9 APR--This Day in US Military History

1731 – Robert Jenkins lost an ear.

The event started a war between Britain and Spain. The War of Jenkins Ear took its name from Robert Jenkins, captain of the ship Rebecca, who claimed Spanish coast guards had cut off his ear in 1731. He exhibited the ear in the House of Commons and so aroused public opinion that the government of the British Prime Minister Robert Walpole reluctantly declared war on Oct. 23, 1739.
Basically, the war was one of commercial rivalry between England and Spain. By the Treaty of Utecht (1713), which ended Queen Anne’s war, Britain was allowed to participate in slave traffic with the Spanish colonies. A special Spanish fleet, however, interfered with this activity and the Spanish also objected to the English log wooders operating on the coast of Honduras. The other cause of the war was the continued dispute over the boundary of Spanish Florida in relation to Georgia.
As soon as war was declared, Gov. James Edward Oglethorpe called on the citizens of Georgia and South Carolina to join in an invasion of Florida. The Spanish retaliated by attempting to invade those colonies by sea.

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