War of Jenkins' Ear
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The War of Jenkins' Ear was a conflict between Great Britain and Spain that lasted from 1739 to 1748. After 1742 it merged into the larger War of the Austrian Succession.
Under the 1729 Treaty of Seville, the British had agreed not to trade with the Spanish colonies. To verify the treaty, the Spanish were permitted to board British vessels in Spanish waters. After one such incident in 1731, Robert Jenkins, captain of the ship Rebecca, claimed that the Spanish coast guard had severed his ear. Encouraged by his government (which was determined to continue its drive toward commercial domination of the Atlantic basin), in 1738 Jenkins exhibited his pickled ear to the House of Commons, whipping up war fever against Spain. To much cheering, the British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, reluctantly declared war on October 23, 1739.
One of the key actions was the British capture, on November 21, 1739, of the silver-exporting town of Puerto Bello (then in New Granada, now Panama), in an attempt to damage Spain's finances. The poorly defended port was attacked by six ships of the line under Admiral Edward Vernon. The battle demonstrated the vulnerability of Spanish trading practices, and led the Spanish fundamentally to change them. Rather than trading at centralised ports with large treasure fleets, they began using small numbers of ships trading at a wide variety of ports. They also began to travel around Cape Horn to trade on the west coast.[citation needed] Puerto Bello's economy was severely damaged, and did not recover until the building of the Panama Canal. In Britain the victory was greeted with much celebration, and in 1740, at a dinner in honour of Vernon in London, the song "God Save the King", now the British national anthem, was performed in public for the first time. Portobello Road in London is named after this victory. The conquest of Spain's American empire was considered a foregone conclusion.
British Admiral Edward Vernon had recruited some 3,500 American colonists for these attacks, enticing them with dreams of capturing mountains of Spanish silver and gold.[citation needed]
The success of this operation led the British in 1740 to send a squadron under Commodore George Anson to attack Spain's possessions in the Pacific.
March, 1741 saw Sir Edward Vernon (known by the nickname of "Old Grog") lead a fleet of 186 ships and 23,600 men to the city of Cartagena de Indias, defended by some 3,600 men and 6 ships. The siege of Cartagena, a month of intense artillery fire and combat against the Spanish and colonial defenders — under the command of the Viceroy Sebastián de Eslava, Don Melchor de Navarrete, Don Carlos Des Naux, and the great Don Blas de Lezo — ended with the British fleet withdrawing in defeat.
The Spanish also withstood attacks against St. Augustine in Florida; Havana, Cuba and Panama. Most of the American colonists died of yellow fever, dysentery, and outright starvation, and those who limped home, including George Washington's half-brother, Lawrence Washington, who renamed his Virginia plantation after Admiral Vernon, had little to show for their efforts.
A 1742 Spanish counter-attack upon the British colony of Georgia at the Battle of Bloody Marsh was also repelled.
The war was also characterised by relatively indecisive naval operations and enormous privateering by both sides. The war eventually died down due to lack of troops as resources were diverted by war in Europe — many had succumbed to disease — without any gain of territory on either side.
However, something did change as a result: for the first time the British began referring to "Americans" rather than "colonials".[citation needed]
In 1742, the war became a minor side-show as resources were redirected to the much larger War of the Austrian Succession. See that article for further discussion of Anglo-Spanish conflict. The Anglo-Spanish war was brought to an end by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
[edit] References
- Tobías Smollet (Tobias Smollett), Authentic papers related to the expedition against Carthagena, by Jorge Orlando Melo in Reportaje de la historia de Colombia, Bogotá: Planeta, 1989.
- The American People - sixth edition by Gary B. Nash and Julie Roy Jeffrey
