History of the Battle of Cartagena de Indias – the Defense of Cartagena Against Edward Vernon

In the Spring of 1741, a massive British force led by Edward Vernon attempted to take Cartagena, Colombia.  He hoped to deal a crucial blow to Spanish power and trade in the Caribbean.  Outnumbered by as many as 4-1, the city’s defenders succeeded in repelling the English invaders in the largest and most famous battle in Cartagena’s colonial history.  Read on to learn more about the history of the Battle of Cartagena de Indias.

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Background to the Battle of Cartagena de Indias

Cartagena’s Importance as a Military Target

Cartagena was a seat of Spanish colonial military and economic power.  One of only a handful of ports that held a monopoly on trade, the city was a key link in the web of trade between Spain and its colonies in the Caribbean and South America.

Cartagena was the site of export of much of the gold and silver mined in South America and, by the 1700s, the increasingly important tobacco and sugar crops.  It was likewise a major site of import of African slaves and goods from Spain and the other colonies.

It was this rich trade that had made the city a target for attacks since its founding.  With the frequent outbreaks of conflict between the colonial powers, most notably the Spanish and English, it was common for each to employ privateers to harass the trading routes of the others.

Privateers were basically pirates operating with licenses from their governments.  Privateers had earlier sacked Cartagena twice, once in 1586 by Sir Francis Drake, and in 1697 by the Frenchman Baron de Pointis.

*Read about Drake’s sacking of Cartagena

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These attacks had prompted the construction of Cartagena’s colonial walls and the building of numerous fortifications to protect the city and its important bay.  Among these fortifications was the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, first constructed in 1657.  You can read more about the history of the Castillo San Felipe here.

If you’d like to learn more about Cartagena’s fortifications, including the Castillo San Felipe, be sure to check out Rodolfo Segovia’s terrific Fortifications of Cartagena: Strategy and History. It can be found at many local book stores and tourist shops in Cartagena or on Amazon. You can also read my review here.

This fort would be the site of Cartagena’s triumphant stand during the Battle of Cartagena de Indias.

The War of Jenkins’s Ear

You read that right, the conflict that led to the fighting of the Battle of Cartagena de Indias is in fact named the War of Jenkins’s Ear.

It earns its name from a man named Robert Jenkins, who was a Welsh trader and, in 1731, was detained by a Spanish privateer and accused of smuggling.

The Spanish captain cut off his left ear as punishment.  According to legend (but not clear if it actually happened), the Spanish captain told Jenkins to show his ear to the English king and tell him he would soon do the same to him.

However, the war would not begin for 8 more years.

In fact, the incident received little attention at the time, even after Jenkins had returned to England and presented his story and severed ear to the king.  During this period, relations between Spain and England had actually been relatively calm, with England’s Prime Minister Robert Walpole looking to avoid conflict.

However, tensions continued to grow, related primarily to continued English smuggling and more frequent Spanish boarding of ships to prevent that smuggling.

Earlier, after the War of Spanish Succession, the Spanish had given the British the right to import a certain number of slaves in what was called the asiento system but with a strict limit on the trade of other goods.

In addition to slaves, the British could sell up to 500 tons of goods in each of the ports of Veracruz and Porto Bello annually. With this limit hardly being enough to make a profit, smuggling was common, with the British ships using these concessions to get their foot in the door so to speak.

The Spanish in turn began to more aggressively board and inspect British merchant vessels for contraband goods. It was just such an inspection that led to poor Jenkins losing his ear.

With these occurring more and more frequently, English public opinion began increasingly calling for retribution against Spain. The opposition to Walpole’s government in Parliament began calling him soft on Spain and stoking calls for war.

*See also: Learn more about Walpole in The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole – Scoundrel, Genius and England’s First Prime Minister

Finally, the opposition to Walpole’s government recalled Jenkins to testify in front of Parliament in 1738.  According to legend (again, not clear if it really happened), Jenkins supposedly displayed his pickled ear during his testimony. This only further riled up those urging for war.

With public opinion at a fever pitch and Walpole under increasing pressure from the opposition to his government, England declared war on Spain in October 1739.

Vernon Scouts Cartagena’s Defenses

The English’s goal at the start of the war was to attack and seize the major Spanish trading ports of the Caribbean in order to wreck Spain’s finances and ability to wage a longer war.

The first major engagement of the war took place in November 1739.  British Admiral Edward Vernon succeeded in sacking Portobello, another important Spanish colonial port on the coast of Panama. While the city was poorly defended and Vernon immediately abandoned it, the victory was cause for celebration in Britain.

