ABSTRACT
The punishment was hardly proportionate to the crime. On July 13, 1854, US naval commander George N. Hollins, an officer long frustrated by his failure to be promoted out of rank, committed a startling act of aggression on a defenseless Central American target. That day, his two-gun war sloop, the USS Cyane, opened fire on Greytown, a small port on what is today Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, that had been known as San Juan del Norte before the British temporarily commandeered it several years previously and named it for a colonial official. Hours later, with much of Greytown already leveled, Hollins sent marines to burn buildings that had survived the bombardment. Throughout the affair, which did an estimated $3 million in damage, Hollins encountered no resistance from the inhabitants, who fled the attack.1
