War of Jenkins' Ear
Britain declared war on Spain in October 1739 over trading rights in the Caribbean, in a conflict named for a severed ear produced in the House of Commons. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 had given Britain the asiento — the contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America — and the right to send one trading ship a year to the annual fair at Porto Bello. British merchants used both as cover for large-scale smuggling, and the Spanish guarda costas responded by boarding and seizing British vessels, often violently and sometimes beyond any legal warrant. Robert Jenkins, master of the brig Rebecca, claimed his ear had been cut off by a Spanish officer in 1731 who told him to take it to his king. He testified to a committee in 1738, allegedly producing the ear in a jar. The opposition under William Pitt used the episode to force a reluctant Robert Walpole into a war he had spent twenty years avoiding, and which he correctly expected to go badly. Admiral Vernon took Porto Bello in 1739 with six ships, which produced enormous celebration in Britain, streets named after it, and the first known public performance of Rule, Britannia. The main effort failed completely. The attack on Cartagena de Indias in 1741 involved some 27,000 men and 180 ships, the largest amphibious operation before the twentieth century, and was destroyed by the fortifications under Blas de Lezo and by yellow fever, with about 18,000 casualties. The war merged into the War of the Austrian Succession and ended in 1748 with nothing settled.
- Year: 1739 CE
- Category: Military
