The Many Problems with the War of Jenkins' Ear and the Odd Story Behind the Fight Between Great Britain and Spain in 1739

 In the late 1730’s the Empire of Great Britain had been at relative peace for nearly a quarter of a century.  However, as a new decade dawned, the United Kingdom was about to go to war with the almost equally powerful Empire of Spain over a human ear--Captain Robert Jenkins’ ear to be more specific.

In 1731 Captain Robert Jenkins was in command of a ship called the Rebecca and he was sailing his ship around the Caribbean, ostensibly to protect the British colonial possession of Jamaica as a Captain in the Royal Navy, but in reality he may simply have been looking for Spanish, French or other non-English cargo ships to board, capture and plunder.  

In the mid-eighteenth century there were few real substantive differences between naval ships and pirate ships other than one (the naval ships) had to split their spoils with their respective governments, while the others (the pirate ships) simply engaged in drunken debauchery with whatever they looted.  It wasn’t unheard of to have upstanding naval officers switch back and forth between piracy on behalf of themselves one day and then privateering (the name given to piracy on behalf of a national government) the next.

Robert Jenkins

But anyway, historical legend has it that in 1731 off the coast of Cuba a ship of the Spanish Costa Guarda intercepted and boarded Jenkins’ ship the Rebecca just outside of Havana harbor.  Heavily armed Spanish marines led by their Commander, a man named Juan de Leon Fandino stormed aboard the Rebecca and confronted Captain Jenkins.

Later, before Parliament Jenkins would state that he offered no resistance since his ship was in no way engaged in any violation of maritime law, and since he feared causing an international incident that might result in a major war between Spain and Great Britain.  Well, as it happens, what happened to Captain Jenkins on that fateful day would lead to war between Spain and Great Britain, but at this point all of that was about seven years and one severed ear in the future.

The story goes that once Commander Juan de Leon Fandino and his men surrounded Captain Jenkins in his cabin Fandino accused him and his crew of piracy and then proceeded to slice off Robert Jenkins’ left ear with his sword on behalf of the Spanish Empire.  

It was reported by the Pennsylvania Gazette, the leading broadsheet newspaper of the American colonies at the time in 1731, that Fandino after slicing off Jenkins’ ear shouted, “Go and tell your king that I will do the same, if he dares to do the same!”

The same what?  Did Fandino believe that King George II of England would one day become a pirate himself?  Who knows?

History doesn’t tell us exactly why Commander Fandino cut off Captain Jenkins’ ear, although some sources do mention a scuffle of sorts between the two men, but oddly enough, after his ear was cut off, Fandino and his Spanish marines in their coast guard ship left the Rebecca; Captain Robert Jenkins picked his ear up off the deck of his ship, placed it in a jar of brine for preservation and safe-keeping and continued to sail around the Caribbean on his mission of protection and plunder on behalf of the Royal Navy.

Eventually, Jenkins returned home and he filed a grievance against Spain with the King of England (of all people!) but surprisingly King George II did absolutely nothing!

Flash forward a couple of years to 1738 though, and the British press which back in 1731 had first caught wind of the story of Jenkins’ Ear but hardly mentioned it in any of their pamphlets or weekly news magazines, and seemed like King George II to barely take note of the incident at all, suddenly in a burst of patriotic fervor begin to demand vengeance against Spain for what they termed “The Jenkins’ Ear Incident”.

Amidst all the stir and outcry Captain Jenkins was called before the House of Commons in the British Parliament.  He brought with him his severed ear preserved in a jar of brine for the past seven years and held up his shriveled appendage for all the Members of Parliament to see.  The MPs gasped and cringed and Captain Jenkins, before merely a lowly privateer, reveled in all of the attention and re-told his story in graphic gut-wrenching detail before Parliament.

The British public was outraged and incensed by the Incident of Jenkins Ear.  Many in England had been fed up for quite some time with other stories of Spanish aggression against Great Britain’s North American colonies and soon war was declared by Great Britain on Spain in retaliation for the Incident of Jenkins Ear.

Jenkins Showing his Pickled Ear

What history now calls the little-known War of Jenkins Ear, and what the Spanish called Guerra del Asiento (War of the Agreement) would last from 1739-1742 and be fought largely in the Caribbean and at sea although there were a few skirmishes on land between Great Britain and Spain in present day Florida and Georgia.

