Roberto Cofresí, one of the last successful Caribbean pirates, is defeated in combat and captured by authorities.

Roberto Cofresí y Ramírez de Arellano, better known as El Pirata Cofresí, was a Puerto Rican pirate. He was born into a noble family, but the political and economic difficulties faced by the island as a colony of the Spanish Empire during the regional independence wars against the metropole meant that his household was poor. Cofresí worked at sea from an early age which familiarized him with the region's geography, but it provided only a modest salary, and he eventually decided to abandon the sailor's life and became a pirate. He had previous links to land-based criminal activities, but the reason for Cofresí's change of vocation is unknown; historians speculate that he may have worked as a privateer aboard El Scipión, a ship owned by one of his cousins.

Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, and vessels used for piracy are called pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding.

The capture of the sloop Anne was the result of a naval campaign carried out by an alliance between the Spanish Empire forces in Puerto Rico, the Danish government in Saint Thomas and the United States Navy. The powers pursued Roberto Cofresí's pirate flotilla in March 1825 because of the economic losses suffered by the parties to the pirates, as well as diplomatic concerns caused by their use of the flags of Spain and Gran Colombia which menaced the fragile peace between the naval powers. Several of those involved had been attacked by the freebooters. Among the diplomatic concerns caused by Cofresí was a robbery carried out by several of his subordinates, the catalyst of an incident that threatened war between Spain and the United States known as "The Foxardo Affair", eventually leading to the resignation of his rival, pirate hunter David Porter.