Cartagena, founded in 1533 by Pedro de Heredia on a sandy island west of the Magdalena entrance, had become a strategic Spanish American point by the eighteenth century. It ranked third among Spain’s new world ports, being surpassed only by La Habana and Lima (Callao).1 Even more than Portobelo and Panama, it was the defensive key to Spanish trade with western South America. This commerce still traveled to and from the Pacific largely by way of the isthmus, though the old galeones fleet which was its former sole link with Spain, had now dropped in importance.2
With the creation of the Peruvian viceroyalty in 1542, the part of northern South America called New Granada became loosely appended to it and remained connected for nearly two hundred years. Then, to remedy a chaotic situation caused by the deposition of colonial president, Francisco Meneses Bravo, by the audiencia of Santa Fé de Bogotá in 1715,3 New Granada was founded as a separate viceroyalty on May 27, 1717. Just at that time, moreover, the Spanish government of Philip V, dominated by Abbot Giulio Alberoni, was preparing operations for the recovery of Sardinia and Sicily.4 Spain thus faced another general European war only four years after the Treaty of Utrecht, and she thought the Caribbean coast needed more protection than it could receive from the distant Peruvian viceroy at Lima. The new political unit consisted of the provinces of Santa Fé, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Maracaibo, Caracas, Antioquía, Guayana, Popayán, and San Francisco de Quito, or in modern terms Colombia, Venezuela, and northern Ecuador.5 The viceroy should reside at Bogotá, then called Santa Fé for official purposes, and have authority equal to those of Peru and New Spain.6
The viceregal appointment went straightway to Jorge Villalonga, Count de la Cueva, then serving as senior officer of the military forces of Peru. But as it would require time to communicate with Villalonga and bring him to his new post, Antonio de la Pedrosa y Guerrero, a member of the Council of the Indies, was named temporary viceroy and immediately sent to New Granada. He bore orders and dispatches for his designated successor, but was not to forward them unless, on arrival, he judged the creation of a new viceroyalty to be really necessary. Pedrosa reached New Granada early in 1718, and after a tour of inspection decided that a recent visitador had been right in recommending the establishment of a viceroyalty. He spent some time organizing a government, and handed power over to Villalonga on December 17, 1719.7
Villalonga was in bad health and somewhat past the age to adapt himself to a new situation. He obviously disliked New Granada from the start, and maintained bad relations with Marquis Castell Fuerte, viceroy of Peru.8 Although he remained until May, 1724, he ended by petitioning to be allowed to return to Spain, alleging that the poverty and lack of importance of the New Granada territories made their continuance as a viceroyalty inadvisable. Pedrosa concurred, and Philip V’s government abandoned the experiment, causing Granadan creoles to feel that their country had been deliberately slighted. Villalonga’s successor, Antonio Manso Maldonado, became governor and captain general of the New Kingdom of Granada, and governed in the pre-Pedrosa manner under the nominal jurisdiction of the Peruvian viceroy.9 In 1734 Intendant Bartolomé Tienda de Cuervo urged that the viceregal status be restored,10 but the crown took no action until 1739.
With the War of Jenkins’ Ear then threatening and the certainty that the English would strike Spain hard in the Caribbean, the idea of the viceroyalty occurred again. On the economic as well as the military side, there was much to recommend it. The prosperity of the region seemed to be increasing and its products, consisting of precious metals and semi-precious stones, pearls, fine woods, livestock, textiles, and cacao, needed a coordinating center.11 There was the further fact that the institution of the viceroyalty, since its inception in the sixteenth century, had stood the test and become the accepted way of carrying on Spain’s government in America. Nonetheless, we are safe in saying that military considerations came first. A temporary period of bad Anglo-Spanish relations had resulted in the blockade of Portobelo by British Vice-Admiral Sir Francis Hosier back in 1726, which had paralyzed Spain’s commerce in the Caribbean for six months, and found her unable to retaliate.12 Rebellion and Indian trouble in the Darién district, which had dragged on before being suppressed, also showed the need for a stronger governing hand nearby.13
The viceroyalty created in 1739 was territorially the same as the previous one, except that the provinces of Portobelo and Panama, which had been left under Lima during the first viceregal period, were now added to New Granada. The post of viceroy went to Sebastián de Eslava, aged only twenty-five. A native of Navarre, he had been one of the cadets enrolled in the initial class of the Academia Militar de Matemáticas at Barcelona, where he had gained a knowledge of engineering that probably explains his selection for this primarily defensive post.14 Although Eslava’s task was one of extreme urgency, the broad instructions given him did not entirely reflect a war situation. They included such matters as protection and religious indoctrination of Indians, distribution of encomiendas and public offices to descendants of conquistadors and early settlers, special orders regarding treatment of Indians in the wild districts of Goajira and Darién, fomentation of mining and agriculture in those same regions, proper punishment of delinquents and criminals, enrichment of the royal treasury, and a careful check on foreigners to make sure they did not get their hands on wealth.15
Additional orders dealt with the defense of the territory and the organization of its land and naval forces. Though Eslava and the viceroys to follow him were ultimately to govern from Santa Fé de Bogotá, of which audiencia they were named presidents, this first appointee should make his headquarters on the coast. He was to remain in “Cartagena, Portobelo, or some place on the Tierra Firme coast while the disturbances from the English last, with authority to disembark and maintain yourself in the place you judge necessary to safeguard the defense of the territory.”16
We cannot go deeply here into the much-discussed causes of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, although the celebrated ear whose amputation is denied by all Spanish and many English historians, was evidently really cut from Captain Robert Jenkins in 1731 by Juan León Fandino, commander of a Spanish guardacosta off Habana.17 Fandino’s quoted accompanying remark, “Carry it to your king and tell his majesty that if he were present I would serve him in the same manner,” is evidently a Jenkins embellishment. Although the incident, which had been well known to British naval officers at the time, was a bit stale by 1738, Jenkins seems to have appeared before a committee of the House of Commons in that year to tell his sad story, bearing in a bottle something that may have been the detached ear.18 The account of the mutilation and Spanish brutality found some unbelievers, but the incident helped whip up sentiment for a British declaration of war against Spain. Needless to say, the real grievances of the English war faction were materialistic and had little to do with the sufferings of a merchant skipper of Jenkins’ doubtful reputation. Spanish guardacostas had certainly overworked their mission of preventing illicit commerce by foreign vessels, often going so far as to apprehend them on the open sea without proof of their destination.19 The Asiento, by which the English South Sea Company had the right to supply a fixed number of slaves to Spanish South America and to send one small ship a year there for trade, had been abused by the British and was to expire in 1744 with no prospect of being renewed by Spain.20 The opposition in Parliament, led by Sir William Pulteney, clamored for more aggressive measures against the Spaniards, and the government of Sir Robert Walpole, though anxious to maintain peace, gradually gave ground to the war party.21 The Spanish foreign minister, Sebastián de la Quadra, Marquis of Villadarias, also dreaded war but refused to be intimidated even when the British dispatched a threatening fleet to the Mediterranean.22 Negotiations in Madrid designed to patch matters up at the last moment were broken off in July, 1739, and on October 19 George II declared war.23
In the meantime, Sebastián de Eslava left for his post, stopping for a time at Puerto Rico to inspect the military defenses of the island.24 He reached Cartagena April 23, 1740, just after the city had received a preliminary bombardment from the English fleet commanded by Admiral Edward Vernon.25 Cartagena’s governor, Pedro Fidalgo, had recently died after making what defense plans he could, and he had been replaced by Colonel Melchor de Navarrete. The latter also did his best to prepare for an attack, by driving cattle inland from the exposed coast and raising hundreds of Indian militiamen.26 Eslava’s arrival raised the morale of Cartagena, and the viceroy largely assumed the city governorship himself.27
Aiding in the defense of Cartagena was Blas de Lezo, one of the ablest officers of the Spanish navy. Lezo was a veteran who, in 1704, at the age of seventeen, had lost a leg in the sea battle of Vélez-Málaga, fighting under the orders of the French Count of Toulouse in a vain effort to retake recently-captured Gibraltar from the English.28 Nine years later, toward the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, Lezo lost the use of an arm during the second seige of Barcelona, in which he distinguished himself. Since then he had risen higher in naval service, and had come to Cartagena in command of the galeones fleet of 1737, reaching the city on March 11. He there became commander of the local Apostadero de Marina (marine station) with a fleet ultimately consisting of six ships of the line. Before Eslava’s arrival, he had worked hard and fast to strengthen the defenses. Finding the forts short of powder, he had supplied them from the ships and had put men ashore to strengthen the garrisons. He also prepared a boom of logs and cables to be stretched between two forts guarding the Bocachica at the entrance to the harbor.29 He proved more energetic than the viceroy did on arrival, and the two men established a relationship that was far from cordial even when cooperating in their desperate defense against the English.
