I have been out of the blog business for a while. Teaching full time and being a busy mom (is
there any other kind though), have been occupying my time, so I haven’t had the
open schedule I needed to research and write.
I can’t guarantee that I will be able to post regularly, but my
historian itch needed scratched. I put
out the call to friends for questions or topic ideas, and someone wanted me to
write about an obscure little war. So
here goes.
When I mention Austria, Britain, Spain, and France in the
context of war, you probably think of one of the World Wars, and wonder why I
left out Germany. Well, long before the
twentieth century, European powers were flexing their muscles and getting all
“salty” with each other. One example
involved some sailors in the Caribbean, a severed ear, and I would imagine some
very creative language.
If we traveled back to April 9, 1731, we would be on a very
different type of Caribbean cruise, though I would guess that some of the
recent cruises that ended in flooded toilets and massive stomach viruses would
rival this one in several ways.
Some Spanish ships were guarding the coast of some tiny
Caribbean island. At the time, Spanish
and British ships were often out sailing around looking for trouble. They were known to board each other’s ships and cause problems. This day was no different. Spanish Captain Juan
de Leon Fandino boarded the British ship Rebecca, and according to witnesses,
tied up the captain, Robert Jenkins, and cut off his ear. Then the Spanish did what you would imagine
if you are a fan of Pirates of the Caribbean.
They plundered and pillaged, and after roughing up the rest of the crew,
set the ship adrift.
Now, in and of
itself, this incident was really not a big deal. But the British and the Spanish had been
fighting off and on for a while (Spanish Armada anyone?), but they had signed the Treaty of Seville from two
years earlier. According to the treaty, the Spanish could stop ships suspected of
smuggling, but were not given free license to raid and plunder, and definitely
didn’t have permission to cut off the ears of British captains. Rumor has it that Jenkins had the ear
pickled, and with it sailed back to England.
Rumor also has it that in 1738, he took that pickled ear and testified
before Parliament. You might ask why he
took so long. Well, I couldn’t find an
answer to that. There is also no actual
proof that the ear made it to Parliament, but it makes for a cool visual.
During his testimony though, Jenkins gave the British people a pretty
quote to rally behind. When asked what
he did during the attack by the Spanish, he said, “I commended my soul to God
and my cause to my country.” The British people were fed up with the Spanish
gallivanting around the Caribbean doing whatever they felt like. They were also completely
done with Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole.
He was seen as weak, and many thought he wasn’t doing enough to promote
British Trade in the West Indies. This
incident, that had happened 7 years before, gave the people, Parliament, and
the British South Seas Company the push
to finally get back at Spain.
The battles began in the Caribbean in 1739. The British suffered heavy losses throughout
the war, which mostly ended in 1742.
Skirmishes continued all the way to 1748 though, in typical eighteenth
century European fashion, with battles also taking place on the North American
mainland. While the British fought to
expand trade, they ended up having to concede to the Spanish, and were no
longer able to smuggle in the Spanish
territories in the Caribbean. The real
significance of the War of Jenkins’ Ear was the later division in Europe
between Britain and Austria, and France and Spain in the War of Austrian
Succession, and arguably, eventually the American Revolution and French
Revolution, all because of an ear.