Anglo-Spanish Wars in the Southeast

Great Britain and Spain clashed for nearly a decade in what became known as the War of Jenkins' Ear, spanning 1739 to 1748. The Caribbean Sea and New Granada saw the bulk of the campaigning, and by 1742 the large scale operations had largely wound down. Historians link this struggle to the broader War of the Austrian Succession, which ran from 1740 to 1748.

The conflict takes its name from an incident involving Robert Jenkins, a British sea captain. Spanish coast guards, while inspecting his vessel for smuggled goods in April 1731, supposedly cut off one of his ears. Politicians critical of the government seized on this story in 1738, using it within Parliament to rally backing for military action against Spain.

Britain's boldest move came in 1741, when forces launched an assault on Cartagena. The attempt ended in failure and cost many lives, discouraging any second attempt of similar scale. Beyond scattered skirmishes touching Spanish Florida, Georgia, and Havana, both nations shifted their attention after 1742 toward the ongoing struggle in Europe tied to the Austrian succession.

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed in 1748, brought hostilities to an official close. Its provisions left Britain largely short of the territorial gains and commercial advantages it had originally sought across the Americas. Within the annals of British naval achievement, this war holds a notable place chiefly because of George Anson's circumnavigation of the globe, undertaken between 1740 and 1744.

Background

Although popular accounts frame this conflict as a commercial quarrel, contemporary scholars contend that Spanish anxiety about British expansion into North America mattered just as much. These same historians point to another crucial element: opposition Tories were waging a political campaign to topple the Whig ministry that Robert Walpole had headed since 1721.

Under the terms of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, British traders gained entry to Spanish American markets, most notably through the Asiento de Negros, which granted exclusive rights to supply 5,000 slaves annually. A related provision, the Navío de Permiso, allowed two vessels each year to unload 500 tons of merchandise apiece at Porto Bello in Panama and at Veracruz in Mexico. The South Sea Company, which the British government had controlled since 1720, held both privileges, though their economic worth paled beside the volume of commerce flowing between Britain and Spain itself.

Historians have called the asiento arrangement nothing more than a "commercial illusion," noting that Britain dispatched merely eight ships under its terms from 1718 through 1733. Even these voyages served mainly to smuggle taxable goods past customs. Steep duties on imports, coupled with str

Conduct of the war

On the twenty-second of October, three vessels under Captain Thomas Waterhouse set out on Vernon's orders, tasked with cutting off Spanish shipping traveling between Porto Bello and La Guaira. Spotting several vessels anchored at La Guaira, a port under the authority of the Royal Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas, he chose to strike there. Brigadier Don Gabriel de Zuloaga, governing the Province of Venezuela, had already readied the harbor's defenses, and command of the Spanish garrison rested capably with Captain Don Francisco Saucedo. That same day, Waterhouse's ships approached under Spanish colors in an attempt to slip into the harbor unnoticed. The trick failed to fool the gunners stationed there, who anticipated trouble and held their fire until the approaching squadron came within striking distance, then unleashed a coordinated barrage. Three hours of relentless bombardment followed before Waterhouse gave the order to pull back. What remained of his damaged squadron limped toward Jamaica for urgent repairs. When later called upon to justify the failed venture, Waterhouse maintained that seizing a handful of minor Spanish craft would hardly have been worth sacrificing his crew.

Capture of Portobelo (20-22 November 1739)

Before 1739, commerce between Spain and its overseas holdings ran through a handful of designated harbors, with outbound fleets gathering twice yearly at Cádiz before the Flota sailed under escort toward Portobelo or Veracruz. Striking or sealing off these harbors offered one means of disrupting Spanish commerce, though foreign merchants often financed the cargoes aboard these vessels, meaning such tactics threatened British and neutral interests as well.

During the Anglo-Spanish War of 1727 to 1729, British forces had tried and failed to seize Portobelo, pulling back after disease inflicted severe casualties on them. Vernon returned to the port on 22 November 1739, leading an assault with six ships of the line. The garrison surrendered within a single day, and British forces held the town for three weeks, demolishing its defenses, harbor facilities, and warehouses before pulling out.

News of the triumph sparked widespread celebration across Britain. Composed in 1740 to commemorate the achievement, "Rule Britannia" debuted at a London banquet held in Vernon's honor. Britain still bears traces of this victory in its geography: Edinburgh's Portobello suburb and London's Portobello Road both take their names from the event, and no single eighteenth century occurrence generated more commemorative medals than this capture.

Many opposition Tories and Patriot Whigs assumed that seizing a Spanish American port would be a simple matter, and they used this assumption to push a hesitant Walpole toward mounting larger naval campaigns in the Gulf of Mexico. Eventually, Spain abandoned its twice yearly Flota system in favor of numerous smaller convoys that stopped at a wider range of ports. Portobelo itself would not see economic recovery until the Panama Canal was constructed nearly two hundred years afterward.

First attack on Cartagena de Indias (13-20 March 1740)

After his triumph at Portobelo, Vernon turned his attention toward seizing Cartagena de Indias, in what is now Colombia. He and Edward Trelawny, the governor of Jamaica, both regarded this Spanish port, vital for shipping gold, as a target worth pursuing. From the moment war began and Vernon reached the Caribbean, British efforts had concentrated on learning what defenses protected Cartagena. In October 1739, First Lieutenant Percival was dispatched by Vernon to carry a letter addressed to Blas de Lezo and to Don Pedro Hidalgo, who governed Cartagena at the time. Beyond delivering the message, Percival hoped to gather close observations of the Spanish fortifications, but his plan collapsed when he was refused entry into the port.

By 7 March 1740, Vernon opted for a bolder tactic, launching a reconnaissance mission backed by force against the Spanish stronghold. He sailed out of Port Royal at the head of a squadron that included ships of the line, a pair of fire ships, three vessels equipped for bombardment, and several transports. When his fleet arrived off Cartagena on 13 March, Vernon wasted no time putting men ashore to chart the terrain and observe the Spanish squadron stationed at Playa Grande, to the west of the city. For several days the Spanish showed no visible reaction, so on 18 March Vernon commanded his three bomb vessels to begin shelling the city, hoping to draw out a response that would reveal more about the strength of Spanish defenses. Lezo, recognizing exactly what Vernon was attempting, chose restraint rather than immediate retaliation. He instead had guns stripped from several of his vessels to build a makeshift battery on shore, intended to deliver suppressive fire when needed.

Vernon then pressed forward with a landing operation, but Spanish resistance proved too fierce, and the attempt to put 400 soldiers ashore failed. In the aftermath, British forces spent three days bombarding the city from the sea. All told, the operation stretched across 21 days before Vernon finally pulled his forces back. He did not abandon the area entirely, however, leaving behind HMS Windsor Castle and HMS Greenwich with orders to intercept any Spanish vessel attempting to approach.

Written by Aubrey Research from War of Jenkins' Ear on Wikipedia, cited as a reference and not reproduced.

Where these engagements were fought

All 18 are placed on the map. Select a marker to see the engagement.

By decade

The tempo of the war, by decade.

Notable engagements

Plus 9 further documented engagements in the Anglo-Spanish Wars in the Southeast record.

By state

Engagements and locations are compiled from published sources: Wikipedia (text rewritten and cited as a reference, CC BY-SA 4.0).