From 1799 to 1815, the publication for what was going on at sea was called the Naval Chronicle, printed in Great Britain. At the top of each issue was this succinct banner: “Britain rules the waves, and not another sail but by permission spreads.”
These guys did not have a problem with self-image.
However, despite the unarguable fact that Britain had the world’s greatest naval force, they still couldn’t be the world’s policeman. In the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, the world’s oceans were a dangerous place to be. Prize-taking was the order of the day, and oftentimes it was difficult to distinguish between a naval warship, a privateer, and a just-plain pirate. Wars broke out constantly, large and small; our “Quasi-War” for example, a little spat we had with France while John Adams was president, never officially declared a war, the result of French outrage over an American merchant treaty with Great Britain that Great Britain never honored anyway, thereby leading straight to the War of 1812.
The seas were in a constant state of turmoil. But it would be hard to find any conflict with a goofier name than the War of Jenkins’ Ear. No quasi-war this, it lasted years, from 1739 to 1748. Like so many naval wars of the period, it started out, finished with, and chiefly affected merchant shipping. A privateer was nothing more than an armed merchant ship with permission from its government, called a letter of marque, to harass and confiscate (steal) enemy merchant shipping. Get ‘em where they live, right in the pocketbook. The nations of Europe had staked out colonies all over the world, and as they did in the previous century over religion, they spent the next two centuries fighting over who got to keep the best real estate.
And who had the ear? Well, Robert Jenkins was a British merchant captain of the brig Rebecca who was cornered and boarded while in West Indian waters by a gang of Spanish seagoing thugs called the guarda-costa, charged with blockading the rich islands to keep anyone else from trading there. In a very un-British display of bad joss, the Spanish captain called Jenkins a pirate and cut off his ear, telling him he’d do the same to any other British captain near Spanish waters. Jenkins went back to report to Parliament. He took the ear with him. And so, of course, the British declared war on Spain.
Robert Jenkins showing his severed ear to British Prime Minister Robert Walpole. Ew.
Like so many other conflicts at sea of this period, one sort of melded into the next, in this case melting into the War of the Austrian Succession and from there to the Seven Year’s War, our French-and-Indian war. Bit of a mess, actually, and it bankrupted everyone all around. But of course, by the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21st, 1805, still Trafalgar Day even in politically correct Britain, the glorious Nelson would put both the Spanish and the French navy in their place, sweeping the seas for England.
As for Jenkins, he didn’t come out badly either, earless or not. He captained in the East India Company for a time, was governor of the island of St. Helena, and eventually retired and, like so many others long forgotten who’d had one whiff of fame, wrote a book, entitled Spanish Insolence Corrected by English Bravery. There’s a title that comes right to the point.
Still a really stupid name for a war, though.
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