Henry Marsh

Henry Marsh commanded the small squadron that took Senegal from France in 1758 and demonstrated what the war was going to be. He was a Royal Navy officer of no particular family who had reached commodore rank, and the expedition he was given was not the Admiralty's idea: it came from a Quaker merchant, Thomas Cumming, who had traded on the Guinea coast, knew the French posts were weakly garrisoned and dependent on local goodwill, and had made contact with the ruler of the Trarza on the north bank of the Senegal river. Cumming put the plan to Pitt, who saw it as the war he wanted - cheap, distant, aimed at French trade rather than French armies. Marsh sailed in March 1758 with two small warships, a sloop and a few transports carrying about two hundred marines. Fort Saint-Louis surrendered in early May after a brief show of force and negotiation, yielding gum arabic, slaves, ships and stores worth far more than the expedition cost. Goree fell to a second expedition later in the year. The Senegal posts were the first French colonial possessions taken in the Seven Years' War and became the pattern for the rest: a global campaign against French trade financed by the profits of the previous capture. Marsh went on to further service and died in 1770. Senegal was returned in 1783 and the gum trade was the reason it kept changing hands. The expedition's promoter, Thomas Cumming, sailed with it and is sometimes called the fighting Quaker on account of it, which he disliked. The prize money from Senegal was distributed in London within months and helped finance the Goree expedition that followed. Contemporary accounts put the marines' losses at fewer than ten.

• Nationality: British
• Roles: military