The Spanish navy which Lezo represented had greatly improved during the last few decades. It owed this revival to José Patiño, a onetime Jesuit who had left the order and served Philip V in various capacities since the time of Alberoni. He occupied the post of chief secretary of state for several years before his death in 1736.30 Acknowledging his preceptors to be Colbert and the Spaniard Gerónimo Ustáriz,31 Patino made the navy and colonial trade his particular specialities. He built navy yards, including one at Habana which was the first in Spanish America, established naval bases at Ferrol, Cádiz, and Cartagena (Spain), founded the first Spanish naval academy, and coordinated the branches of the service.32 When he took the Intendencia de Marina, “there was no place where a caldron of pitch could be boiled”; at his death he left a fleet of 34 ships of the line, 9 frigates, and 16 auxiliary craft.33 While there is no particular evidence to bracket his name with that of Blas de Lezo, he customarily kept an eye on promising men and probably did so in this case.
Even before the war started, the English government had selected Captain Edward Vernon to be its naval commander in the West Indies. Vernon knew these waters well because as a junior officer he had served four years there during the War of the Spanish Succession.34 In July, 1739, Walpole held a conference at the Admiralty to discuss actions to be taken in the impending war, and Vernon was among the naval officers present. There he repeated arguments he had already enunciated in the House of Commons, to the effect that if certain key places in South America could be seized the whole Spanish empire would collapse. “If once Porto Bello and Cartagena are taken,” he insisted, “then all will be lost to them.”35 Although Vernon did not think at the time that he had made much impression on the conference and went home discouraged, he was awakened in the small hours of the following morning by a messenger summoning him to Whitehall. There he learned that he had just been promoted vice-admiral of the Blue and given command of a fleet destined at once for the West Indies.36 He went immediately to Portsmouth, and on July 23 sailed from Spithead with a fleet of nine ships; his own 70-gun flagship Burford, three other 70’s, three 60’s, a 50, and a 40. After hovering a few days off Galicia, according to orders, in the vain hope of intercepting four ships returning from Buenos Aires and Mexico to Spain, he left his three 60’s and the 40 there to maintain the alert and steered with the rest for Madeira and then for Port Royal, Jamaica, where he arrived October 12.37 He bore loose orders, and the first ones being to capture galleons and inflict as much loss as possible on Spanish shipping. He should also prevent assaults by the Spaniards on Georgia and the Carolinas, and procure any information that would facilitate future British attacks on Caribbean land strongholds. His only concrete instructions concerning operations against such objectives said, “In case you shall find that the Spanish men of war or galleons, either at Cartagena or Porto Bello, lie so much exposed as that you shall judge it practicable to burn or destroy them in port, you are to attempt it, provided it may not too much hazard the disabling of our squadron under your command from performing any other services that may be necessary.”38
After a few weeks at Jamaica, during which he decided that a former plan of his for attacking Spanish galleons at Habana was impracticable,39 Vernon decided to take Portobelo. He hoped to find and destroy galleons there and, in any event, to ruin the port’s fortifications and make it useless to the Spaniards as an assembly point for shipping. Accordingly, he left for there with six ships and in company with Commodore Charles Brown, reaching the isthmian port on November 20.
The capture of Portobelo proved easy, as only one of its three protecting forts offered real resistance, and the local governor, Francisco Javier Martínez de la Vega y Retes, was described by another Spanish officer as “highly inept for such employment, of small talent, and resembling a man only in physical respects.”40 After the surrender of all the forts and a few Spanish ships in the harbor on November 22, Vernon had no thought of permanently occupying the town. This consisted of about 500 poorly built houses, most of which stood empty except for those few weeks of the year when they could be rented at high prices for the feria or market, during the annual visit of the trading galleons. The admiral destroyed all the fortifications so as to “distress the Spaniards by preventing them from holding their fair at Porto Bello and to distress the Galleons even in Cartagena by preventing their being supply’d with arms, naval stores and provisions of which they stand in great need.”41 The dismantling task required several days, during which Vernon had some correspondence of the kind he enjoyed with President Dionisio Martínez de la Vega across the isthmus in Panama. Writing to demand the release of two South Sea Company employees held there, he added this blast, “Health and prosperity to all true Spaniards that may lament sacrificing the true interest of their country to the ambition of an Italian Queen.”42 Vernon’s thrust at Philip V’s Parmesan wife Isabel Farnese, whom everyone knew to be the real ruler of Spain, failed to arouse Martínez noticeably. In his reply promising to liberate the factors of the Asiento, he mildly remonstrated, “it has been to me the greatest matter of wonder that the last paragraph of Your Excellency’s letter is calculated to derogate from the greatness of the Queen my Lady.”43
Vernon was back at Port Royal before the end of December, and the news of his Portobelo exploit in England caused the nation to celebrate more vociferously than the actual achievement warranted. Medals were struck in commemoration, of which one side displayed the six ships entering the harbor and the other showed the admiral, sometimes alone and sometimes with Commodore Brown.44 Walpole’s government tried to bolster its sagging popularity and prestige from the exploit. To the unlettered British public, Portobelo meant Spanish America; indeed it was the only place there of which most stay-at-home Britons had ever heard. In fancy they built its small, shambling garrison into a great army and its antiquated fortifications into an impregnable citadel; impregnable, that is, to all except the British navy.
