce belonging to the estranged mother country, Spain. But many of these raiders robbed indiscriminately.
