• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 436 0

and allowed leadership to be exerted by Robert Walpole, who is thus recognized as England’s first prime minister. Walpole’s success was due in large part to his policy that England’s economy was best maintained and strengthened by avoiding war. Consequently, he had negotiated the Treaty of Seville in 1729, which led to the episode involving Captain Jenkins two year later. Under the treaty, England agreed not to trade with Spain’s North American colonies and, to enable verification, allowed British ships to be inspected by Spain for cargo from those ports.

The treaty was highly controversial in England. While peace was good for the economy, such severe limitations on its overseas trade were not. Nor did it sit well with the nation’s pride. Many merchants and the sea captains and crews they financed did not abide by the treaty’s prohibitions.

These violations explain, in part, Captain Fandino’s frustration and violence. From Prime Minister Walpole’s perspective, Fandino’s rage reflected Spain’s reduced circumstances. Spain was increasingly desperate to preserve its monopolies in the New World—the totality of which it had originally possessed following the voyages of Christopher Columbus. But that had been over two hundred years earlier. Spain’s efforts to control the New World’s supply of sugar and gold created a lucrative black market. Pirates engaged in hijacking, initially on their own and later with secret financing in some instances by other nations. By the time Robert Jenkins was at sea, otherwise legitimate shipping companies engaged in periodic smuggling as well.

When Jenkins returned to England in June 1731, a full account of his misfortune appeared in the press, but fame did not ensue. Such occurrences were not particularly unusual. The article in London’s Universal Spectator also included:

The Bacchus, Captain Stephens, which is arrived at Bristol from Jamaica, was taken the 27th of April by a Spanish pirate sloop or guarde costa.… They treated her captain and crew very barbarously, putting their fingers between gunlock screws till they flattened them, and some had lighted matches between, in order to extort a confession where their money [Spanish doubloons from smuggling] lay, of which they had none on board.

Still, as these depredations continued, Walpole’s efforts to avoid war met with increasing opposition. The tipping point came in 1737 with the death of Queen Caroline, through whose friendship Walpole had maintained the approval—or mitigated the occasional disapproval—of George II and the Prince of Wales (the future George III).

The future king’s opposition to his father now emerged more boldly, and with it Walpole’s political opponents commenced a drumbeat for war. Parliament held hearings regarding instances of mistreatment of British seamen by Spain. And just as the U.S. Congress has demonstrated its flair for the dramatic through the stage-managed appearances of star witnesses, Parliament’s star for 1738 was Robert Jenkins. His presentation was electrifying: he related his breathtaking experience and climaxed his testimony by unfolding a square of cotton and producing his severed ear.

Or so later accounts state. The parliamentary records of his testimony do not record the ear being displayed. Nor is it mentioned in any of the newspaper accounts that immediately followed his testimony. Nevertheless, those news accounts, augmented by politicians expressing newfound outrage, generated a public uproar. Walpole had no choice but to accede to war.

In Georgia these distant events created considerable concern, since the colony was adjacent to the Spanish colony of Florida. Fearing an attack, James Oglethorpe, Georgia’s founder, raised troops and improved defenses along his colony’s coast and nearby islands. In July 1742 the Spanish attacked, with a vastly larger force than that of Oglethorpe, and quickly overtook one of the two forts on St. Simon’s Island.

Oglethorpe still occupied the island’s second fort, which was protected by a surrounding marsh with only two roads of access. The greater number