War of Jenkins’s Ear was fought between British and Spanish forces in the Americas from 1739 to 1743. At the time, Great Britain (now the United Kingdom) and Spain were on opposite sides of a general European struggle, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). In the Americas, the two nations were competing for colonial dominance and control of trade. The War of Jenkins’s Ear saw bloody battles fought on land and at sea, but it ended in a draw. Colonial boundaries and trade agreements remained largely what they were before the war.
Background.
Beginning in the 1500’s, Spain created colonies in the Caribbean and areas of Central and North America around the Gulf of Mexico . Britain also created colonies in the Caribbean and the east coast of North America. The two powers often quarreled over territory as well as shipping and trade rights, and they fought a succession of brief wars. In 1731, the Spanish captured Robert Jenkins, a British sea captain whom they suspected of smuggling. The Spanish cut off Jenkins’s ear as punishment. In 1738, the case received publicity in the British press, and it was cited in the British Parliament as proof of Spanish “tyranny.” It was the most famous of several incidents that again led Britain and Spain to war.
The war.
Shortly after declaring war on Spain in October 1739, British naval and marine forces raided Spanish ships and territories along the coasts of the present-day countries of Colombia , Panama , and Venezuela . Royal Navy Admiral Edward Vernon seized Portobello, a wealthy silver-exporting city on the coast of what is now Panama. The victory was widely celebrated in Britain.
The largest and bloodiest battle of the war was the siege that began in March 1741 at Cartagena , where the Spanish repelled a similar British attempt to take the important Colombian port city. Admiral Vernon and General Thomas Wentworth’s invasion force numbered about 30,000. It included a significant number of British colonists organized into the American Regiment, commanded by Colonel William Gooch. Lawrence Washington, the elder half brother of future United States President George Washington, served as a company commander in the American Regiment. He later named his estate Mount Vernon for the British admiral. The British failed to take Cartagena. Stiff Spanish defenses, combined with mosquito-borne diseases that claimed thousands of sailors, contributed to the British defeat.
Between 1740 and 1744, Commodore George Anson led a Royal Navy squadron in a daring circumnavigation of the world. Fighting occurred off the western coast of South America and in the Pacific Ocean , where Anson’s ships tried to disrupt Spanish shipping lanes connecting Mexico and Peru with the Philippines .
In southeastern North America, Spanish and British troops battled for control of the borders and coastline of colonial Florida and Georgia . By June 1740, a British force—led by James Oglethorpe , the founder of the Georgia colony—captured two forts near Saint Augustine in Spanish Florida. One of those forts, named Fort Mose , had been a small community of free African Americans who had fled enslavement in the southern British colonies and taken refuge in Florida. A Spanish counterattack—composed of Spanish regulars, the free black militia, and Native American allies—successfully defeated a British force holding Fort Mose. After failing to take Saint Augustine itself, the British retreated to St. Simons Island in Georgia. In July 1742, Spanish troops assaulted St. Simons Island, but they were defeated at the Battle of Bloody Marsh . Border clashes continued without resolution into 1743.
By 1744, French involvement as a Spanish ally in the War of the Austrian Succession forced the British to turn their attention largely to Europe, effectively ending the War of Jenkins’s Ear. British troops, however, did fight the French in King George’s War (1744-1748), which took place for similar commercial and territorial reasons in New England and New France in North America.
Aftermath.
Little was accomplished in the War of Jenkins’s Ear, but both sides suffered heavy casualties (people killed, wounded, missing, or captured). Thousands more soldiers and sailors fell victim to tropical diseases, particularly yellow fever , than died in battle.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 returned all colonial claims to previous owners. Fighting in the Americas resumed in the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the result of which gave Britain control of North America east of the Mississippi River .
