Talk:Battle of Cartagena de Indias

British ship losses

While some Spanish sources state 6 British ships of the line sunk or burnt, it cannot be confirmed through english language sources. Examining Beatson's list of losses shows no SoL sunk. Other Spanish sources give: "6 navíos de tres puentes. 13 navíos de dos puentes. 4 fragatas. 27 transportes." a total of fifty with 6 three deckers and 13 two-deckers, or 19 ships of the line and 4 frigates and 27 transports - it does not say they were all sunk. The number, 19, on the SoLs correspond to other sources for damaged and disabled ships- the HMS Tilbury which burns later in 1742 shouldn't be included in these losses. Also I think the statement 6 ships sunk which is sourced to a web site should be deleted even though its kind of sourced pending a clearer, confirming source.Tttom1 (talk) 22:39, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I am just going through the list of ships from websites like 3decks and the list of which vessels took part in particular Beatson's Naval memoirs. I believe many were damaged such as HMS Boyne and Hampton Court but so far no ships of the line appear to be lost. This may take a while as I will go through as many frigates as I can too. The source I deleted mentions at least 15 ships of the line lost which I think seems to be somewhat exaggerated. Bruich (talk) 00:05, 17 August 2010 (GMT)

See Beatson V.3 p.83. I see no SoL lost, however, the number of 18 or 19 SoL for damaged and disabled seems reasonable based on accounts. I think the 1500 guns is just an extrapolation that assumes the 3rd and 4th rates are sunk (which would give a total of some 1200 cannon) not just damaged and that all those cannons are lost - although that is just my opinion, see: Wikipedia:Verifiability "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth".Tttom1 (talk) 00:33, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

After reading Rodger's Command, I accept the Spanish sources to the extent that there may have been 6 ships of the line lost and as many as 19 damaged. Rodger explains (particularly on pp.220 and 606) that naval practices "intended to mislead... such as the British 'rebuild' system of the first half of the eighteenth century... had the effect of padding the lists with fictitious ships.". 'Great rebuilds', as explained, leave room for replacing lost ships during a period, 1696 to 1745, when Parliament voted no money for shipbulding.Tttom1 (talk) 15:57, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The only navy ship lost during the Cartagena campaign was the prize ship Galicia, Blas de Lezo's former flagship. Several ships were damaged, especially Shrewsbury and Prince Frederick, but none were lost. Spanish sources were likely citing the burning of transport ships that Vernon abandoned for lack of crew members before he withdrew from Cartagena. NCHist (talk) 05:26, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

The almost insurmountable problem of establishing accurate losses in wars of previous centuries is compounded by the insufferable British custom of refusing to admit losses and their propensity to obfuscate and outright lie about actions in which they came out the losers. Read the preface to Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Naval War of 1812.” The author states that he could find no descriptions of any of the naval engagements in which the British lost in any of the Admiralty archives. It was as if the war never existed in British history. The same was seen in WW2, when tallies of downed German aircraft were grotesquely inflated into outright fantasy. (Read, for example, Peter Smith’s “Stuka.”). More recently, I purchased (in the 80’s) The Encyclopedia Brittanica. I find the following: no entry on the Battle of Cartagena. A one line entry about the City of Cartagena, mentioning only that it was a salve-trade Center. No entry for Admiral Vernon. Beware of British sources! 70.187.40.175 (talk) 03:31, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Where is the part of STRENGTH with the number of forces (spaniards 3000, english 27000-32000), like in other battle articles of wikipedia? Is a mistake or rather an embarrasing data for the author of this article (I suppose english)?

Its in the article's infobox. And articles do not have single editors, they are written by multiple authors (whose nationality is irrelevant). Lord Cornwallis (talk) 23:56, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for the update. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.5.13.0 (talk) 00:18, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Battle of Cartagena de Indias/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Hchc2009 (talk) 19:35, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Criteria:

In general, a well researched article on which a lot of effort has gone. Most of the changes required are cosmetic, but the number of them make them important to fix. I've listed them below.