News of Portobelo’s fall dismayed some in Cartagena, but did not daunt Blas de Lezo. In answering a letter from the English admiral requesting considerate treatment for prisoners held in the city and their early return to Jamaica, Lezo poured scorn on the British success. He well knew, he said, that the factors of the South Sea Company had informed Vernon of the weak state of Portobelo’s defenses. “I can assure Your Excellency,” he concluded, “that I would have been in Portobelo to prevent this [the capture] if events had gone as I wished, and would even have gone to seek you out elsewhere, being persuaded that the courage those in Portobelo lacked I could have supplied in sufficiency to contain their cowardice.”45
Philip V had meanwhile honored Cartagena with a special cedula dated January 7, 1740, announcing to its officials the existing state of war with England. The Portobelo attack and the fact that similar announcements had earlier gone out to viceroys and governors made the news hardly a surprise, but His Catholic Majesty, or whoever really wrote the cedula, had a special reason for addressing Cartagena, which would likely bear the brunt of a British attack. It exhorted the citizens to think of the Catholic religion and the danger to it if the English should conquer. “Endeavor as I command you to do,” it continued, “to make every effort necessary to prevent whatever insults the enemy attempts, using all means that offer to resist him, and aid the viceroys and governors with all the earnestness and promptitude the present circumstances require.”46
Yet Cartagena got through the year 1740 without serious trouble. The British Admiralty made preparations slowly and Vernon still lacked the strength to assault so large a place with any hope of success. In February and March he reconnoitered the mainland coast from Santa Marta to Portobelo, and in passing Cartagena gave the town and its forts a rather harmless bombardment.47 He would have liked to tempt Blas de Lezo out for a sea battle, but the latter felt in no sporting mood, although he had five ships of the line and five galleons.48 From Portobelo, Vernon rounded Cape Toro to where Castillo San Lorenzo protected the entrance to the Chagres river, headquarters for the guardacostas and an embarcation point for the galeones fleet when the river held enough water. Using a map of the river mouth and shoal drawn for him by a reformed pirate named Lowther,49 Vernon entered the Chagres with three ships and cannonaded the small fort. Its commander, Infantry Captain Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Zevallos, was in even worse shape for defense than the governor of Portobelo had been, and, after Vernon had bombarded him rather gently for two days, sent out a flag of truce.50 Again the British had no idea of a permanent conquest: after blowing up the fortifications, burning the customs house, and scuttling two guarda-costa vessels, they sailed away.
England was meanwhile making elaborate preparations, though making them in a fumbling, inefficient way. Commodore George Anson, who sailed with six ships in September, 1740, for the Pacific, at first had instructions to make for the Philippines, “with express orders to touch at no place until they came to Java Head in the East Indies.. . .”51 But the plan changed and the Admiralty told Anson to harry Spanish shipping between Peru and Panama and then support Vernon by collaborating with him in an attack on Panama.52 The land forces given Anson consisted largely of invalids and Chelsea pensioners,53 and the ships, hotly pursued by a Spanish fleet under Admiral José Pizarro, numbered only three by the time they had rounded the Horn under stormy weather conditions. The commodore was therefore in no condition for ambitious amphibious operations, though he did capture the Peruvian port of Paita.54 Learning by various reports that he would get no support from the West Indies for an attempt on Panama, and failing to capture the Manila Galleon off Acapulco, Anson set sail for China. He went on with his lone flagship to complete a highly-publicized voyage around the world which made him a national hero but had not the slightest bearing on the outcome of the war.
England was meanwhile assembling a large body of troops for use in the West Indies, to sail convoyed by a fleet that finally turned out to be that of Sir Chaloner Ogle.55 Vernon received word from the Duke of Newcastle, secretary of state, that the British force would consist of 8,000 men under Major-General Lord Charles Cathcart, and that supplementary troops from British North America would arrive in Jamaica even before these.56
The colonial contingent, numbering about 3,600 in all, came from nine of the thirteen colonies: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.57 Reasons for the abstention of New Hampshire and Delaware are unknown but can be reasonably ascribed to indifference. South Carolina and Georgia had forces at that time serving under Governor James Oglethorpe, and accomplishing precisely nothing, against St. Augustine in Spanish Florida.58 Lawrence Washington, half-brother of the nine-year old George and fourteen years his senior, held a captain’s commission in one of Virginia’s four companies. It seems unlikely under these conditions that he could have had much acquaintance with the admiral, but he esteemed him sufficiently to change the name of the Hunting Creek plantation, given him by his father, to Mount Vernon.59 An anonymous English officer with the Cartagena expedition later gave an unflattering description of the colonials. “As for the American troops, they were in general many Degrees worse [than the British] but the Officers in particular were composed of Blacksmiths, Taylors, Shoemakers, and all the Banditti that Country affords, inasmuch, that the other Parts of the Army held them in Scorn.”60 The colonials had all reached Jamaica before the end of 1740, where many of them straightway succumbed or became helplessly ill from climate, fever, and rum.61
The Britishers, assembling on the Isle of Wight and consisting of two infantry regiments and six of marines, were also saluted by the pen of the officer just quoted on the subject of the colonials:
That the whole Body of the Troops, that came from England (unless two Regiments) were raw, new-raised, undisciplined Men, is a fact known to every one; and the greatest Part of the Officers commanding them, either young Gentlemen whose Quality or Interest entitled them to Preferment, or abandoned Wretches of the Town, whose Prostitution had made them useful on some dirty Occasion, and by Way of Reward were provided for in the Army; but both these Sorts of Gentlemen had never seen any Services, consequently, knew not properly how to act, or command; so that the worthy old experienced Officers, who had served long and well, underwent a continual Hardship, in teaching and disciplining a young raw Army, at a Time when they were on Service, and every one ought to have been Masters of their Trade, instead of having it to learn; and thus, by more frequently exposing themselves, most of them were knocked on the Head.62
Cathcart showed he appreciated the weakness of one of his regiments by writing, “They may be useful a year hence, but at present they have not strength to handle their arms,”63 meaning that most of the recruits were only boys. He wrote to Vernon, “The appointing Port Royal in Jamaica for the place of our Rendezvous gives me no small uneasiness from the apprehensions I have of what may happen to our men from an immoderate use of new rum, and this leads me to beg you may be so good as to be taking measures for having the inconvenience prevented.”64 Vernon, too, had his fears concerning rum—in fact his insistence on watering it for the sailors led to the nickname “grog” for this thinned beverage65 but the lord here asked more than lay in his power, and the men on arrival sickened and died fast.