Now the British navy turned its eyes on more victories. A large fleet was assembled to be sent to the Caribbean.  The overall goal of the expedition was to take and hold the 4 major ports of Porto Bello, Veracruz, Cartagena, and Havana, giving the British control of the Caribbean trade routes as well as bases from which to take Spanish holdings inland as well.

Meanwhile, it would deny the Spanish of the income from the trade and from resupply for its inland strongholds.

There was, however, one problem with this plan. The British did not have any dry docks to build and repair ships in the Caribbean. That is why the original first target of the expedition was Havana, where the Spanish had constructed dry docks.

However, at a war council in Jamaica, Vernon pushed for the first target to be Cartagena as it had a larger port, was considered to be less well defended, and was easier to reach and resupply from Britain’s current Caribbean colonies.

Vernon first arrived off the coast of Cartagena in March 1740 and again in May of that year with smaller fleets, in both cases taking pot shots at the city while scouting its defenses.  His main purpose here seemed to be a probe of the defenses of the city in preparation for a later assault.

Nearly a year after his first scouting mission, Vernon would return with a massive fleet in an attempt to take the city.  It was this force that initiated the Battle of Cartagena de Indias.

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias

Vernon Arrives with a Massive Force

On March 13, 1741, the people of Cartagena awoke to see a massive fleet amassed on the horizon.

Sources on Vernon’s fleet put his strength at between 120 and 186 ships, and between 20,000 and 27,000 men, including at least 12,000 infantry. Even the low ends of these estimates entailed a massive force.

Among the English forces were 1,000 slaves from Jamaica and 4,000 recruits from the colony of Virginia, including George Washington’s half-brother Lawrence. You can learn more about the Virginians sent to Cartagena in America’s First Marines: Gooch’s American Regiment, 1740-1742.

Meanwhile, sources on Cartagena’s defense put the city’s defenders between 3,000-6,000, at least half of which were non-regulars, including 600 indigenous archers.  The city also had only 6 ships of war to defend against the massive English fleet.

In charge of the city’s defense was Admiral Blas de Lezo, who was already a legend in the Spanish navy.  He had scored numerous earlier victories and had suffered injuries that left him with a missing arm, leg, and eye.

Often referred to as “half-man,” Lezo is often viewed as the inspiration for the modern portrayal of the appearance of pirates in literature and film today. He would go on to solidify his legacy as a brilliant tactician in his defense from the attack on Cartagena by Vernon.

De Lezo Prepares for a War of Attrition

Knowing he was so heavily outnumbered, de Lezo’s plan to defend the city hedged on two factors. 

First, he hoped that a fighting withdrawal from the city’s outer defenses would be able to weaken the English forces as they approached the city. 

Second, he knew that tropical diseases such as yellow fever, typhus, dysentery, scurvy, and malaria would wreck even more havoc on the English than his own men.

Therefore, his plan of defense consisted of trying to slow the English advance until the start of the heavy rains at the end of April, when the conditions would make it extremely difficult if not impossible for the English to continue their attack.

Even before Vernon’s arrival, the latter half of this strategy was working.  While gathering their massive fleet, the English immediately began to feel the effects of tropical disease. 

By January 1741, they had already suffered as many as 500 dead and 1,500 sick, including the overall commander of the expedition Lord Cathcart.  This left many of the infantry soldiers meant to be part of the landing force during the Battle of Cartagena de Indias to have to take up positions on the crews of the ships to replace the sick and dead.

Cathcart’s death also led to a lack of central command and dissension within the British leadership.  Unclear who was actually in charge, decisions were left to councils of war between the ranking officers.

Vernon in particular often found himself at odds with the infantry commanders. This infighting would be an important contributing factor to the failure of the 1741 attack on Cartagena.

Also working in de Lezo’s favor were recent repairs and the strengthening of Cartagena’s defenses.

The declaration of war and Vernon’s earlier probing of the defenses had prompted preparations for an attack on the city. In particular, the fort of San Felipe de Barajas was fully repaired and a new battery was added.

It should perhaps be noted that the fort was just a square shaped fort atop a hill with walls approximately 50 feet high, only a small fraction of the eventual fortress that can be seen today.

Still, it would prove to be the site of de Lezo’s decisive and victorious final stand during the Battle of Cartagena de Indias.

Furthermore, the Spanish had succeeded in sending a small number of reinforcements to the city, along with a new viceroy, Sebastian de Eslava.  De Lezo and de Eslava also did not see eye to eye, but de Eslava ultimately deferred to de Lezo and his plans for defense.