As a personal aside, I can remember visiting St. Augustine, Florida with my grandparents in the early 1990’s and touring the famous Spanish fort there, the Castillo de San Marcos, and reading the placards in front of the large cannon that said, “This cannon was used in 1742 during the War of Jenkins’ Ear”.  I remember my eleven year old self wondering, “The War of Jenkins’ Ear?  What the heck was that about?”  Well, now I guess I know, sort of, because there are many problems with the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

The first problem is whether or not the whole thing is even true to begin with--not the war itself because there definitely was a naval war between Great Britain and Spain between 1739 and 1742 and that war killed upwards of 20,000 people and destroyed as many as 500 ships--but the problem is whether this whole severed ear business is even true to begin with or not.

Spanish Fort Castillo de San Marcos 

Even at the time many in Great Britain believed that the ear Captain Jenkins presented to Parliament hadn’t been cut-off by any rogue Spanish officer, but that Captain Jenkins had lost his own ear while being punished in a pillory for dereliction of duty in the form of drunkenness.  Jenkins himself was a known and admitted privateer and not averse to breaking the law, hitting the bottle or even lying to authorities when the need suited him.

Furthermore, the s0-called “War of Jenkins’ Ear” took place amidst the larger backdrop of something called The War of Austrian Succession which was an economically driven war fought mostly in central Europe among European alliances for control of the Mediterranean Sea that lasted from 1740 to 1748 and is where the Spanish name Guerra del Asiento (War of the Agreement) actually comes from.  In fact, the English name “War of Jenkins’ Ear” wasn’t even invented until 1858 when the term was coined by well known and influential Victorian Era Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle.

So what does history have to say about the truth behind the Incident of Jenkins Ear?  Well, years ago many people thought the whole thing about Captain Robert Jenkins’ ear being cut off aboard his ship might simply have been hogwash, or patriotic propaganda used at the time to justify an economically driven war against rival Spain, but now, many newly discovered documents from the 1730’s are beginning to turn the tide once again and are causing many to believe that the Incident of Jenkins’ Ear from 1731 may, in fact, have been entirely true!

A letter addressed to the British Admiralty in London dated October 12, 1731 and written by decorated Royal Navy Rear-Admiral Charles Stewart, a member of Parliament and a man with decades of honorable service on the high seas, states, “I was a little surprised to hear of the rough usage Captain Jenkins was met with off Havana.”

Only one month prior to this letter in September of 1731, Admiral Stewart wrote to the Spanish Royal Governor of Cuba and accused a Costa Guarda Commander by the name of Fandino of, “Violence and Villanies!”  In his letter to Spanish authorities Stewart stated, “About the 20th of April last Commander Fandino sailed out of your harbor of Havana in one of those Guarda Costas and met a ship of this island bound for Britain; and after using the Captain in a most barbarous inhuman manner, taking all of his money, cutting off one of his ears…”

This letter from the fall of 1731 from one of the British Empire’s most respected Admirals would seem to confirm that Captain Jenkins’ ear had, in fact, been cut off by Commander Juan de Leon Fandino.

Thomas Carlyle the man who coined the term War of Jenkins' Ear

Further, copies of The Gentleman’s Magazine, London’s most popular 18th century news periodical (since apparently women weren’t supposed to read about current events!) reported in June of 1731 that, “Captain Jenkins was captured off Jamaica by a Spanish Costa Guarda who put his people to torture….and they cut off one of his ears.”

Granted in the 1730’s there was no fact checking in the media whatsoever, so that a line or two in a so-called Gentleman’s Magazine is only interesting because it corroborates the written record of a British Admiral on the same exact subject.

But there is much historical evidence to suggest that Captain Robert Jenkins’ ear, the one that he preserved for seven years in a jar of brine before presenting to Parliament in 1738, was severed from his head by a Spanish Coast Guard Commander named Fandino based solely on suspicion of piracy.

This incident sparked a war between the Empire of Great Britain and that of Spain that lasted for nearly three years and cost over 20,000 lives.  It is interesting to note that officially, concerning the “Incident of Jenkins’ Ear” the records of the British Admiralty in a list of ships taken, boarded or plundered by Spain in the year 1731 state only:

Rebecca, Robert Jenkins Captain, Jamaica to London.  Boarded and Plundered near the Havana, 9 April 1731.

There is no mention of anyone’s ear ever being cut off, but then again, nations have fought senseless wars throughout history for a lot less…