The troops went aboard their transports in August and lived miserably in those cramped quarters until Sir Chaloner Ogle could partially man his fleet and assemble it by the Isle of Wight in midOctober. The expedition did not depart until October 26, and it worked its way out of the channel and across the Atlantic, in constant apprehension of being attacked by a combined French-Spanish fleet which it was feared might be assembled.66 No such danger presented itself, however, and the force reached Dominica in the middle of December, where Lord Cathcart became the first major casualty, dying not of rum but of either dysentary or an overdose of laxative.67 Brigadier General Thomas Wentworth, the second in command, and a book soldier without campaign experience, took his place, and the expedition went on to Port Royal to join Vernon.
Athough Cathcart’s orders had been to attack Havana if at all possible, Vernon, who outranked Ogle, preferred to take the expedition against Port Louis in Hispaniola. He had been informed by W. Dandridge, captain of the sloop Wolf and future brother-in-law of George Washington, that nineteen French ships lay there commanded by the Marquis d’Antin.68 The fleet had actually been there some time earlier, with orders from Minister of Marine Maurepas to attack the English if necessary to protect the Spanish colonies.69 But Dandridge had not seen these vessels, which had left for France before the end of January, 1741; he had been deceived by a haze and mistaken merchantmen for ships of the line. Vernon therefore went to Port Louis and returned empty handed to Jamaica, where a council of war considered the next move. The English commanders knew that Spanish Admiral Rodrigo de Torres, with the Ferrol fleet consisting of twelve ships of the line, had recently visited Cartagena.70 They also now learned that Torres had left there on January 31, presumably for Havana. If d’Antin had gone to join him at Havana, which for all the English knew might have been his destination, the concentration would be a dangerous one. The fact was, however, that the French admiral had sailed to Europe, and Torres had gone to Havana to defend it, leaving Eslava and Lezo in Cartagena with only a small fleet. Vernon and his colleagues took a chance regarding the possibility of a d’Antin-Torres union at Havana, and on February 25 the whole expedition sailed for Cartagena. The main strength of the fleet consisted of 29 ships of the line divided into three divisions, commanded respectively by Vernon, who now flew his flag from the 80-gun Princess Carolina,71 Sir Chaloner Ogle, and Commodore Richard Lestock. The fleet also had a frigate, corvettes, bomb-vessels, tenders, fireships, and a brigantine, together with 85 transports bearing the English and colonial troops plus several hundred Negroes from Jamaica to act as laborers.72
Turning now to Cartagena, we find stories that contradict each other. Blas de Lezo, who made no effort to conceal his contempt for the young viceroy, afterwards wrote to Minister La Quadra,
It seems hardly possible that a city threatened by the enemy and given anticipatory notice by the king for its preservation, as well as being ordered to create a six-months’ stock of provisions, should have such a scarcity of stores that D. Sebastián de Eslava should be under the necessity of taking what I had for the crews of my ships, which I distributed equally between the seamen and the land forces, for although I gave him plenty of time to solicit the necessities for this important end both from the French colonies and the kingdom of Santa Fé, he would not agree to it on the pretext that he had no funds.73
This is to say that a provision shortage existed in Cartagena which would have proved even more serious if the attack had lasted longer, even though the British never closed all the approaches to the city from the interior. Eslava, on the other hand, had his loyal backers. Oidor Antonio Berástegui, who wrote the viceroy’s “Relación de Mando” for residencia purposes at the end of his administration, said that Eslava raised local spirits by his conduct on arrival:
This hope [of being spared an English conquest] grew with the immediate application by His Excellency to the repair of Bocachica castle and other forts, the assembling of arms, the preparation of munitions, the construction of a bulwark in the castle of San Lázaro, the making of gun carriages and slopes and all the other foresighted preparations that displayed the mastery by His Excellency of the military profession so that when . . . the powerful armament of the same Admiral Vernon came, his resistance was prepared.. . .74
Berástegui’s testimony could not have been written to curry favor, as Eslava had left New Granada at the time it was written. This and other evidence shows that some in Cartagena thought very well of the viceroy. Lezo when he wrote his ill-tempered remarks, was suffering from a severe wound, of which he later died. It certainly did not improve his disposition to know that Eslava had forwarded to Spain a diario of the recent siege that did not present the facts as the veteran naval officer wanted them presented.75
Cartagena lies on a stretch of Caribbean coast extending almost due north and south. Although the city, on its elongated island, looks directly out to sea, the number of rocks and the heavy surf made a direct approach from that side out of the question; moreover, a marine wall of cement and heavy logs formed an additional defense there.76 Cartagena’s harbor is behind the city and consists of the bay or lake of the same name, whose northern Surgidero arm faces the suburb of Jijimani southeast of the main city. The nearest fort was San Felipe de Barajas, situated on Mount San Lázaro, with guns capable of commanding a considerable area. The Surgidero’s entrance was commanded by two forts, Castillo Grande and Manzanillo; the latter was situated on an islet. The outer, or main, Cartagena harbor measures about three leagues from north to south and is separated from the sea by the island of Tierra Bomba. This had not been a separate island long, for as late as 1740 a storm had opened the passage called Boca Grande between it and Cartagena’s own island.77 Boca Grande had depth enough only for small launches and was, of course, impossible for Vernon’s fleet, but Bocachica, at the southern end of Tierra Bomba, was then as now capable of floating vessels of any draft. Two forts, Santiago and San Felipe, guarded the Bocachica entrance. Another, San Luis, faced inward toward the bay, and just inside the harbor, on an island or sand bank, was Fort San Joseph, mounting twelve cannon.78 On the southern or mainland side of Bocachica, on a spit called Abanicos, there was a fascine or protected battery of fourteen guns, and farther back, at a spot named Baradero, were four more guns.79
To defend Cartagena against the powerful-looking British array, Viceroy Eslava had to rely on what forces had been for some time available, as there is no record of Spain’s having sent any recent help. He could presumably have called reinforcements from the interior of his viceroyalty, but had not seen fit to do so.80 Blas de Lezo’s fleet now consisted of six moderate-sized ships; the flagship Galicia, 34, San Felipe and El Africa of the same armament, San Carlos, 50, El Conquistador, 38, and El Dragon, 52.81 Most of Lezo’s manpower, consisting of 600 sailors and 400 marines, fought ashore, manning various artillery posts. Otherwise, Eslava had 1,100 soldiers from two battalions, named España and Aragón, and one local one called De la Plaza, 500 militiamen including two companies of Negroes and free Mulattoes, and 600 mountain Indians raised by Melchor de Navarrete.82 The latter are called in some accounts “flecheros” and they were indeed probably armed with bows, but Eslava makes it clear that he used them principally as a labor battalion.83
The Spaniards in Cartagena had long known of the large British expedition in the West Indies, but could not be sure it was intended for them until March 13 and 14. On the 13th they spied two English warships and a packet which, after a little maneuvering, cast anchor near Punta Canoa, a little north of the city.84 The following day a sloop managed to run past them and enter the harbor, bearing messages from the French governor of Léogane in Hispaniola, which informed Eslava and Lezo of the impending full-scale British attack.85 On the 15th the bulk of Vernon’s fleet came in sight around Punta Canoa from the north and anchored near the first two arrivals, causing the viceroy to rush reinforcements to the nearby fascine battery of Cruz Grande, which was little more than a lookout post.86 Although Eslava considered the nearby beach a suitable landing place, Vernon was only feinting and endeavoring “to amuse them with motions as if I intended a descent this way,. . .”87 Within a few days he had made it clear that Tierra Bomba would be his first objective, whereupon the viceroy recalled the men from Cruz Grande, where they seemed not needed. Meanwhile Lezo had stretched the boom across the Bocachica entrance and arranged his six ships so that four guarded that passageway and two watched shallow Boca Grande.
