A TYPICAL WEST INDIA EXPEDITION 519 1200 troops on board. A letter of one of his officers stated that, if assured of the safety of the Spanish treasure galleons, they would at once attack our colonies as usual ill prepared and now panicstricken. But the curses of West India warfare soon blighted these lofty designs. Sickness ravaged the French crews; uncertainty about the galleons clogged those ships which could move; and finally the Spanish commander declined French escort. While some hovered about uncertain, others watched Vice-Admiral Benbow's squadron protecting Jamaica. He, too, fared ill. Stout "old tarpaulin", while struggling desperately for four days against a French section, was thwarted by the cowardice of two captains who were justly condemned to death, while on 4 November he himself died at Port Royal of a wound exacerbated by anger and melancholy.1 Owing to an epidemic his successor, Rear-Admiral Whetstone, could effect little. The French losses, however, being as heavy, the major operations petered out. Except at St Christopher where Codrington from Antigua outwitted the enemy (thereupon expelling the French settlers) no conjoint expedition succeeded. Nay! his success was of doubtful value; for the French refugees, resorting to Martinique, where food was very scarce (salt fish sold at 74d. a lb.), took up privateering with the zest of Dunkirkers and swept the seas of unprotected British merchantmen. Hence the diversion of many British warships to convoying or coast protection. A more vigorous plan was to aim a blow at Martinique, which then would recall its privateers.2 A typical West India expedition was that designed for Lord Peterborough, which devolved finally on Codrington. That experienced officer hoped the force would arrive in November 1702 and capture Martinique, "which we might have had for the asking last year". Its instructions, not drafted until January 1703, pointed vaguely to the French Windward Isles, then to a rendezvous at Jamaica for consultation as to a blow, first at the Spanish Main, then at Placentia and the French Newfoundland fishing fleet, or at Quebec for the expulsion of the French from Canada. Thus all Codrington's warnings as to seasons and the danger of delay were ignored; and the sequel ran the natural course. The fleet which Commodore Walker brought to Barbados in February 1703 lost heavily during his long stay owing to spirituous hospitality, and was thereafter too weak for an attempt on Martinique; but, landing in and devastating the chief places of Guadeloupe, found itself in the heats and rains of May unable to hold that island, still less to attack the Spaniards. After causing great discontent in Jamaica by impressing men, Walker sailed away for Newfoundland, where the French had meanwhile so strengthened the forts of Placentia as to render an attack imprudent. Codrington passed the verdict-"Delays cost more men than the 1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1702, pp. 47, 71, 110, 216-18, 368, 460, 673-9, 744. warmest actions". In truth, the net result was the devastation of parts of Guadeloupe, whose inhabitants thereupon took to privateering and reduced the settlers of our Leeward Isles to such straits that several fled to Pennsylvania.1 2 The Spaniards and French gained other privateering centres by taking and laying waste the Bahamas (1703), whence they preyed upon West Indian and American commerce. In the spring of 1706 Nevis and St Christopher were raided by d'Iberville, until an English squadron drove him off. Thereupon Codrington's successor, Parke, urged the Government to capture the source of all evil, Martinique, adding derisively-"Send me over 10,000 Scotch, with oatmeal enough to keep them for three or four months". With them he will do much (or see them knocked on the head): he will take and settle Porto Rico "a better settlement than their beloved Darien". He received the equally tart rebuke that after the Act of Union all Britons were to enjoy equal privileges. Though in 1707-8 some twenty-four British warships cruised in those waters, yet privateering devastated commerce. In January 1708 a Jamaican reports: "Trade in general seems at a stand and nothing on foot but privateering", which tempted away so many seamen that the warships had to fill up from the troops or stay rotting in port. He foretells that the war will "leave to the world a brood of pirates to infest it". Commodore Wager might take or destroy near Cartagena Spanish galleons worth £15,000,000, and buccaneers might bring in much spoil to Kingston; but it is clear that the war impoverished all the West Indies.3 Meanwhile, the fate of the colonies was being decided largely in the Mediterranean. To that sea Louis had despatched his main force in the hope that so far from home the British and Dutch would be at a serious disadvantage. He erred; for that same consideration led them to conquer Gibraltar and Minorca. Their diffuse operations on the coasts of Spain having induced her to parcel out her feeble army, Admirals Rooke and