1. Well-written:

(a) the prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct;

The text needs a little work in places. I've captured most of the ones I spotted below:

Background:

• "the Annual Ship" - you'll need to explain what this is, or wiki-link.
  • done
• "The commercial class in Britain" - classes?
• "claimed that the Spanish coast guard" - "claimed" suggests it might not have happened. If so, probably worth explaining; if not, I'd change "claimed" for "said", or a neutral term like that.
  • the story of Jenkin's ear has lost nothing in the retelling - then and now.
• "spoke for offensive action both" - "spoke in favour of"?
• "where ships could be refit. " - refit is probably grammatically ok, but reads oddly - how about "refitted"?
• "The despatch of the large fleet and troop contingent had been demanded by the public, led by the Duke of Newcastle[30] in Parliament" - as written, suggests that the public in parliament had made the demands, which wouldn't be quite accurate! Suggest you break up the sentence a bit to clarify this.
• "would be successful" - "would be as successful"... or... "would be successful in the same way that..."
• "thereby acquire Spain's American empire" - do you really mean the whole of Spain's empire? (i.e. including South America etc.)
  • seems preposterous now, but yes - the feeling then in England was that Spain was a hollow shell easily beatable.
• "and thought Havana too well defended" - this is dangling at the end of the sentence - you'll need to tie it into the first bit.

Battle:

• "The Battle of Cartagena pitted a British invasion force of at least 27,400 military personnel, 12,000[38] of which were infantry including: two British regular regiments, the 15th Foot and 24th Foot, 6,000 newly raised marines[39] in 186 ships[40] including: 29[41] Ships of the Line;[42] 22 frigates, 2 hospital ships, various fire ships and bomb ketches armed with a total of some 2,000 cannon; 80 troop transports and 50 merchant ships. Included, but arriving from the North American colonies sailing on another 40 transports were some 3,600 American colonial troops in four battalions designated as the 43rd Regiment of Foot, command by Colonel Gooch.[43]" - I found this hard to follow. I'd suggest separating the list of infantry from the ships more clearly. I wasn't what the "included" meant in the second sentence.
  • done
• "Opposed was a force" Opposing them?
• "combatants" - I couldn't work out who these were.
• "fighting from six Ships of the Line and massive fortifications " - I'm not sure you can fight from a fortification.
• "daring and spectacular as any naval officer of his day" - language felt a bit overblown here.
  • Kind of like Nelson to the Spanish, and lost an eye arm & leg to Nelson's eye & arm.Supported by Habron ref.
• "The expedition was very slow getting started from England." - "very slow in leaving England" would be more accurate, since the winds stopped them leaving initially.
• "but not as destructive to operations" - "disruptive"
• " Boca Chica channel" - first time this is mentioned, so you'll need to explain what it is.
• " to approach it from sea" - "from the sea".
• "the 6 Spanish line ships" - "six", vice "6"
  • done
• "the whole of the land forces: the two regular regiments, the six regiments of marines[57] but of the Americans only 300 were allowed ashore" - if 3,300 Americans were left on the ships, the whole of the land forces hadn't gone ashore. "most of the land forces"?
  • done
• "died from the diseases of " - you could lose "from the disease of", as you've already explained earlier that these are diseases, and they're wikilinked
• "ill-considered, badly planned... specious excuses..." These are harsh terms, so I'm assuming that the reference at the end backs them up in a similar way.
• " walls unbreached during a night attack" - this fits awkwardly in the sentence, and I wasn't sure quite what you meant here.
• "would attempt to carry the parapets" - attempt to storm? take? "carry" isn't quite right in this context.
• "who had volunteered, lured by promises of land[73] and mountains of gold," - I'm not sure this bit fits well here - perhaps it would work better when you first mention the American forces earlier in the article?
• "forbade to talk or write" "forbade" is archaic, and you need to say who he forbid to talk or write about it.

