Action of 1 January 1800

Action of 1 January 1800
Part of Quasi-War, War of Knives
A sketch of the action between Experiment and picaroons. William Bainbridge Hoff, 1875
Date 1 January 1800 Location Gulf of Gonâve, Saint-Domingue Result Indecisive
Belligerents
United States	France
Commanders and leaders
William Maley David Porter	André Rigaud
Strength
1 armed schooner 4 merchant ships	14 armed barges 400–500 Haitian Picaroons
Casualties and losses
2 merchant ships captured 1 killed 1 wounded	3 barges sunk, many killed
Civilian casualties: 1 wounded

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 USS Experiment, and a squadron of armed barges manned by Haitians known as .

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.

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.

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