The war was eminently a naval conflict happened in the Caribbean, where political tensions about trade and piracy between the two countries ended up with them coming to blows, or rather to cannonfire. Its curious name would come from a British sailor who complained to the Parliament that a disrespectful Spanish coastguard had severed his ear (several years earlier), after which a warmongering opposition called for military retaliation. The British navy would be sent with the goal to conquer the city ports of the Spanish viceroyalties, setting in motion a sea invasion of monumental scale, while for their part, the Hispanics just dug the heels of their alpargatas into the muck of their coastal Hungry Jungle and dared the British to come. The war would eventually achieve nothing, as the attackers failed to accomplish decisive conquests, often disastrously so, although the defenders equally failed at expanding into the British colonies in America and fulfill the so-called "Spanish Alarm."
Unlike other conflicts in the history of both United Kingdom and Spain, this war went relatively unnoticed in pop culture, due not only to its eventual uneventfulness, but also to the fact than a much greater and more complex war overshadowed it before it had even ended. Still, it left a couple marks, such as English admiral Edward Vernon, who was remembered as the hero of Portobello, and its Spanish counterpart Blas de Lezo, considered one of the greatest admirals ever and a Memetic Handicapped Badass in Spain.
Background
After the War of the Spanish Succession, the now Bourbonic Spanish Empire had lost most of its possessions in Europe. It had also lost its asiento de negros, its rights of the Atlantic slave trade, which would go to Great Britain for the next thirty years, including also a license for the British to send a yearly navío de permiso to trade in the the previously closed Indies. However, relationships between the two empires hadn't improved, including a short, forgettable war in 1719, so a variety of complaints, demands and toe-stepping happened every day since, usually with the Spaniards complaining about British and Dutch piracy and contraband in their seas. In order to counter it, the Spanish improved greatly their navy and resorted to royal corsairs like Miguel Enríquez, a Scary Black Man that became the richest man in the Caribbean at the expense of the British, but this only caused further friction.In the 1730s, things were initially smoother, with both Spain and Britain being at the same side the War of the Polish Succession, but everything returned to its sour state afterwards. British Prime Minister Robert Walpole was opposed to war, but he found himself sorely pressed by an opposition that demanded military action against the Spanish Empire for all the affronts, and the thing exploded when a supposed contrabandist, Robert Jenkins, appeared in the Parlament to show that a Spanish privateer had sliced off his left ear and threatened to do the same to British King George II if he dared to come. Walpole eventually submitted to the heated environment and agreed to send military forces against Spain, and after a string of failed negotiations, Spanish King Philip V revoked the British commercial privileges, making them declare war in 1739.
Sieges in the Caribbean
Under the command of admiral Edward Vernon, the British Navy initiated in 1740 a plan to capture the rich ports of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (modern day Venezuela and other countries). The plan started off on the wrong foot, as their attempt to take La Guaira failed due to its strong defense, but they found success in Portobello, which they captured to great fanfare of the British press (it is remembered today by Portobello Road, in west London), after which Vernon sent Commodore George Anson to circumnavigate South America so they could simulaneously attack the Spanish ports in the Pacific. He then went himself for the capital of the zone, Cartagena de Indias, but the Spanish positions turned out again too well defended, and the same difficulties welcomed Anson, whose expedition was wrecked by the difficult navigation and a chase by admiral José Alfonso Pizarro (no known relation to Francisco). Eventually, though, Vernon succeeded in destroying San Lorenzo el Real del Chagres, a center of Spanish privateering.Meanwhile in Florida, war reached the Spanish forts of San Agustín and Fuerte Mosé. The latter had a strong symbolic value, as it basically the first city of free black people in America, settled by former slaves of the British colonies that had escaped to the Spanish viceroyalty under the promise of freedom in exchange for military service. The British governor of Georgia, James Oglethorpe, attacked Fuerte Mosé with the help of local Seminola and Creek tribes (as well as, ironically, a contingent of black slaves), but its garrison, led by the freedman Francisco Menéndez, escaped in time and returned with reinforcements from around the zone to return the blow. Oglethorpe then opted to besiege San Agustín, where the Spanish forces had gathered, but the impossibility to fully cut all the roads and the news of a relief fleet forced him to give it up and return home. Around this time, at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, British corsairs attacked the Canary Islands, but they were repelled too.
Vernon had originally conceived to deviate towards Cuba in 1741, but the success of Portobello and San Lorenzo convinced him that Cartagena de Indias would fall under just enough pressure, so they gathered a humongous 186-ship fleet in Jamaica and sailed towards the city. Their advantage in numbers and guns over the city's garrison (as much as 30,000 vs. 4,000) seemed such a safe win that few could blame them for sending letters to Great Britain announcing that they had already conquered Cartagena and therefore snatched the control of New Granada, which brought celebrations, parties and even commemorative coins and medals for having surrendered the place. However, Cartagena would turn out to have unexpected natural defenses and the presence of Blas de Lezo, a Spanish veteran famous for lacking an eye, an arm and a leg who was nonetheless the man (or the half-man, as he was later known) needed to do the job.