Aftermath:

• "Following the news of the disaster Robert Walpole's government soon collapsed and Spain retained control over its very lucrative colonies, and over a strategic port in the Caribbean that helped secure the defense of the Spanish Main" - the sentence needs breaking up; Spain maintained control of its colonies before the news arrived in England!
  • done
• "It caused George II of Great Britain, who had been acting as mediator between Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa supporting Austria over Prussian seizure of Silesia in December of 1740, to withdraw its guarantees of armed support for the Pragmatic Sanction. " - confusingly long. "its guarantees" - "his guarantees"?
  • done
• "was now taking shape" - suggest "occurred"
  • now began (originally it was 'was now inevitable'.
• "The staggering losses suffered by the British compromised all the subsequent actions by Vernon and Wentworth in the Caribbean and most ended in acrimonious failure" - again, I'd check that the sources support terms like "staggering" and "acrimonious".
  • Article has numerous refs supporting casualty rates, e.g. Fortescue: "Of the regiments that had sailed from St. Helen's under Cathcart in all the pride and confidence of strength, nine in every ten had perished." 90% dead qualifies as 'staggering'. Rodgers ref sums up Vernon: "... his (Vernon's) ruthless exploitation of the army, his unscrupulous skill at claiming credit for every success and blaming the soldiers for every failure, eventually destroyed any possibility of harmonious combined operations." Vernon's carping, criticism and goading are well known and can be expanded and ref'd. Wentworth argued but made no public complaint until much later. The governor of Jamaica drew swords with one of Vernon's admirals, so - acrimonious is fair.

(b) it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

Lead:

• You mention the size of Cartagena, but this isn't in the main body of the article.
• The word "massive" probably isn't needed in the lead, and is a "word to watch".

2.Factually accurate and verifiable:

(a) it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout;

There's a good range of sources cited, but there's some considerable work to be done on tidying up the bibliography and citations:

Sources:

• I would question whether http://www.globalsecurity.org is a reliable source in this context; given the other volumes mentioned, I'd be inclined to replace it with a more regular academic source.
  • added a supporting source

In the references and bibliography:

