CHAPTER XV
WAR AGAINST FRANCE AND SPAIN
(1739-1748)
Though the same king did not reign over both countries the same family did. So the French and Spanish Bourbons made a Family Compact against British sea-power. Spain promised to take away from the British all the trading rights she had been forced to grant them in America, while France promised to help Spain to win Gibraltar back again.
When the secret began to leak out the feeling against the Bourbons ran high; and when a merchant skipper called Jenkins paraded London, showing the ear he said the Spaniards had cut off him in South America, the people clamoured for immediate war. Admiral Vernon became immensely popular when he took Porto Bello in the Spanish Main. But he was beaten before Cartagena. He was a good admiral; but the Navy had been shamefully neglected by the government during the long peace; and no neglected navy can send out good fleets in a hurry.
Still, the Navy and mercantile marine were good enough to enable British sea-power to turn the scale against Prince Charlie in Scotland and against the French in Canada. The French tried to help the last of the Stuarts by sending supply ships and men-of-war to Scotland. But the British fleet kept off the men-of-war, seized the supply ships, and advanced along the coast to support the army that was running the Jacobites down. Prince Charlie's Jacobites had to carry everything by land. The British army had most of its stores carried fen times better by sea. Therefore, when the two armies met for their last fight at Culloden, the Jacobites were worn out, while the British army was quite fresh. In Canada it was the same story when the French fortress of Louisbourg was entirely cut off from the sea by a British fleet and forced to surrender or starve. In both cases the fleets and armies worked together like the different parts of one body. At Louisbourg the British land force was entirely made up of American colonists, mostly from enlightened Massachusetts.
A fleet sent against the French in India failed to beat that excellent French admiral, La Bourdonnais. But Anson's famous four years voyage round the world (1740-44) was a wonderful success. The Navy having been so much neglected by the government for so many years before the war, Anson had to put up with some bad ships and worse men. Even poor old pensioners were sent on board at the last minute to make up the number required. Of course they soon died off like flies. But his famous flagship, the Centurion, got through, beat everything that stood up to her, and took vast quantities of Spanish gold and silver. Yet this is by no means the most wonderful fact about the Centurion. The most wonderful thing of all is, that, though she was only a one-thousand-tonner (smaller than many a destroyer of the present day) she had no fewer than eight officers who rose to high and well-won rank in after years, and three—Anson, Saunders, and Keppel—who all became First Lords of the Admiralty, and thus heads of the whole Navy.
[Illustration: H.M.S. Centurion engaged and took the Spanish Galleon
Nuestra Senhora de Capadongo, from Acapulco bound
to Manila, off Cape Espiritu Santo,
Philippine Islands, June 20, 1743.]
Three years after his return Anson won a victory over the French off Cape Finisterre, while Hawke won another near the same place a few months later. In both the French fought very well indeed; but, with less skill in handling fleets and smaller numbers than the British, they had no chance. One of Hawke's best captains was Saunders. Thus twelve years before Pitt's conquest of Canada the three great admirals most concerned with it had already been brought together.