Battle of Lake Pontchartrain

Battle of Lake Pontchartrain
Part of the Gulf Coast campaign
Map showing modern Louisiana. Lake Pontchartrain is the large lake in its easternmost area, and is just north of New Orleans
Date September 10, 1779 Location Lake Pontchartrain, then British West Florida, now Louisiana Result Spanish-American victory
Belligerents
United States  Spain	Great Britain
Commanders and leaders
William Pickles	John Payne †
Strength
schooner USS Morris, 57 men	sloop-of-war HMS West Florida, 15 men
Casualties and losses
6–8 killed, some wounded	2 killed, 1 wounded, 1 sloop-of-war captured

The Battle of Lake Pontchartrain was a single-ship action on September 10, 1779, part of the Anglo-Spanish War. It was fought between the British sloop-of-war HMS West Florida and the Continental Navy schooner USS Morris in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, then in the British province of West Florida.

The West Florida was patrolling on Lake Pontchartrain when it encountered the Morris, which had set out from New Orleans with a Spanish and American crew headed by Continental Navy Captain William Pickles. The larger crew of the Morris successfully boarded the West Florida, inflicting a mortal wound on its captain, Lieutenant John Payne. The capture of the West Florida eliminated the major British naval presence on the lake, weakening already tenuous British control over the western reaches of West Florida.

Significant military activities of the American Revolutionary War did not occur on the Gulf Coast until 1779, when Spain entered the war. Before then, New Orleans, then the capital of Spanish Louisiana, served as a semi-secret source of money and matériel for the Patriot cause. The cause was quietly supported by the Spanish governors before 1779, and often mediated by Oliver Pollock, a prominent New Orleans businessman. Pollock effectively acted as an agent of the Continental Congress, negotiating with the Spanish governor, and taking other actions, including spending some of his own fortune, on Patriot activities along the lower Mississippi River.

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