[5] In 1815 Bouchard started a naval campaign under the command of Admiral William Brown, wherein he attacked the fortress of El Callao and the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil.

On 12 September 1815 he was granted a corsair license to fight the Spanish aboard the French-built corvette Halcón, which had been bought for the Argentine State by Vicente Anastacio Echeverría.

[6] Bouchard and Miguel Brown subsequently set course for the Peruvian coast, while the Hércules sailed to the Juan Fernández Islands in order to free a number of patriots that were being held prisoner there.

Bouchard elected to return to Buenos Aires via Cape Horn, and it was there that new incidents with the crew arose, many of which were solved with violence, such as a duel with one of his sergeants.

Following the altercation Echevarría sent a letter to Supreme Director Juan Martín de Pueyrredón explaining that the incident was the result of the crew having been stuck in Buenos Aires for an extended period, and that chances of further outbreaks would be lessened once the ship put to sea.

On 27 June Bouchard obtained the Argentine corsair patent (a "letter of marque") that authorized him to prey on Spanish commerce, the countries of Spain and Argentina being in a state of war at the time.

[7] On 9 July 1817 (the first anniversary of the signing of the Argentine Declaration of Independence) Bouchard set out from Ensenada de Barragán in command of La Argentina on a two-year voyage, intending to travel across the Atlantic to the African coast in order to circumnavigate around the Cape of Good Hope and engage a fleet of ships operated by the Company of the Philippines that had sailed from Spain to India.

Consequently, when the ship subsequently arrived in the Indian Ocean it headed northeast to Madagascar, where it laid up at Tamatave (on the east of the island) for a period of two months while repairs were effected.

On 18 October La Argentina encountered an United States Navy frigate that passed on the news that the Company of the Philippines had ended trade with India three years prior.

While the frigate's crew was negotiating with the natives to secure adequate supplies, sentries were stationed, loaded with muskets, to repel any possible attack by the Joloans.

To further tighten the siege over the capital of the archipelago, Bouchard arranged for an armed Pontin with 23 crew members to block the strait of San Bernardino under the command of second captain Sommers.

The Argentine frigate was unable to approach the harbor because of its draft, so Bouchard ordered Sommers, Greissac and Van Buren to use three boats to capture the ship.

[18] Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. in his paper: “Manilamen and seafaring: engaging the maritime world beyond the Spanish realm”, stated that his second ship, the Santa Rosa had a multi-ethnic crew which included Filipinos.

[19] Mercene, writer of the Book “Manila Men”, proposes that those Manilamen were recruited in San Blas, an alternative port to Acapulco Mexico where several Filipinos had settled during the Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade era.

A group of natives came close to the ship in a canoe and informed them, in English, that a corvette, which used to be Spanish but had been sold to King Kamehameha I, was also at anchor in the harbor.

When he arrived at the harbor he found the Santa Rosa almost dismantled, therefore he decided to meet King Kamehameha I wearing his uniform of Lieutenant Colonel of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.

The governor, Pablo Vicente de Solá, who resided in Monterey, ordered removed from the city all valuables and two thirds of the gunpowder stocked in the military outposts.

[30] On 20 November 1818, the watchman of Punta de Pinos, located at the tip of the southern end of Monterey Bay, sighted the two Argentine ships.

The governor was informed; the Spanish prepared the cannons along the coastline, the garrison manned their battle stations, and the women, children, and men unfit to fight were sent to an inland mission at Soledad.

[4] The Argentines took the city for six days, during which time they stole the cattle and burned the fort, the artillery headquarters, the governor's residence and the Spanish houses.

[33] On 29 November they left Monterey, passed Point Conception, and anchored off of Refugio Canyon, about twenty miles west of Santa Barbara, where they went to the hacienda of the Ortega family rancho.

On 5 December the Argentines disembarked near the farm and, meeting no resistance, took all the food, killed the cattle, and slit the throats of the saddle horses in the corrals.

A small squadron of cavalry, sent by José de la Guerra y Noriega from the Santa Barbara Presidio, waited quietly nearby for an opportunity to capture some stragglers.

Once he arrived at Santa Bárbara, and seeing the town was heavily defended (in reality, what Bouchard saw through his spyglass was the same small troop of cavalry, which stopped and changed costume each time it passed behind a heavy clump of brush), the privateer sent a messenger to speak to the governor.

In order to put pressure on the court, Argentine Colonel Mariano Necochea along with 30 Mounted Grenadiers and sailors stormed La Argentina and took control of the ship in the name of the United Provinces.

In December of that year he requested José de San Martín, who had been named Protector of Peru, to be allowed to return to Argentina due to his economic situation.

[45] Cochrane complained again and Tomás Guido asked him to protest to the Chilean government and ordered Bouchard to be ready to fight if the Scottish admiral decided to attack the Peruvian fleet.

Bouchard confronted Cochrane at sea, to the point of challenging him to a single duel; however, the Chilean admiral refused to fight and sailed back to Valparaíso.

[5] In his adopted country of Argentina, Bouchard is revered as a patriot and several places (one being a street in downtown Buenos Aires close to the waterfront) are named in his honor.

[2] USS Borie, an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer sold to Argentina in July 1972, was renamed as ARA Hipólito Bouchard; the ship saw action in the Falklands War.