• Weblinks (e.g. Don Blas de Lezo y Olavarrieta un Ejemplo Del Espíritu Militar Español) will all need expansion. You'll typically need the name of the author(s); title of the article within quotation marks; name of the website; date of publication; page number(s) (if applicable); the date you retrieved it (required if the publication date is unknown).
• You'll need to be consistent about the use of shortened citations (sometimes you shorten them, other times you repeat all the details each time). You can do either, but you'll need to be consistent within the article.
• In the bibliography, be consistent about whether you end the name with a full stop, or a comma. Similar for where you place the year, and how you end the title of the book/article. You'll need to be consistent about how you end each biblio reference - a full top, or no full stop?
• Check Fortescue or Fortesque (you use both)
  • done
• "Letter from Governor Montiano, July 6, 1740, Collections of the Georgia Historical Society. (Vol. VII. – Part I) Published by Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga." - not in the bibliography.
• Hume, David. The History of England, London, 1825 missing from bibliography.
• Smollett, Tobias George and Hume, David. History of England, Vol. II, London, 1848 missing from bibliography.
• Geggus David. Medical History, 1979, 23:38-58., Yellow Fever in the 1790s: The British Army in occupied Saint Domingue, missing from bibliography.
• Harbon, John D..Trafalgar and the Spanish navy, Conway Maritime Press, 2004 missing from bibliography. Check if "Harbon" or "Harbron".
• Coxe, William. Memoirs of the kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon, Volume 3, London 1815 missing from bibliography
• Tindal, N. The continuation of Mr. Rapin's History of England, Vol. VII, London, MDCCLIX is missing from the bibliopgrahy. MDCCLIX needs to be put in Latin numerals to fit with your style in the rest of the article.
• Le Fevre, Peter; Harding, Richard, ed..Precursors of Nelson: British admirals of the eighteenth century, is missing from the bibliography.
• Pares, Richard. War and Trade in the West Indies, Routledge, 1963, missing from the bibliography
• Ibañez, I.R.. Mobilizing Resources for war: the intelligence systems during the War of Jenkin's Ear, is missing from the bibliography.
• The Cambridge Naval and Military Series, The navy in the war of 1739–48, vol 1, p.101, is lacking an author.
• James Pritchard, Anatomy of a Naval Disaster: The 1746 French Expedition to North America. Montreal and Kingston, is missing from the bibliography.
• Clark, Walter. The State Records of North Carolina, Vol.XI, pp. 42–45 is missing from the bibliography and lacks a publishing location or date.
• Marshall, P.J. and Low, A.M..The Oxford history of the British Empire: The eighteenth century, Oxford, 2001 is missing from the bibliography.
• Fortesque, J.W.. A History of the British Army, MacMillan, London, 1899, Vol. II breaks with the formatting of the other entries by having both publisher and location - you'll need to stay consistent with your article style.
• The London Gazette, Number 8015, "... the two Regiments of Harrison and Wentworth, and the six Regiments Marines landed without opposition." is missing from the bibliography and lacks author, publishing location and date.
  • London Gazette shows no author, editor - names a printer. Location is unmentioned, presumably, London.
• Knowles, Charles.An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, London, 1743, p.45 is missing from the bibliography.
• The Mancroft Essays,1923, pp.236–242 - needs author, publishing location and needs to be in the bibliography.
• Pares, Richard. War and Trade in the West Indies, Routledge, 1963 is missing from the bibliography.
• Conway, Stephens. War, state, and society in mid-eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland, Oxford, 2006, is missing from the bibliography.
• Ford, Dougla. Admiral Vernon and the Navy: A Memoir and Vindication London, MCMVII,. Check spelling of "Dougla", and expand to Latin numerals.
• The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle, London, Vol. XI, 1741. is in the bibliography, but the citation needs to include the full details in the same way as your other citations do. It needs an editor or author as well.
• Marley, David. Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present, ABC-CLIO (1998). ISBN 0-874-36837-5. is in the biblio, but I can't spot the citation using him.
• Offen Lee, "Gooch's American Regiment, 1740-1742, America's First Marines", Fortis Press, ISBN 978-0-9777884-1-5 - similarly not cited.
• Quintero Saravia, Gonzalo M. (2002) Don Blas de Lezo: defensor de Cartagena de Indias Editorial Planeta Colombiana, Bogotá, Colombia, ISBN 958-42-0326-6, in Spanish. Similarly not cited.

(b) it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines; and

(c) it contains no original research.

• " Letter from Governor Montiano, July 6, 1740, Collections of the Georgia Historical Society. (Vol. VII. – Part I) Published by Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga." - Are you quoting from just the primary source here (which would be OR) or did the GHS publication make the same observation? If the latter, you'll want to give the page reference where the secondary comment is made.
  • don't think this qualifies as OR as it is only an 'interesting footnote' and does not determine estimate given.
• Knowles, Charles.An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, London, 1743, p.45. - given the date and title, this feels rather like primary research and OR, unless it can be backed by a suitable secondary source.
  • ref contains secondary support - Fortescue.
• The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle, London, Vol. XI, 1741. - similarly, is there a secondary source which backs this up?
  • again, Fortescue. There are others, cited earlier, which do much the same.

3. Broad in its coverage:

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and

• The one major gap is the description of Cartagena itself. There's a little bit of description of it in the middle of the article, but I wasn't really sure how big it was (in terms of people or size) or what sort of town or city it was. A couple of sentences around where you describe the channels might help answer this.
  • done
• A minor point, which wouldn't stop me passing this at GA, is that you could mention the weapons used by the typical soldiers (e.g. muskets). It would only need a passing line, but would mean that a (very) casual reader would know what they fought with in the battle.

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

• Pass.

4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias.

• The article feels broadly neutral.

5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

• Stable.

6. Illustrated, if possible, by images:

(a) images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content;

• File:Sebastián de Eslava.jpg. The copyright tags would be fine, but there's no indication on the description page of the date the picture was created, which makes the "artist plus 75 years" and "US PD" tags hard to argue for. You'll need to give the date of the creation of the piece for these to apply. (e.g. if you could say it was an 18th century painting for example, that would be ok)
• File:Edward-vernon-1.jpg. Ditto.
• File:Medalla Lezo y Vernon.jpg. and File:"Toma" de Cartagena por Vernon.jpg. If these had been created by the Crown, we'd have to change the copyright tag (although they'd still be usable), but I think these were privately coined, so that shouldn't be a problem. Let me know if you think they were made by the Crown.
  • I don't think they were made by the crown. There are numerous variants.