The squadron of Sir Chaloner Ogle opened the real attack on March 20, bombarding forts San Felipe and Santiago on the sea side. Within four hours their 80-man garrison, commanded by Marine Captain Lorenzo Alderete, spiked the remaining guns and retreated across the southern peninsula of Tierra Bomba to the stronger Fort San Luis.88 The English ships then moved closer in to cannonade San Luis and San Joseph on the nearby island, an operation they continued for several days. In the meantime, a picket sent out by the viceroy discovered that the English had disembarked Wentworth’s force.89 Eslava had meanwhile established headquarters aboard Lezo’s flagship, Galicia,90 which gave these two mutually antagonistic commanders a chance to keep each other under observation.
Relations between the English leaders were no better, however, as Vernon and Ogle discovered that General Wentworth was not the man for this sort of operation. Sir Edward had assumed that the general would at once advance on San Luis and carry it by storm, which it appears he could have done easily. Instead, he seemed to fear a surprise attack, and although he could have been in no danger from the small Spanish force, he set up an elaborate system of sentries, and established a camp. The camp was in the worst possible place; an open stretch where the men were exposed to ravaging heat. Many of them suffered sunstroke as they worked on the elaborate battery of twenty cannon and twelve mortars Wentworth judged necessary to bombard the fort before it could be carried by storm. By someone’s piece of stupidity, the English placed their battery in front of the camp and in the fort’s direct line of fire, so that every Spanish shot passing over the guns fell into the tents, causing frequent casualties. Yet the general seemed in no hurry; he was doing what the rules books specified, and from this he would not deviate. Vernon, though irritated, displayed some tolerance at first. “Our friend General Wentworth’s inclinations,” he wrote to the governor of Jamaica, “I take to be very hearty and zealous, but the work is new, and he is, as he complains, and I believe very justly, ill-supported with proper assistance to carry it on, and their delay has wonderfully emboldened the enemy, and I think they are the more active of the two.”91 But as the campaign continued and Wentworth remained timid and lethargic, Vernon and Ogle came to regard and address him as a person of subnormal intelligence. In the words of Sir John Fortescue, “the tone of the two sailors towards the soldier was rather that of a contemptuous nurse towards a timid child,. . .”92
While Wentworth laboriously made unnecessary preparations, the English ships gave the forts and Lezo’s vessels all the pounding of which they were capable. Frequent skirmishing went on between British outposts and scouts sent from Fort San Luis, with the Spaniards, who knew the ground, usually having the better of the clashes.93 An English deserter, brought into the fort, informed the Spanish officers that Wentworth had put men to work opening a new road through the hill country northeast of San Luis, that he was emplacing thirty cannon, and that the British and colonials were falling sick in great numbers.94
The English found the fire of the Spanish fascine battery on Point Abanicos a nuisance, and Vernon resolved to give Wentworth a lesson in initiative. On the night of March 30, he landed from boats a naval force and a group of colonials commanded by Lawrence Washington. The men went ashore well behind the battery and first stumbled on the gunners of the Baradero, of whose existence they had been ignorant. By a bold rush they captured the position and then raced for the larger battery, which they were able to seize before the defenders could turn their seaward-pointing guns inland against them. They drove the Spanish artillerymen off and made several prisoners, after which they spiked the twenty-four and twenty pounders of the battery and “made two glorious bonfires of the platforms and carriages.”95 However dismal the colonials were as fighters elsewhere, they do not seem to have looked bad on this occasion : Washington and his men were mentioned in the reports for gallantry.96 However, they had made a hasty botch of spiking the guns, because, after they had gone, their commander, Naval Lieutenant José Campuzano, succeeded in unspiking several of them and resuming his fire.97
Despite all Wentworth’s delays, the Bocachica entrance could not be held indefinitely against the vastly greater English power. The constant battering from the ships was taking effect, and by April 3 the Abanicos battery had been lost again to another landing party. The viceroy, on this, gave orders for those manning both San Luis and the ships to prepare for retirement. The following day, as Eslava and Lezo sat in the castle of the flagship Galicia, an English shot crashed through and raised a shower of splinters, giving the viceroy a wound in the thigh and injuring Lezo’s good arm. Both lacerations seemed slight at the time, and the two leaders went on with their duties without a break.
The following morning the viceroy returned to Cartagena, leaving instructions for an evacuation of San Luis as soon as the breach already opened in the walls by Wentworth’s battery became untenable. Eslava intended the garrison to retire by land along a road called camino del pozo to Boca Grande, where the men could be picked up by boats and added to the small garrison still available for the defense of the city itself.98
Vernon’s prodding had at last stirred Wentworth to action, and on that very day, April 5, the general formed his grenadiers and sent them to storm Fort San Luis. As they approached, the garrison raised the white flag, but the English troops either failed to see or misunderstood it, for they continued both to advance and fire. The Spaniards fled, and though Lezo tried to take them aboard his ships they were so demoralized that most of them scattered into the rough country east of the fort.99 Some of the British troops who had captured Abanicos tried to ford the shallow water to Fort San Joseph on its island, but found that impracticable, whereupon they landed there in boats and encountered but three drunken Spaniards, the rest having decamped.100 Blas de Lezo had already left his ships, which were in a position where escape was impossible and had only skeleton crews aboard. The collapse of the land defense caused panic among these few remaining seamen, who had orders to scuttle the vessels. San Felipe’s poop rested on a sand bank almost out of the water; the crew set her afire and the flames immediately leaped to El África. Those in San Carlos managed to settle their ship on bottom and take flight, but the men aboard Galicia could not evacuate in time and surrendered to an English boarding party.101 At once the British broke the cable and log boom, the only remaining obstacle to their further progress. Vernon’s elation caused him to write the Duke of Newcastle, “The wonderful success of this evening and night is so astonishing that one can’t but cry out with the Psalmist— ‘it is the Lord’s doing and seems marvellous in our eyes.’”102
The admiral now had every reason to think; that the hard part of the task had been accomplished and that Cartagena would fall within a few days. His dispatch to Newcastle breathed optimism, and noted signs of despondency on the Spanish side as though the enemy had small hope of holding out long. “Tho’ the Bully Don must be said very well to know how to make a disposition, he is very far from convincing me he knows how to make the best defence with it afterwards.”103
Vernon exaggerated his opponents’ discouragement, as they were even then working hard to strengthen their next defenses. The viceroy had sent one of his aides with all available small boats to pick up the fugitives from San Luis who gathered at a stone quarry on an abandoned part of the Tierra Bomba shore. He and Lezo personally superintended the rescue of other refugees who had fled as far as Boca Grande; the admiral removed the ships that had guarded that narrow strait and sent them to the Manzanillo channel leading into the Surgidero.104
