the
Mosquito fleet, as it was called, fitting out against the pirates of the
Caribbean Sea. Learning that it was to be commanded by his old captain,
Commodore David Porter, he asked for and obtained orders to the
Greyhound, one of the small vessels composing it, commanded by
Lieutenant John Porter, a brother of the commodore.

Since the peace with Great Britain, Captain Porter had been a member of
the Board of Navy Commissioners; a body of three officers appointed by
an act of Congress passed early in 1815, whose duties were to administer
the affairs of the navy under the supervision of the Secretary.
Meanwhile the sufferings, not only of American property but of the
persons of American citizens, from the prevalence of piracy in the
Caribbean Sea, had become unendurable. Ordinary naval vessels were, from
their size, unable to enforce a repression for which it was necessary to
follow the freebooters and their petty craft into their lairs among the
lagoons and creeks of the West India islands. The general outcry rousing
the Government to the necessity of further exertion, Captain Porter
offered his services to extirpate the nuisance; with the understanding
that he was to have and fit out the kind of force he thought necessary
for the service. He resigned his position on the board on the 31st of
December, 1822; but before that date he had bought and begun to equip
eight Chesapeake schooners, of fifty to sixty tons burden, of which the
Greyhound, Farragut's new vessel, was one. He also built five rowing
barges, unusually large, pulling twenty oars. With these, supported by
the ordinary man-of-war schooners, of which several were already in the
service, and by the sloops-of-war, he expected to drive the pirates not
merely off the sea, but out of their hiding-places.

The commodore put to sea with all his squadron on the 14th of February,
1823. A northeast gale was at once encountered, but the tiny vessels ran
through it without any harm. For the next six months Farragut was
actively employed in the operations of the little fleet, the Greyhound
being one of the five which were sent through the Mona Passage, between
Porto Rico and Haiti, and thence ransacked the southern shores of the
latter island and of Cuba as far as Cape San Antonio, where Cuba ends.
There were many encounters between the pirates and the squadron,
sometimes afloat, sometimes ashore, in several of which our officer
served, forcing his way with his party th