U.S. expanding south during the ARW

Enough with the Quebec/Canada secedes with the 13 colonies chestnut. Could the newborn U.S. have somehow scraped together a fleet or gotten help to take over some British holdings in the Caribbean, i.e. the Bahamas and Bermuda?
 
Enough with the Quebec/Canada secedes with the 13 colonies chestnut. Could the newborn U.S. have somehow scraped together a fleet or gotten help to take over some British holdings in the Caribbean, i.e. the Bahamas and Bermuda?
Well, the US did actually conquer the Bahamas during the ARW. The first action by the United States Marine Corps.

And from what I've heard, Bermuda was rather supportive of the rebels.

The Bahamas could very easily have been annexed by the US and not returned to the British, thugh this would be a sore spot with the British above and beyond everything else, but Bermuda was almost impossible, because the open ocean was still very British.
 
The Bahamas were given back to the British, by the Spanish.

The colonials held it for all of about a week.

The US simply didn't have the fleet for such an action.
 
The Bermudians were quite friendly to the US in the ARW and was actually at tat time poorly fortified.

POD The Continental Navy evacuates the Delaware in 1777, no Penobscot expedition in 1779 and doesn't get bottled up in Charleston in 1780. USS America launched in 1781 instead of 1782. Its a rather ragtag but strong force, you could send it to Bermuda and/or the Bahamas. There were also attempts to conquer Florida which pretty much fell apart from the get go.
 
I get the impression that it's more of a matter of the diplomatic difficulties, rather than military ones.

So say the U.S. is able to capture Bermuda and/or the Bahamas. What's to say that Britain refuses to let them have the islands at all, or perhaps that they're given to Spain or France instead?
 
The US already got way more territory that the facts on the ground indicated they should, ask for more is simply ridiculous.

As is the idea that a US barely hanging on can go adventuring.

Honestly, if Bermuda was that easy to take the French would have done so.
 
Well in this case Darkling the US wouldn't be asking. Bermuda wasn't strategically valuable until after the ARW, its soil is worthless, and Britain already possessed the entire eastern seaboard. France was much more interested in the sugar islands of the west indies.

The Bahamas are near enough to the US that a relatively quick strike could sieze them and with Britain busy defending more important possessions(they could've retaken them from Spain or whoever took them to begin with)the US could've held them at the end.
 
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