Battle of the Bay of St. Louis — War of 1812

On December 13, 1814, British warships entered the Mississippi Sound. Captain Nicholas Lockyer commanded more than 1,200 troops, 45 launches and barges, and 43 cannons. The Royal Navy was moving on the Bay of St. Louis, the opening thrust of the campaign to take New Orleans. Commodore Daniel T. Patterson commanded the New Orleans naval station. He sent Lieutenant Thomas A. P. Catesby Jones with a gunboat flotilla — 182 men, 23 cannons — to contest the Sound. John Baptiste Toulme fired a cannon from the Bay St. Louis bluff in defense. The Battle of Lake Borgne followed around 1:00 a.m. on December 14, 1814. The engagement lasted two and a half hours. Six Americans were killed, thirty-five wounded. Seventeen British were killed, ninety-four wounded. The USS *Alligator* was captured. American gunboats grounded on Malheureaux Island. The battle delayed the British advance and gave Andrew Jackson critical time to fortify the Chalmette Battlefield before the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. The Mississippi Sound was the last American waterway invaded by a foreign military. No marker stands at the battle site. It happened on open water. Juan de Cuevas defended Cat Island and is buried in the Old Biloxi Cemetery. You come here to stand where the Sound opens to the Gulf and understand that this coastline was the hinge — the delay here changed what happened upriver.