THE “WAR OF JENKINS’S EAR” BROKE OUT IN 1739, AFTER A BRITISH TRADER NAMED ROBERT JENKINS HAD HIS EAR CUT OFF BY SPANISH SAILORS UPON BEING ACCUSED OF SMUGGLING.
Some estimates place the death toll of this war over an ear between 35,000 and 50,000.
In the year 1731, sea captain Robert Jenkins stepped onto the gangplank and climbed aboard his British merchant ship Rebecca. He ordered his crew to set sail and they left Jamaica, bound for London, England. Also on board the ship was the much-loved commodity of sugar. In this case, the ship’s precious cargo was true to the records, but often the ships in these seas carried goods not honestly matching the ship’s inventories.
Contraband was in high demand and the pull of the black market was strong
In prior years, Queen Anne and her Hanoverian successors had signed a series of treaties regarding trade in the Caribbean.
In 1715 at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the British were awarded the Asiento as part of the Treaty of Utrecht. The Asiento was a monopoly granted by Spain to the British to supply slaves to Spain’s American colonies, 5,000 of them a year, which the British passed to the South Sea Company. The Spanish had no influence in West Africa from where the slaves were being taken, but did rely on slaves for their exploits in the New World, and so they traded with those who dealt in enslaved people, like the British. As well as the trade of slaves, the British were allowed two ships per year selling 500 tons each of goods in Porto Bello in present-day Panama and Ceracruz in present-day Mexico. The French were earning well there, saturating the ports with French goods, and the British wanted access too. The Spanish could stop and search vessels in the Caribbean to ensure that the British were sticking to the agreements. The day that the Rebecca left Jamaica was to be one of those days. The coastguard ship Isabella demanded Rebecca be stopped.
The British ship was boarded and searches were made. Nothing untoward was found but the Spanish captain, the privateer Juan de León Fandiño, was not happy as he was convinced there was contraband onboard. The ship was searched again and a crew member was beaten. Captain Jenkins looked on but gave nothing away. Then they turned on him. He had a rope thrown round his neck and he was hanged, though not to the point of killing him. Jenkins still had nothing to reveal to the privateer.
He claimed to have nothing hidden on board besides a small amount of money that would see them safely back to England.
The Spanish were not appeased. Jenkins was held down and his ear was cut at and ripped off, with a warning to the King that should he think of doing a spot of smuggling, he would suffer the same fate. Jenkins was left mutilated, bloodied and angry.
The ear comprises of two main parts. The outer ear, known as the pinna, is the part that we can see, and luckily for Jenkins, hearing is not totally lost if the pinna is damaged or removed.
The pinna is made of cartilage but has, as anyone knows who has ever cut their ear, a reasonable blood supply. Inside the ear, the tube, the hairs, the wax, the drum and the tiniest of all the body’s bones can still function even if the pinna is lost.
The pinna channels sounds into the inner ear, so without it, hearing is more difficult. Any scar or scab forming in the area could impact those sounds getting through, but to lose one’s outer ear is not the end of the world for most people. Unless it starts a war.
As in any scenario when the skin is compromised there is a chance that infection might follow, or worse, that it might result in sepsis, a systemic response to the local infection. Jenkins survived the attack though and he sailed back to England with his ear in a bottle.
When Jenkins and his dishevelled crew arrived back in London, there was a ripple of interest in the sea captain’s story. He presented his pickled ear to the King in protest of his treatment under the agreement with the spanish. It all went quiet, however, and not because Jenkins couldn’t hear anything … but because politics is politics. When it was convenient, Jenkins’ ear was heard from once again. Years later when the Tories were looking to oust a long-standing Whig government under Walpole, they looked for a fight. The many stories reaching British shores telling of outrageous Spanish behaviour were raised and no doubt embellished, but Jenkins’ incident was not an isolated one.
The stories suggested that Jenkins and other captains in the Caribbean risked losing their cargo, their ships, and maybe even their lives. One story told of a Dutch captain who was forced to eat his own hand after the Spanish coastguard chopped it off.
The torturers kindly boiled it for him first. Jenkins was called upon once more and paraded with his severed ear in a bottle in front of Parliament. Justice was demanded, but increased trade in the Caribbean was an even better objective. Jenkins and his missing ear had now become political capital. In a sketch of the time Walpole is seen swooning at the sight of the severed body part. The British wanted more from the West Indies and they used Jenkins’ ear as justification, so war became inevitable.
Thomas Carlyle named the conflict “The War for Jenkins’ Ear when he wrote about it over a hundred years later. The name stuck because we all love a good hook. The Spanish refer to the war as the Guerra del Asiento, the Asiento being the trade agreement between Spain and other nations, particularly for slaves. The war had a rocky start for Spain but in the end they defended their positions. The British attempt to gain territory and further their trade opportunities was thwarted. After the War for Jenkins’ Ear, the British lost the Asiento in 1750 with the Treaty of Madrid.
It has been rather sensationally claimed by one commentator that Jenkins’ ear is the most famous ear in history and yet Gaudi’s book on the subject called it the ‘forgotten war.