Battle of Lake Pontchartrain

William Pickles held a Continental Navy commission from October 1776, but on the Gulf he served Bernardo de Gálvez, Spain's governor, who gave him a small vessel, the Morris, to hunt British shipping on the lake. His September 1779 prize, the West Florida, became his next command: re-rigged and renamed Gálveztown, it sailed for the Mobile expedition and then to Philadelphia, where it was sold. Pickles was later captured, escaped Mill Prison in 1781, and died in Philadelphia in 1783 after an assault by a gang of Italian sailors.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fontainebleau State Park — 2.3 mi
  Lakeshore park on the Northshore where Tchefuncte potters, Acolapissa and Choctaw lived, and where 153 people were enslaved at Marigny's sugar and brick plantation by 1840; the mill ruin still stands.

More markers nearby

• Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Hall — 0.5 mi
• Pottery Hill — 0.5 mi
• Native Peoples — 1.4 mi
• The Enslaved — 1.5 mi