It is worth pointing out that the newly arrived Spanish soldiers also suffered from disease, but not being cooped up in close quarters on ships prevented the suffering of epidemic proportions that beset the English.

The City’s Outer Defenses Fall

Part of what made Cartagena such a formidable city to take is its geography.

The city’s walls along with rough waters made landing an attack force from the ocean difficult if not impossible. Any attack force would first have to enter the city’s bay and its calmer waters before attempting to land a ground invasion force outside the city walls.

The city’s bay technically has two entrances, but a sandbar in the larger Bocagrande channel made it risky for large warships to enter there.  Therefore, Vernon would have to sail through the narrower Bocachica channel.

This channel was well defended with the Fort of San Jose on one side and the Fort of San Luis (where the Castillo San Fernando sits today) on the other, at the end of the island known as Tierra Bomba.

De Lezo planned to carry out his war of attrition against Vernon by executing a fighting withdrawal here, at the entrance to the bay.  By offering resistance and delaying the English, he hoped mounting casualties and disease would stop the invaders from being able to successfully take the city proper.

Vernon focused at first on the smaller defended points around the entrance to the bay, but met resistance at each.  He eventually turned his attention to taking the strong point of the Fort of San Luis. 

Land forces came ashore and built a battery to wear down the fort’s defenses.  After several weeks of siege with fire coming from some of the fleet and the newly constructed battery on land, the English finally succeeded in punching a hole in the walls.

On April 5, the British conducted a final combined sea and land assault on the damaged fort.  However, de Lezo had already cleverly withdrawn his forces under the cover of darkness to prevent further losses.  He had also scuttled 2 of his ships and set his flagship on fire before the British succeeded in capturing it.

The British now controlled the city’s outer defenses and controlled the entrance to the bay, meaning they could now look to land ground forces and besiege the city itself. However, it had taken them nearly a month to get this far.

English seizure of the defenses at Bocachica had come only at a high cost.

Over 100 men had been killed in the fighting, another 250 had died from disease, and as many as 600 were injured or sick.  With the dead thrown overboard during the fighting, the bodies in the water only further added to the spreading of sickness.

Still, despite these losses, Vernon remained confident he would succeed in taking the city.  He went so far as sending word to English colonial authorities in Jamaica that his victory was imminent. 

When word reached England, there were commemorative medals, china, and even a song produced.  The medals showed a kneeling de Lezo surrendering the city to Vernon.  You can see replicas of some of the medals on display today on a visit to the Castillo San Felipe Fortress.

De Lezo Makes His Stand at the Castillo San Felipe

It would be the Castillo San Felipe, known at the time as the Fort of San Lazaro where de Lezo would concentrate the majority of his remaining forces and score the victory of the Battle of Cartagena de Indias.

With the outer defenses fallen, he knew the fort was vital to defense of the city.

If the British succeeded in taking it, they could use it as a base from which to bombard Cartagena into submission. Therefore, he decided that the fate of Cartagena would depend on holding the fort.

Vernon, despite his confidence, was also growing impatient.

He know the longer it took to take the city, the more he would have to worry about the mounting sickness among his men.  Already April, he, like de Lezo, also knew a protracted siege of the city would drag into the coming rainy season and work to the defenders’ favor. 

Likely due to this worry along with a not so healthy dose of arrogance, Vernon conceived of a desperate and ill-fated plan for a frontal attack on the fort.

With the only English engineer killed during the fighting to take Fort San Luis, there was no one with the expertise to build another land battery to weaken or breach Castillo San Felipe’s walls.  Therefore, the British planned to go medieval and storm the walls by ladder.

In preparation, De Lezo had a trench dug around the fort, which stood at the top of a large hill and had a little over 1,000 of his remaining men ready at the defenses.

Meanwhile, the British landed their attack force on April 16.

They made the decision to attempt their storming of the fort from the side facing the city, where the walls were shortest.  However, this also put them at risk of being fired upon by the cannons from Cartagena’s walls.  Therefore, they planned a night assault.

However, keeping with the theme of the entire campaign, the assault was delayed and only began around 4 a.m., not long before dawn, on April 20.

The attack was an utter disaster.

Some of the force were separated from the main group and the ladders they carried were not even tall enough to reach the top of the fort’s walls. The Spanish defenders hit the oncoming English with volley after volley of musket fire.

Once the sun came up, artillery from Cartagena opened fire, catching the English in a deadly crossfire. An infantry force also set out from the city to encircle them, forcing them to abandon their reckless attack and return to the ships.

