Richard Harding’s ambitious study of Britain’s disastrous expedition against Spanish America during the War of Jenkins’ Ear underscores the possibilities for re-interpretation of quite well known events. The ministry of Sir Robert Walpole, long condemned for inefficiencies in the organization and supply of the expeditionary force, receives rehabilitation. Brigadier General Thomas Wentworth, criticized for inexperience and incompetence in the agonizing British defeats at Cartagena, Santiago de Cuba, and Portobello, earns sympathetic treatment if not total rehabilitation. Notwithstanding the tragic loss of 10,000 to 14,000 British and colonial North American soldiers, most to tropical diseases rather than combat, Wentworth no longer emerges as the prime culprit. That role is reserved for the erstwhile naval hero, Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, who Harding finds primarily responsible for the succession of military disasters.
Outraged by arbitrary seizures of merchant shipping in the Caribbean, the British planned to capture a strategic port, such as Havana, Cartagena, Veracruz, or Portobello. After considering the possible danger of also having to face a combined Spanish-French naval squadron, Vernon selected Cartagena, which had fallen to the French in 1697. After delays in assembling ships, troops, munitions, and supplies, which were almost unavoidable in eighteenth-century expeditions, Britain dispatched a well-equipped and supplied expeditionary force. The British and American colonial troops were neither the “abandoned wretches” nor the “banditry” described by observers following the defeats.
Vernon needed to watch for a possible coalescence of Spanish and French naval forces, but his absolute disdain for the Spaniards and their fortifications was a crucial flaw. Concerned only with the marine side, Vernon dominated the inexperienced Wentworth and assumed total command during the attack on Cartagena. Unaware that the Spanish had constructed much stronger, more modern fortifications since the buccaneering raids of the seventeenth century, Vernon bullied Wentworth and denied him the essential naval cooperation to breach the fortress walls. The naval commander failed to understand that in amphibious operations, the prime requirement was total cooperation between sea and land forces. The final British attack by escalade, promoted by Vernon, was a disastrous failure that Vernon blamed on Wentworth. Much weakened by disease, the force withdrew from Cartagena to launch a new attack on Santiago de Cuba. Landing at Guantanamo Bay, Vernon rejected accurate information from army engineers that there was no suitable road to Santiago de Cuba. After losing many troops to disease, the expedition withdrew to suffer one more defeat at Panama. By May 1742, little remained of the original expeditionary force and its reinforcements.
Although Harding might have presented additional evidence from Spanish archival sources, he illustrates the full impact of improved eighteenth-century defensive fortifications and of strategies designed to immobilize enemy attackers until they succumbed to tropical diseases. Vernon’s refusal to commit his seamen to amphibious landings and systematic siege operations sealed the British failures in the 1740-42 operations. Harding’s revisionism may overstate Vernon’s responsibility for these disasters somewhat, but his book is essential for scholars interested in understanding the defense of eighteenth-century Spanish America and amphibious operations during the age of sail.
