The weakened British forces under Vernon launched an Britain did not attempt any additional attacks on Spanish possessions. They used in times past to come Cap in Hand to the Office praying for Relief, now the second word is [¶3] British merchants stoked public outrage at what they charged were Spanish "depredations" against them--and there was, no doubt, significant abuse of the kind alleged.
Her men fought well, and for the most part successfully, when the chips were down. He was a marine veteran hardened by numerous naval battles in Europe, beginning with the Vernon ordered his forces to clear the port of all On the evening of 19 April, the British mounted an assault in force upon Reversing the tide of battle, the Spanish initiated a Vernon carried on, successfully attacking the Spanish at News of the defeat at Cartagena was a significant factor in the downfall of the British Prime Minister The success of the Porto Bello operation led the British, in September 1740, to send a squadron under Commodore Anson sailed home, arriving in London more than three and a half years after he had set out, having When war broke out in 1739, both Britain and Spain expected that France would join the war on the Spanish side. On 12 Sept. 1731, Rear-Admiral Charles Stewart had complained to the Spanish Governor of Havana … The governor of the Province of Venezuela, Brigadier Don Gabriel de Zuloagahad prepared the port defences, and Spanish troops were well-commanded by Captain Don Francisco Saucedo. This doubleness of the conflict--mercantile motives and geopolitical ramifications--is captured in the ambiguous status of the chief British negotiator with the Spanish, Benjamin Keene, who was not only the British king's ambassador at Madrid but also the agent of the South Sea Company, a private firm that had its own dealings with the Spanish crown (Temperley 1909: 200-01). The Spanish "tacitly intimated that the [¶4] By March 1738, the British court was reported to be considering issuing Letters of Reprisal to British subjects whose ships had been seized or looted by the Spanish (though the merchants themselves wanted the government to take action against the Spanish, not to be forced to do so themselves) (Temperley 1909: 210). Let there be an end of the haughtiness and cruelty and tyranny of the Spaniard by the assertion of the freedom of the Protestant Briton and the like. Then, on 17 March 1738, "Captain Jenkins is believed to have presented to a sympathetic House of Commons his tale of woes together with his ear in a bottle" (Temperley 1909: 210). But it was not all one-sided, a fact some British figures acknowledged privately, as British seamen and traders abused residents of the Spanish colonies: "One well-informed pamphleteer declared that he had seen Spaniards publicly sold as slaves in British Colonies, and that the seas swarmed with English pirates, often including British logwood cutters from Campeachy Bay [the lower part of the east coast of Mexico]" (Temperley 1909: 207-08). He attacked the Following the strategy previously applied at Porto Bello, the British destroyed the fort and seized the guns along with two Spanish patrol boats. The British public's outrage and bellicosity was raised to a new pitch:Seldom had English indignation swelled higher--one speaker talked of Englishmen in chains, another of Englishmen crawling with vermin in Spanish prisons. War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-48) [¶1] The conflict which broke out between Britain and Spain in 1739 takes its name from a British captain, Robert Jenkins, who was assaulted by the Spanish Guarda Costas eight years earlier, but whose case had been re-publicized in the lead up to this war.