As much as a quarter of the 2,000 men that landed ashore were lost in the battle, and the already weakened and ailing English forces were left in an even more precarious position.

Vernon’s Withdrawal

De Lezo’s grand plan paid off, as the rains began in earnest a few days later.

The English, still licking their wounds from the disastrous assault, debated what to do. Ultimately, they decided to withdraw, having failed to take their prize. 

Vernon sailed away on May 8, 1741.

During their 67 days attempting to take Cartagena, Vernon’s forces had suffered as many as 18,000 casualties due to the combination of death, injury, and sickness.

According to legend, Vernon wrote a letter to de Lezo saying he would return after getting reinforcements from Jamaica, and de Lezo responded by telling him that if he wanted to return to Cartagena the English king would have to build a new fleet since Vernon’s was now only good for transporting coal from Ireland to England.

This exchange probably didn’t actually happen as contemporary sources don’t mention it, however it would have been quite the insult to injury by de Lezo if it did.

*See also: Read the official British report on the battle

Impact of Vernon’s Defeat at Cartagena

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias proved to be an unmitigated disaster for the English war effort.  With Vernon’s force so significantly weakened, the plan to take the other major ports of the Spanish Caribbean never really got off the ground.

Although he did get some reinforcements in Jamaica, Vernon never returned to Cartagena or seriously threatened any other Spanish strongholds in the Caribbean.  He was eventually called back to Britain and by the time the campaign ended a year later, as many as 90% of the soldiers originally deployed had died.

The defeat at the Battle of Cartagena de Indias led to the downfall of Walpole’s government in Britain and helped contribute to the outbreak of the War of Austrian Succession when England withdrew a guarantee to support Austria’s claim to Silesia. This in turn prompted France and Spain to support Prussia in war against Austria.

For the Spanish, the victory helped prevent the disrupting of trade in the Caribbean.  De Lezo added to his already impressive military record, although initially de Eslava criticized him for the decision to scuttle his ships, which were costly to replace. 

However, “Don Blas” later received the credit he deserved and is remembered as a hero in both Cartagena and Spain today for his exploits at the Battle of Cartagena de Indias.

He himself succumbed to disease shortly after the battle.  The fabled “half-man” has a statue commemorating his victory outside the Castilo San Felipe Fortress today as well as a neighborhood, avenue, and numerous restaurants named after him today.

As for Cartagena, Vernon’s 1741 attack would be the last major enemy attack against the city.

Vernon did demolish what remained of Fort San Luis on Bocachia when he left, but a new fort named Castillo San Fernando was later constructed in its place.

There was even another fort atop a hill built near Bocachica to prevent a land force from taking the newly constructed San Fernando, which itself was better fortified against land assault than San Luis had been.

These forts are very well preserved today. Read more about them and how to visit here.

The city’s defenses were further strengthened with the expansion of the Castillo San Felipe to the massive structure it is today. The hill it stood upon was basically encased the entirely in stone.

When the shifting of currents reopened the Bocagrande entrance to the bay, an underwater wall was constructed to solidify the heavily defended Bocachica channel as the only entrance to the bay, guarded by the crossfire from the San José and newly constructed San Fernando forts.

No other foreign force would brave an attack on these defenses.

In fact, it would not be until the siege of Cartagena by the Spanish during the independence era that another major battle was fought in the city.

In more recent times, a plaque commemorating the men of Vernon’s crew that died during the battle was unveiled in 2014 during a visit by Prince Charles. However, after a wave of criticism and the damaging of the plaque, it was ultimately removed. It isn’t very often after all that there are monuments built to the foreign invaders.

You can read more about the plaque, the controversy around its unveiling and its removal in this article.

Interested in learning more about the Battle of Cartagena de Indias and the history of Cartagena, Colombia?

• Check out this article on the history of the Castillo San Felipe, recounting the entire history of the fort, including Vernon’s attack.
• Check out this visitor’s guide to the Castillo San Felipe, where you can walk in the footsteps of the Spanish defenders of the city.
• Check out this visitor’s guide to the excellent Cartagena Naval Museum, where you can learn more about the 1741 Battle of Cartagena de Indias as well as other battles in the city’s history.
• Check out our primer on the history of Cartagena or out more detailed comprehensive history of Cartagena.
• Check out the following books:  The Fortifications of Cartagena de Indias:  Strategy & History covering the city’s colonial military history and Breve Historia de Cartagena (available in English on Amazon).  They can also both be picked up at local book stores.
• While a later era, the book No Limits to their Sway about the privateers Cartagena used as a naval force during the independence era is one of my favorite books on Cartagena’s history. Read my review of it here.