After forcing their entry in the bay of Cartagena, the British army disembarked an army to assault their walls. However, the expedition was unprepared for the tropical jungle and its rainy season, and just as Lezo had expected in a Fabian approach, malaria and other diseases started utterly decimating them, allowing the defenders to rout them easily. Vernon then changed tactics and, after probing the defenses with an attack of British slaves, ordered an assault with ladders the next day. However, Lezo (or his lieutenants in charge, depending on the source) read through this and ordered his men to dig the moat deeper by night, so when the attack came, the British discovered that their ladders didn't reach high enough anymore, and were routed again by heavy fire. Vernon retreated to the fleet and tried to force the fortress to submit by bombardment, but the diseases and shortage of food went beyond the tolerable and forced him to return home, where explaining the real outcome was an awkward affair. Ironically, Lezo himself would also die shortly after of illness caused by battle wounds.
After the failed siege of Cartagena and its subsequent scandal abroad, Vernon decided New Granada was too tough of a target, so he next directed the remnants of his fleet to Cuba, where much less resistance was expected to be found. Judging his best option was attacking Santiago de Cuba, the main city of the least populated segment of the island, he disembarked in Guantanamo Bay in July 1741 and sent his lieutenant Thomas Wentworth towards the city, but the Hispanics led by Francisco Caxigal de la Vega waged an intense guerrilla campaign against them through the road, adding to the already usual tropical diseases. Vernon had decided to take his time, but with the increasing losses and his disagreements with Wentworth, and seeking to avoid a repeat of Cartagena, he ultimately ordered his forces to evacuate and return to Jamaica. This would be Vernon's last mission before being recalled home and replaced by Sir Chaloner Ogle.
War in Europe
The war experienced a hiatus of months until an instrumental event happened back in Europe: the War of the Austrian Succession, a miniature world war which pit Spain and France against Great Britain (and many other countries in every side, actually) and eventually moved most moved of the action from the Indies to Europe. The Spanish forces in Florida switched to the offensive and initiated an invason of Georgia, thinking it would be the right chance to conquer given that Britain's reinforcements were busy elsewhere, but a wild ambush in Bloody Marsh and a smart misinformation play by Oglethorpe made the Hispanics retreat. Oglethorpe declined a counterinvasion, though, upon realizing the clash between Florida and Georgia would likely be a continuous Wimp Fight. In 1743, Ogle sent his lieutenant Sir Charles Knowles to try to take again the Spanish ports of New Granada, although this time with smaller resources and lesser targets. However, but they would be repealed from La Guaira and Puerto Cabello by the foces of Gabriel de Zuloaga.The Anson expedition, by this point arguably The Artifact of the first phases of the war, was diverted to attack the Spanish Philippines. With the help of the Portuguese, the Spaniards' Iberian rivals, Anson successfully captured one of their Manila galleons, although his activities were cut short by unexpected parties, the local Chinese authorities and European merchants, who were wary that another nation was engaging in piracy around and threatening their vital trade with Manila. Still, Anson returned as a celebrity to England, in a much needed bout of morale given that Spanish privateers, now unimpeded by the lack of British success, had started wreaking havoc in the British transatlantic shipping. Anson then turned his efforts on more manageable naval battles against the French.
The British and Spaniards clashed again in the Austrian conflict at the beginning of 1744, when a Franco-Spanish fleet under Juan José Navarro in Toulon bruted a needed supply fleet through English ships led by admiral Thomas Matthews, who would be accused of lacking battle wits. Matthews retreated to the allied kingdom of Sardinia, but another Bourbonic fleet under the Spanish Infante Philip and the beat them again and made the king of Sardinia, Vittorio Francesco de Savoy, a prisoner of war.
End of the war
In 1747, the British and their allied Miskito Indians scored a win by destroying a fort in Costa Rica and keeping their positions. While this happened, it also took place one of of the last crazy trivia facts of the war: the voyage of the Glorioso, a Spanish ship loaded with American silver and captained by the former Viceroy of New Granada himself, Pedro Messía de la Cerda, which managed to fight its way through three individually stronger enemy parties until successfully unloading its cargo in Galicia. The ship was eventually captured afterwards, but it was so damaged by all the fighting that it had to be broken up, while Messía was taken to London, where he was treated as a Worthy Opponent by his sheer cojones and later freed.The following year, seeking to stop Spanish privateering, Sir Charles Knowles attacked their main base, Santiago de Cuba, but again, the were beat by the local defense, this time by Alonso de Arcos Moreno. Skirmishes continued throughout the year, with the British extracting a publicized win against pirates in Brunswick (wrongly called the last engagement in the war by some sources), until the last conquering effort was made in La Havana. Knowles' flotilla fortuitously found Spanish ships leaving the port and drove them back, but he found himself without force to attack further the port. Before any further action, it was learned that the two nations had signed up the Treaty of Aquisgran. After a lot of negotiations with Spain's new king Ferdinand IV, war was finally over.
In fiction
Literature- James A. Michener's novel Caribbean includes the war.
- Lezo has a cameo in The Ministry of Time, played by Vicente Colomar, although the war itself is only portrayed in one of the series' comic spinoffs, Mi tiempo se agota.