The 6th of April saw only scouting operations. Vernon aboard his Princess Carolina, entered the main bay in company with three smaller craft and reconnoitered, anchoring for the night off Punta de Perico. The following day Eslava began obstructing Manzanillo channel by scuttling what merchant ships he had there and setting fire to the upper parts still visible above water.105 On the 10th, the viceroy had a conference with his chief engineer, Carlos de Noux, who convinced him that the Castillo Grande fort could hold out but a day at the most against the English fleet and that any garrison would be unable to escape. Accordingly, orders were given to abandon the fort and spike its guns, and as Noux also had no hope that Lezo’s two remaining warships, El Dragón and El Conquistador, could resist long, these also were scuttled.106 Meanwhile, more English warships had been entering the bay, and one of these approached Castillo Grande, fired a few testing shots, and, as there was no reply, landed a party to occupy it.107 Fort Manzanillo then became useless as a harbor defense and soon fell into English hands.108
El Conquistador had been only partially scuttled and remained half afloat and movable. Two English warships attached cables to this vessel’s poop and with exertion succeeded in turning her so as to clear an entrance passage. Immediately bomb ketches with protecting warships moved in and began to shell the city, keeping up the bombardment until the 27th of April and, meanwhile, facilitating the landing of Wentworth’s troops.109 Shots fell inside Cartagena and houses were destroyed, but no time could be spared for repairs, as all available labor was needed to strengthen the fortifications. On the 15th Eslava, with a small escort, rode to the harbor shore to inspect his advanced outposts; the English gunners aboard the ships saw him and made him the target of a redoubled bombardment. Blas de Lezo, some distance away, heard the extra shooting and sent his aide de camp to learn the cause. Eslava sent the man back with the reply that the English had recognized him and fired a salute as was their obligation: he expected that on retirement they would do so again.110
It required a week to transport the Anglo-Colonial army, much diminished now by disease, from Tierra Bomba to the Surgidero. As usual, the energetic Vernon complained at the slovenliness of the land forces, and claimed that the entire burden fell upon his sailors. On the 16th some of the troops were landed at Tejar de Gracias, about three miles from the city, and marched in the direction of Fort San Felipe on Mount San Lázaro. They made no move against the strong-hold that night, but some of the colonials occupied the Cerro de la Popa, a hill from which they could see the city and all its fortifications.111 There was skirmishing between the British and the Spaniards, who drew off without making a serious resistance.
Meanwhile, Wentworth was having his usual debate with the admirals. He wanted 5,000 men put ashore, whereas they insisted the 1,500 he already had should be ample for storming San Felipe and taking Cartagena as well. They stood ready to land whatever numbers he required, but urged him above all to act with speed. On the 15th day they wrote, “We think if you push with vigour you can’t fail of success”;112 an encouragement that failed to stir him to action. On the 17th and 18th they gave in to his wishes completely and landed the entire force, reminding him “that the most fatal enemy to be apprehended is from delay exposing your troops to the approaching rains.”113 But Wentworth, who could probably have taken the fort with one bold rush and then pursued the enemy into Cartagena, settled down to construct the same type of elaborate camp with which he had wasted his troops’ time and strength on Tierra Bomba. In hopes of obtaining some action, Vernon sent him as a guide Mr. Alexander MacPherson, purser of the Sandwich, who had been to Cartagena before and knew the surrounding country thoroughly. The general appeared uninterested, and returned the Scot to the fleet. Then, under MacPherson’s direction, a map of all the neighboring roads was drawn and delivered to Wentworth, but this only brought the remark that such matters as reducing forts could not be undertaken in a hurry. The general continued to insist that San Felipe was stronger than the navy men supposed and that “a breach ought first to be made in a garrison town before any attack.”114 He suggested that the fleet bombard the fort, though he should have known that it lay out of effective range. At this point, the never very stable Vernon temper flared. The admiral, with Ogle’s concurrence, drafted a scathing letter pointing out that so far the fleet had done all the work and its guns had even protected the army from Spanish raiders. “And with the least observation everyone can’t but be sensible that no ship can be brought to do you more service in the attack of St. Lazar than she has already done.” Furthermore, they continued, “if your Council of War continue of opinion for raising batteries to make a breach against so paltry a fort as St. Lazar, let your engineers complete their battery, which is the first step, and we will answer for it, they shall never wait a minute for their cannon.”115
Wentworth’s own engineers persuaded him not to lose more time in erecting a battery to blast the easily surmountable walls of San Felipe, and they repeated the admiral’s warnings concerning the nearness of the rainy season. Therefore, as he could find no further ways to delay a disagreeable decision, he made ready to assault the fort on April 20. He formed his troops and began the advance at three in the morning, detailing 1,500 men for the assault, though the Spaniards later thought they had been attacked by about 4,000.116 Colonel Wynyard was to lead the main attack up the eastern slope where he would not come under the fire of the Cartagena guns, and Colonel Grant, with a smaller force, was to attack from the north. Brigadier General J. Guise would command the entire operation.
The viceroy had strengthened San Felipe as well as his small numbers would permit, and had worked his men to the last minute. One of the best ideas, conceived by either Eslava or Lezo, was the digging of a trench just in front of the walls. This meant that the English sealing ladders, had they ever been placed against the walls, would have proved too short by ten feet and therefore useless. Inside the fort were the battalions named España and Aragón, and during the battle these received a timely reinforcement of 250 of Lezo’s marines.117
The English assault went as badly as Wentworth’s operations customarily did. Wynyard’s and Grant’s columns, guided by local creoles who professed to be pro-British, left camp together and parted as they approached the objective. Wynyard’s men, whose guides either blundered or deceived them, were led toward the east side by an ascent so steep as to force them to climb on hands and knees. Because of this slow progress it was broad daylight by the time they reached the top, and the Spaniards poured a deadly fire of musketry into them. Grant’s force on the north side came under fire at about the same time, and one of the first volleys mortally wounded Grant himself. His troops called for ladders, which had been entrusted to the American colonials, “but the undisciplined Americans had long since thrown them down and fled.”118 Cannon might have been used to silence the Spanish artillery, but these were at the tail end of the columns and evidently could not be brought forward. Possibly a coordinated rush by both divisions would still have carried the works, but no one gave such an order and the troops attempted to keep formation in the open without advancing, and meanwhile returned the Spanish fire as well as possible. Wynyard’s grenadiers coolly lit their fuses and hurled grenades at the enemy, but most of these were defective and scarcely one in three would explode. Wentworth allowed his men to absorb this punishment until eight o’clock, when he mistook a reinforcement sent by Eslava from Cartagena to the fort for an effort to cut the British off from their ships.119 He then gave the order to retire and the men did so in a fairly disciplined manner. The British had suffered a loss of 43 officers and 136 men killed and a total of 475 wounded. Colonel Grant, just before dying, managed to gasp, “The general ought to hang the guides and the king ought to hang the general.”120
Wentworth could now report to Vernon and Ogle that he had 3,569 men left, many of whom lay in the camp prostrate with yellow fever, while others were too fatigued to be of service. With the disastrous outcome of the assault, the admirals were ready to agree that the campaign must be called off, though Vernon climbed Cerro de la Popa to reconnoiter the scene and “visibly there perceived how easily they might have succeeded in that attempt, as well as how, from want of prudent conduct, they had come so ill off.”121 But as matters stood, the only thing was to re-ship troops and artillery as fast as possible.