Vanderdussen struck at Gibraltar with incisive effect. That fortress was being repaired by the Spaniards, and was not so weak as has often been stated; but the garrison did not exceed 500 men, four-fifths of them militia. The place, therefore, invited attack by a great combined fleet; and, when cut off from mainland succours by a landing party at the isthmus and overpowered in front by the ships' broadsides and boats' crews, the small garrison surrendered. At the cost of 60 killed and 216 wounded, the dream of Cromwell and the design of William were thus fulfilled (22 July 1704). To keep the key of the Mediterranean was another matter; for Louis XIV and Philip V, realising their mistake, now strove hard for its recapture. Louis hurried off the Comte de Toulouse with the 1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1702-3, pp. 89, 117, 127, 132, 150, 213, 439–50, 571, 750, 817. 2 Ibid. 1706-8, pp. 358, 426; ibid. 1708-9, pp. 191, 432. 3 Ibid. pp. 40, 191, 202, 270, 320, 402. 4 Letters published in The Times of 17 Feb. 1926, by Morshead, O. F. GIBRALTAR AND IMPERIAL DEFENCE 521 Toulon fleet of fifty sail, which off Malaga fought an even fight with the allies' fifty-three (13 August). The Count, for all his boasts of victory, admitted a strategic reverse by retiring to Toulon, thereby leaving the allies free to strengthen their hold on Gibraltar. Rooke's battered fleet having to retire to Lisbon or Portsmouth for repairs, the French and Spaniards again assailed the place, only to be worsted by the prompt approach of Admiral Leake's succouring squadron from Lisbon (29 October). Again, in 1705, his support from Lisbon as base enabled our little garrison to hold at bay and wear down ten times their number of assailants.1 In fact imperial expansion was to be based on the Rock of Gibraltar. No place in the world offered greater strategic and tactical advantages. First, as a base to a British fleet, it enabled us to sever the French and Spanish Mediterranean forces from those in the Atlantic. After 1704, Toulon and Cartagena were, in a strategic sense, wasted enterprises; for the enemy's favourite gambit against England or her colonies from one or both of those ports was now countered at the start; and his endeavour to doff the Gibraltar incubus generally led to a battle with part of his Navy, which favoured the British war plan. Further, our frigates based on Gibraltar nearly always sighted and tracked a squadron working out to the open, and thus ended the uncertainty which had often paralysed naval operations. The tactical advantages of Gibraltar were also great. A small garrison there, supported by but few warships, could repel the attacks of a considerable army-a state of things exasperating to the enemy, who must attack that post in order to assure naval reunion, yet lost heavily in so doing, because a small force afloat or ashore at Gibraltar was a match for a far greater force of assailants. Therefore British colonies had comparative rest because the French and Spanish forces needed for conquest in the New World were hurled in vain at the Rock. These effects were gradual and cumulative. At first Gibraltar was ill fortified and had so few docking facilities that our Mediterranean fleet perforce returned home for the winter. The need of a more spacious base farther east becoming urgent, Minorca was captured in September 1708; and its land-locked harbour of Port Mahon proved to be a far better base for the observation of Toulon.2 Thenceforth the British fleet, operating on the Gibraltar-Minorca base line, acted as a central force, linking up the allies' moves on and near the coasts of Italy and Spain, while France found the flank and rear of her armies insecure and felt the throb of her Levantine commerce die away.3 Meanwhile, as the prospects of "Charles III" brightened, the allies began to trade with the Spanish colonies in his name, with results favourable to commerce as far as New York. There and in 1 Torrington Memoirs, pp. 138-45; Life of Sir J. Leake, by Leake, S. M. (ed. Callender, G. for N.R.S.), vol. 1, chap. iv; Corbett, chap. xxxi. 2 Leake, 1, 267-9. 3 Colomb, P. H., Naval Warfare, p. 367; Callender, G., Naval Side of British History, chap. x. Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1704–5, pp. 24, 44, 49, 69, 140. New England the new treaty of alliance with the Iroquois secured the frontier except in New Hampshire and Maine, now reduced to misery by border outrages. The coast and the fisheries suffering almost as much from the raids of Quebec, Placentia and Port Royal privateers (the last "is become another Dunkirk"), Governor Dudley of Massachusetts besought Great Britain for 3000 troops and adequate shipping to strike at the root of the evil.1 Equally insistent was a Bostonian, Captain Vetch, who, in July 1708, presented to Mr Secretary Boyle a memorial, "Canada Surveyed", describing the hardships of the Plantations, which spent £97,000 a year on defence, yet lost much of their shipping. For the half of one year's losses, they could conquer Nova