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18th Congress.]
No. 400.
[2d Session
PIRATES IN THE ISLAND OF CUBA.
COMMUNICATED TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 11, 1825.
Extract of a letter from Francis Adams, Commercial Agent of the United States at Matanzas, to Mr. Adams, dated December 30, 1821
"Those piratical bands, who have become the disgrace and scourge of the island, are for the present restrained by the number and vigilance of the forces sent by the United States and Great Britain for their suppression, but that they are only restrained and not extirpated is certain, from the fact that few or none have been captured, and that depredations have recently been committed on land, by bodies of fifteen to
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twenty persons, by which the foreign settlers on the coast have been the sufferers. Their migratory course of life, and the various points of the coast which afford fine harbors, and are at the same time distant from any military post, or even inhabited district, renders their extirpation by the authorities of the island difficult, if not impossible; and the arming of merchant vessels to resist the attacks of small boats, and the constant presence of a naval force sufficient to prevent the egress of larger vessels, appears to be the only means of securing our trade from their depredations, until the hopelessness of their employment, or the revival of Spanish commerce, shall have induced an abandonment of their desperate course of life"