Skirmishing went on for days, and the British continued to bombard Cartagena from a distance, though a brief armistice was arranged for collection of the wounded and burial of the dead. During this truce Spanish officers told an English naval captain that if Wentworth had straightway attacked their fort instead of bothering to build his camp, he would have found them utterly unprepared to hold it and that only the general’s procrastination had enabled them to make it defensible.122
On April 28 Eslava learned from a Biscayan sailor who had escaped from British captivity that Wentworth’s troops had reembarked.123 The fact that the viceroy had to learn this from an escaped prisoner certainly did not speak well for his vigilance and communications, but he at once sent men to the camp site in hopes of cutting off the rear guard. These captured only an officer, six soldiers, and two Negroes, but found a great deal of ammunition, camp equipment, and digging instruments for building entrenchments.124 The Spaniards made no effort to impede the further evacuation of the British, who, as they went, demolished Castillo Grande and the works around Bocachica. Not until May 20 did the last British ship leave the vicinity. Vernon and Ogle, who relieved him in October, made no further attempt against Cartagena, although the irate Blas de Lezo evidently expected them to do so. Writing to Sebastián de la Quadra on May 30, the Spanish admiral complained of Eslava’s laxness by saying, “the city is in the same state it was in on April 28, when the last shot was fired, without there having been built a single outwork for its defense, meaning that the enemy can penetrate at will from the mouth to the harbor without the slightest opposition.”125 Lezo concluded by requesting permission to return to Spain by any transportation available, as he had no naval vessels left. This doughty warrior had fought his last fight, however, for he died at Cartagena on September 7, 1741, of his wound and the fatigues of the campaign. The Spanish king honored him with the title Marqués de Ovieco, but the ennoblement unfortunately had to be posthumous.126
The young viceroy, however well or ill he had managed the defense, had at least been fortunate. He became Marqués de la Real Defensa, and governed the viceroyalty until 1749, when he returned to Spain to become captain general of Andalucía. His residencia, held, after he had gone home, at Santa Fé de Bogotá where he had never resided, saw ten charges brought against him, but these turned out to be mostly technicalities, and the oidor of the audiencia, Antonio de Berástegui, easily refuted them.127 Eslava held other important military posts in Spain until the death of King Ferdinand VI in 1759, after which he seems to have retired from public life, although he lived until 1789. A portrait of him in the Museo Nacional of Bogotá must have been painted in later years, for it shows a man obviously much older than Eslava could have been as viceroy.
The War of Jenkins’ Ear, which merged into that of the Austrian Succession and ultimately involved France as Spain’s ally, dragged on until 1748 and ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and the supplementary Treaty of Madrid. No territorial changes took place between England and Spain.
How important was the successful Spanish defense of Cartagena? There is no doubt that the British planned here the heaviest blow they leveled against the Spanish American empire until the attempt on Buenos Aires in 1806-1807, by which time the empire was ready to crumble. The Spanish naval historian, Cesáreo Fernández Duro, has written, “Without any exaggeration, if the English had made themselves masters of that place, all the mainland Indies would now be in their possession.”128 Their aim was permanent conquest, and if they had taken the city and learned to cope with its climate, as they did in many other tropical places, they should have been able to seize and hold the Isthmus of Panama, already presaged by their capture of Portobelo and Chagres. This would have split the Spanish empire and must surely have led to major alterations in the history of the New World.
Cristóbal Bermúdez Plata, Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras por los Señores Don Cristóbal Bermúdez Plata y Don Celestino López Martínez (Sevilla, 1931), p. 35.
Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739-1763 (Oxford, 1936), p. 5.
Francisco Javier Vergara y Velasco, Capítulos de una historia civil y militar de Colombia, 3d. ser. (Bogotá, 1908), pp. 65-77.
Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta, Historia de España y su influencia en la historia universal, V (Barcelona, 1929), 51-59. Alberoni did not become a cardinal until July, 1717.
Carlos Restrepo Canal, “El sitio de Cartagena por el Almirante Vernon,” Boletín de historia y antigüidades (Colombia), XXVIII (1941), 451.
Jerónimo Becker and José María Rivas Groot, El Nuevo Reino de Granada en el siglo xviii (Madrid, 1921), p. 201.
Vergara y Velasco, Capítulos, 1st ser. (Bogotá, 1905), p. 71.
Ibid.
Gabriel Porras Troconis, Historia de la cultura en el Nuevo Reino de Granada (Sevilla, 1952), p. 150.
Becker and Rivas Groot, El Nuevo Reino, pp. 203-230.
Cayetano Alcázar Molina, Los virreinatos en el siglo xviii (Barcelona-Buenos Aires, 1945), pp. 263-264.
William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy, a History, III (London, 1898), 44.
Alcázar Molina, Los virreinatos, pp. 227-228.
The school was founded by Próspero Jorge, Marquis of Verboom, a Belgian who became a Spanish officer and spent his later years living in the Barcelona citadel.
Restrepo Canal, Boletín de historia, XXVIII, 452-453.
“Relación sobre el gobierno del virrey Eslava,” Relaciones de mando, compiled and published by E. Posada and P. M. Ibañez (Bogotá, 1910), p. 53.
J. K. Laughton, “Jenkins’ Ear,” English Historial Review, IV (1889), 748.
H. W. V. Temperley, “The Causes of the War of Jenkins’ Ear,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, III (1909), 14.
Ibid., p. 10.
Pares, War and Trade, p. 53.
The Vernon Papers, ed. B. McL. Ranft (Greenwich, England, 1958), p. 2; Temperley, Transactions, passim.
Ibid., pp. 35-36.
H.W. Richmond, The Navy in the War of 1739-48, I (Cambridge, England, 1920), 37. Hereinafter cited as Richmond.
Vergara y Velasco, Capítulos, 1st ser., p. 73.
Clowes, Boyal Navy, III, 60-61.
Bermúdez Plata, Discursos, p. 36.
His first thought was of raising money and he at once appealed to the citizens of Cartagena for funds. Roberto Triana, “Epistolario del virrey Eslava,” Boletín de historia, XIV (1922), 379.
Cesáreo Fernández Duro, “Don Blas de Lezo,” Almanaque de la ilustración para el año de 1881 (Madrid, 1880), p. 24.