Scotia and Canada -the only way of ending their ills. England should supply eight warships and two battalions of regulars, the colonists furnishing 1000 militia and transports for the blow at Quebec, also 1500 militia and Iroquois for that at Montreal. The New England attempts on Canada in 1707 had failed "only through want of officers and conduct". After the conquest the Indians will soon be loyal subjects "when they have no priests to poison them"; and Canada, with a climate far better than Darien, will become "a noble colony, exactly calculated for the constitutions and genius of the most northern of North Britons".2 The French reinforced his arguments by raiding St John's at Christmas 1708; but, apart from sending a small force to recover it, the Whig ministers sent little or no help. Their preoccupation in continental campaigns caused increasing annoyance, not only in the colonies but at home, Swift bidding them remember that for the Maritime Powers the true way to get at Spain was, not through Flanders, but the West Indies. Other reasons for neglect of the colonies were bad naval administration and the failure of the Dutch to supply the stipulated naval quotas, the deficiencies in 1708–10 amounting to eighteen, thirty-one and twenty-four sail of the line respectively. An undue strain was, therefore, thrown upon the British Navy, many of our ships having to remain "in remote seas and at unseasonable times, to the great damage and decay of the British Navy". For these reasons, apparently, only three British warships with a regiment on board and several vessels with local levies sailed from Boston. They easily captured Port Royal, now renamed Annapolis Royal (September 1710); but, as the hold on Acadia was precarious while Canada remained French, requests were sent to London for an expedition to expel the enemy. Late in 1710 the Tories, recently come to power, prepared an expeditionary force of some 5000 troops in fifteen warships and forty-six transports, under the 1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1706-8, pp. 31, 260, 438, 587-91: 2 Ibid. pp. 41-51. See infra, chapter xx. C.J. 1711, pp. 49, 120, which correct Mahan, pp. 61-2. THE PEACE OF UTRECHT 523 command of Rear-Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker and General Hill. Picking up 2000 New Englanders under Vetch at Boston in July 1711, the force proceeded up the St Lawrence, where Walker and his pilots during gales and mist neglected the most rudimentary precautions, and ran eight transports on the reefs of Egg Island, some thirty miles out of the course. Hill and he then resolved to return home, without attacking the petty forts of Placentia.1 This disgraceful failure scarcely affected the main issue, which was determined in Europe. Already, in 1709, the first overtures for peace came from exhausted France.2 They elicited from colonial circles various petitions, e.g. from Jamaica merchants for the removal of the French settlements from Hispaniola, “a sad and grievous thorn in our side"; a general demand for the annexation of St Lucia, Dominica and Tobago, to which we had good claim, and the retention of the whole of St Christopher; also for the expulsion of the French from Newfoundland and Hudson Bay. Massachusetts urged the retention of Nova Scotia, whose privateers had ruined New England trade and fisheries.3 Though the French and Spanish Navies had been reduced to impotence, yet the losses of British merchants contributed to the war weariness and partisan intrigues which led to the Peace of Utrecht (1713). France had to cede Nova Scotia ("the key of all the eastern colonies") and her settlements in Newfoundland, Hudson Bay and St Christopher. But the Tory ministry made no effort either to secure the cession of Cape Breton Island or to delimit the southern and eastern limits of Canada. Both omissions soon bred constant strifes. From distracted Spain ministers extorted only Gibraltar and Minorca (already in our hands), and they abandoned the cause of "Charles III" and the Catalans, besides leaving Spain to Philip V, that is, to the French connection. Discontent with this compromise was general; it appears in the protest of North American merchants against leaving to France Cape Breton Island, a certain menace to Nova Scotia and British shipping. The criticism was soon to be justified; for from its port, Louisbourg, as base, France pressed forward her schemes for the conquest of North America. Yet at Utrecht trade interests had been protected, especially in the Asiento clause of the treaty.5 Such was the profitable but inglorious ending to a war waged at sea neither with foresight nor efficiency. Marlborough it was who prompted the nearly successful conjoint expedition against Toulon in 1707 and the capture of Minorca in 1708. In naval strategy and tactics the war was singularly barren: but the plodding ways of British seamen, the exhaustion of France and the inevitable pre 1 Morgan, W. T., Art. in Trans. R. Hist. Soc. 1927. Corresp. of William Shirley (ed. Lincoln, C. H.), п, 149. |