(b) images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

• "Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister of Great Britain from the studio of Jean-Baptiste van Loo, 1740." - missing comma after "Britain"
• "A map of the trading part of the West Indies created 1741 in honour of Vernon shows Boca Chica, Cartagena – 2nd from the bottom left" - I found the little picture rather hard to read. I've uploaded a snipped version with just Cartagena on it in case you fancy it; it's at File:Cartagena in the 18th century.png. If you want to keep the original, that's fine, but I'd advise "A map of part of the West Indies..." to avoid the archaic "trading part" in the caption.
• It's not vital for the GA criteria, but many of the captions aren't complete sentences, so won't need full stops at the end.

You should just fail it now. I'm not going ot be able to work on it for a while. Bernstein2291 ^{(Talk • Contributions • Sign Here)} 19:41, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

• OK - if you get the chance to come back to it, I'd be very happy to re-review; drop me a line on my talk page. Hchc2009 (talk) 19:46, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I have addressed the concerns above as best I could and would appreciate a re-review. Thanks.Tttom1 (talk) 21:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

doesn't add up

"The battle pitted a British invasion force of 124 ships[50] including: 29 ships of the line,[51][52] 22 frigates, 2 hospital ships, various fire ships and bomb ships armed with a total of some 2,000 cannon, 80 troop transports and 50 merchant ships. "

29+22+2+80+50=183 not 124

so which one is it? 124 or 183? or something else, since the "some" 80 and 50 may be approximates?

88.168.175.234 (talk) 20:20, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Date format

Wondering why AnomieBOT changed the format from dmy to mdy. I added the dmy template simply because the Infobox date was already in dmy format. ?? Carlotm (talk) 23:11, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Are you sure? No idea why, but the diff suggests it simply added a date to the tag. Wiki-Ed (talk) 11:37, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Sorry to all. My eyes (or my bias) betrayed me unexpectedly.Carlotm (talk) 00:54, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Infobox Corrections

Under Spanish Leaders, Jose Campuzano Polanco is the correct name.

Under British Strength, the British had 9,700 soldiers and marines. The navy ships had complements of close to 17,000 men but the army provided about 3,000 men to fill vacancies among the crews. The British fleet consisted of 29 ships of the line (two more would follow later), 12 frigates, 7 fireships, 2 bomb ketches and 2 hospital ships. About 120 transport ships sailed with Vernon.

Under Spanish strength, the Cartagena garrison and regular regiments mustered less than 2,000 soldiers. They were augmented by another 2,200 sailors from the 6 galleons in Blas de Lezo's fleet.

Under British losses, the numbers quoted are based on the entire campaign in the West Indies. Many of the deaths occurred in Cuba and later. British fatalities at Cartagena and immediately following while the army recovered in Jamaica amount to 3,400, according to muster records. Losses among the navy crews likely add another 2,500 deaths during the Cartagena portion of the campaign. NCHist (talk) 05:20, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Bibliography

The Bibliography has two gaping omissions: Vernon, Edward. The Vernon Papers. Ed. B. McL. Ranft. Navy Records Society, 1958 and Harding, Richard. Amphibious Warfare in the Eighteenth Century: The British Expedition to the West Indies 1740-1742. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Royal Historical Society & Boydell Press, 1991. The Vernon Papers compiles most of Admiral Vernon's correspondence during the campaign. Harding's book provides the most in depth analysis of the leadership squabbles between Vernon and Wentworth. NCHist (talk) 05:32, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

I think that means neither source has been used in constructing the article. The bibliography (and indeed the sourcing for most articles in this war) is rather weak - many Spanish sources and/or dated sources and/or primary sources. Wiki-Ed (talk) 20:31, 22 November 2022 (UTC)