Ibid., p. 25; Colección de opúsculos del Exmo. Sr. D. Martín Fernández de Navarrete, ed. Eustaquio and Francisco Fernández de Navarrete, II (Madrid, 1848), 268.
Jean O. McLachlan, Trade and Peace with Old Spain, 1667-1760 (Cambridge, England, 1940), pp. 146-148.
Ibid., p. 152.
Antonio Béthencourt Massieu, Patiño en la política internacional de Felipe V (Valladolid, 1954), p. 18.
Ibid., p. 19.
Cyril Hughes Hartmann, The Angry Admiral. The Later Career of Edward Vernon (Melbourne, London, Toronto, 1953), p. 10. Hereinafter cited as Hartmann.
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid., pp. 16-18.
Vernon Papers, p. 6.
Ibid., p. 7.
Cesáreo Fernándedz Duro, Armada española desde la unión de los reinos de Castilla y de Aragón, VI (Madrid, 1900), 254.
Vernon Papers, p. 45.
Hartmann, p. 32.
Vernon Papers, p. 42.
Illustrations are shown by Restrepo Canal, Boletín de historia XXVIII 464-465.
Bermúdez Plata, Discursos, p. 33.
Documentas para la historia de Cartagena, compiled by José P. Urueta, IV (Cartagena, 1880), 199.
Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 60-61.
Richmond, I, 51-52.
Vernon Papers, p. 82.
Ibid., pp. 82-83.
A voyage Around the World in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV by George Anson, Esq., by Richard Walton, 2d. ed. (London, 1748), p. 3.
Richmond, I, 97-98.
Ibid., pp. 98-99.
Ibid., p. 99.
Ibid., p. 94. Plans concerning the convoy remained uncertain until September 13, 1740, when Ogle received orders to undertake the task.
Hartmann, p. 44.
Leander McCormick-Goodhart, “Admiral Vernon; his Marylanders and his Medals,” Maryland Historical Magazine, XXX (1935), 247.
John Tate Lanning, The Diplomatic History of Georgia. A Study of the Epoch of Jenkins’ Ear (Chapel Hill, 1936), pp. 223-225.
The Hunting Creek plantation was evidently given by the father, Augustine Washington, to Lawrence in 1740, although Augustine lived until 1743. Lawrence, dying in 1752, left a widow, who soon remarried, and a small daughter, Sarah. He left a life interest to his wife and permanent ownership to Sarah, with remainder to George in case she died or had no issue. Sarah soon died and George rented the estate until 1761 when his former sister-in-law’s death placed him in full possession.
An Account of the Expedition to Cartagena with Explanatory Notes and Observations, 3d. ed. (London, 1743), pp. 55-46.
J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, II (London, 1910), 62. Hereinafter cited as Fortescue.
An Account of the Expedition, p. 55.
Fortescue, II, 60.
Hartmann, pp. 46-47.
Vernon was known as “Old Grog” because he wore a foul weather cloak made of the coarse fabric grogram, supposedly waterproof. When he issued watered rum to the sailors, they named the thinned beverage after him. Hartmann, p. 46.
Richmond, I, 103.
Ibid.; Fortescue, II, 62.
Vernon Papers, p. 171. Dandridge was the brother of Martha Dandridge, later Martha Custis, later Martha Washington.
Richmond, I, 107.
Vernon Papers, p. 137.
Ibid., p. 164; Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 70.
Hartmann, p. 61; Clowes, Royal Navy, III, 70: Richmond, I, 106. The figures of these authorities do not quite agree.
Fernández Duro, Armada española, VI, 277.
Relaciones de mando, pp. 18-19.
This is presumably the “Diario de todo lo ocurrido en la expugnación de los fuertes de Bocachica y sitio de la ciudad de Cartagena de las Indias en 1741,” Colección de libros raros ó curiosos que tratan de América, XI (Madrid, 1894), 189-214. Hereinafter cited as Diario.
Enrique Marco Dorta, Cartagena de Indias. La ciudad y sus monumentos (Sevilla, 1951), pp. 236-239. Dorta publishes numerous old maps of Cartagena that show the situation changed as the Boca Grande continually opened and closed.
Diario, p. 194.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Perhaps Eslava considered any reinforcements he might receive a useless encumbrance. On March 30, during the fighting, he sent back 250 militiamen who were on their way to the city “por ser inútil para el servicio.” “Diario de lo acaecido en la invasión hecha por los ingleses,” Documentos para la historia de Cartagena, VII (Cartagena, 1891), 19. Hereinafter cited as Documentos.
Ibid., p. 33.
Ibid., p. 32.
Diario, p. 196.
Documentos, p. 15. Spanish and English dates for these events differ because Spain used the Gregorian calendar and England still employed the Julian. All dates here given for the fighting are according to the Spanish Gregorian system.
Documentos, p. 15.
Ibid.
Vernon Papers, p. 194.
Documentos, p. 16.
Ibid., p. 17.
Diario, p. 197.
Vernon Papers, pp. 194-195.
Fortescue, II, 65.
Documentos, pp. 18 ff.
Ibid., p. 19. The deserter was evidently mistaken regarding the road, but certainly correct as to the illnesses.
Ibid., pp. 19-20; Vernon Papers, p. 209.
Doeumentos, p. 20.
Ibid., p. 21 ; Diario, p. 202.
Doeumentos, pp. 21-22.
Ibid., p. 22. Carlos de Noux, who defended the fort, says that most of the men were picked up in launches and canoes, but he evidently refers to the rescue at the stone quarry.
Vernon Papers, p. 211.
Documentos, p. 22; Vernon Papers, p. 211.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 212.
Documentos, p. 22.
Ibid., p. 23.
Ibid.
Vernon Papers, p. 214.
Ibid., p. 215; Documentos, p. 24.
Ibid., pp. 24-28.
Ibid., p. 24.
Hartmann, p. 81; Doeumentos, p. 25.
Vernon Papers, p. 217.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 234.
Ibid., p. 219.
Documentos, p. 25; Diario, p. 207.
Hartmann, p. 82.
Fortescue, II, 70.
Ibid., p. 71; Documentos, p. 26.
Fortescue, II, 71: Tobias Smollett, Roderick Random, part II, ch. 33, says “. . . a resolution was taken in a council of war, to attack the place with musketry only. This was put in execution, and succeeded accordingly; the enemy giving them such a hearty reception, that the greatest part of the detachment took up their everlasting repose on the spot.” Roderick is fiction but Smollett was present at the siege as a naval surgeon.
Richmond, I, 22.
Hartmann, p. 82.
Documentos, p. 28.
Ibid.
Fernández Duro, Armada española, VI, 278.
José March y Labores, Historia de la marina real española desde el descubrimiento de las Americas hasta el combate de Trafalgar, II (Madrid, 1854), 663.
Relaciones de mando, pp. 17-73.
Quoted by Hartmann, p. 93.
Author notes
The author is professor of history at the University of Illinois.