American Independence and the Spanish Navy

For the ministers in charge of the Spanish empire, the outbreak of the American Revolution was nothing short of unthinkable. In 1776, the rebellion of American colonists against Spain’s quintessential enemy, the British empire, was too good to be true.

However, after 1783, tensions arose between the Spanish monarchy and the newly independent republic. Reports of American “ingratitude” toward the Spanish monarchy surprised and even angered ministers. The arrival of American petitions about navigation of the Mississippi River, rights of trade, and access to the port of New Orleans represented a failure of confidence in Spain. In 1788, the “Reserved Instruction for the State Council,” prepared by a leading statesman, the Count of Floridablanca, for the government of the future king of Spain, Charles IV, specified the importance of “a human barrier to protect Spanish Louisiana against American colonists, depending on the United States trying to extend very fast in those regions and vast territories.”[1]

Global history has given us new historical perspectives on European overseas empires and the American colonies both North and South. Everything, including the American Revolution, was connected. This global framework helps to explain developments big and small. During the American Revolution, certain factors that remain largely unknown, such as the role played by the Spanish navy, were very important. This, among other Spanish contributions to American independence, is finally coming to light.

The war against the British was always popular in Spain and Spanish America. At the same time that the War of American Independence was being fought, there were other fields of battle in Gibraltar, the North Atlantic, and the Caribbean. (In fact, this would be the last serious attempt by Spanish forces to occupy Gibraltar.) In the court, the political atmosphere was toxic. Contrary to what happened in Madrid in 1766 at the infamous Esquilache Mutiny, when the Sicilian-born Marqués de Esquilache was expelled from power and King Charles III escaped to Aranjuez to save himself from the anger of the mob, after 1779 the positions of the Spanish political imperial elite and popular sentiments were quite the same. When it came to “Perfidious Albion,” there were no disagreements. In the wars against the British, lost by Spain with terrible results in 1713 and 1763, and another in 1742 without a clear winner, navy officers, policy makers, and merchants in ports like Cadiz, Barcelona, Veracruz in Mexico, and Havana in Cuba were expecting an opportunity for revenge.

The War of American Independence was not one war, but several wars. It was not only American, but a war in the Americas, and especially in the Caribbean. The independence of thirteen British colonies giving birth to the United States is a result we know for sure. But from the beginning, it was an extremely unpredictable and politically dangerous situation. For Spain, there were many questions: Are the enemies of your enemies always your friends? To what extent is it fair, not to say prudent, to help the American rebels against the British king, your enemy? What about the possibility of an extension of the rebellious attitude to Spanish Americans? Fear of a repetition of 1763, with its crushing defeat, gave Spain pause. But the Spanish empire was not so ill prepared.

The most important Spanish navy officer in the War of American Independence was José Solano y Bote, who helped to secure the rescue of Pensacola after being in charge of the Armada on that occasion. Solano was a great leader. He spent seven years, from 1754 to 1761, exploring the Orinoco River. In 1762, in the new war with England, he took command of the Rayo, a 100-gun ship, or navío, built in Havana. After the defeat, he was appointed governor of Venezuela from 1763 to 1770, and then became governor and captain general of the island of Santo Domingo until 1779. Brilliant and efficient, he decided to return to what he called his “natural job and inclination” in the navy. It was the right time, and he would be in the right place. Almost three years after the American rebels’ Declaration of Independence, on April 3, 1779, the Spanish government sent to London some proposals for mediation and truce. At the beginning of May, as expected, the British rejected these. Within months, Solano was second in charge of a squadron in the English Channel, “losing his time,” as he put it, due to what he regarded as badly planned French strategies of invasion.

As in the Seven Years’ War, the main goals of Spain were to recover Gibraltar and Menorca from the British, who had owned them since 1704, and to damage British trade through the actions of privateers. The siege of Gibraltar, from June 16, 1779, to February 7, 1783, was the longest lasting Spanish action in the war. Despite the larger size of the besieging French-Spanish army, at one point numbering 33,000 soldiers, the British under Lieutenant-General George Augustus Elliott, the governor of Gibraltar, held out in the fortress and were resupplied by sea three times. Admiral Luis de Córdova y Córdova was unable to prevent Admiral Richard Howe’s fleet returning home after resupplying Gibraltar in October 1782. In 1781, Spanish efforts to recover Menorca met with greater success. Menorca surrendered the following year and was restored to Spain after the war, nearly eighty years after being captured by the British.

In 1780 and 1781, the fleet of Luis de Córdova captured British ships, disrupting British trade in the process. Solano was ordered to stay in Brest, the French navy’s main port in the Atlantic. From Brest to Cadiz, he followed the movements of Admiral Sir George Rodney, who after Gibraltar departed for the West Indies. In February 1780, Solano was put in charge of a large squadron to Havana, which arrived by August.

Solano then had his finest hour at the Siege of Pensacola. In March 1781, he came to support Bernardo de Gálvez with almost 4,000 men and 36 ships. Of critical importance were Solano’s nearly scientific strategies when he was in command of the Spanish Armada during the War of American Independence. When he was in charge, the empiricist approach prevailed. However, a haphazard combination of maps and charts used in the different ships led to the production of a general map of the region, the Atlas de la América Septentrional. After the war, in 1787, a map of the Caribbean was drawn by the pilot of the fleet, José de San Martín, who explained it was done under Solano’s command. Debates about the accuracy of these maps arose between scientific officers and traditional officers, some of whom were “more accustomed to rum than equations,” as the historian Cesáreo Fernández Duro put it.

Without proper cartography and a consistently scientific approach, no imperial politics were possible any more. Such were some of the lessons for Spain from the War of American Independence.

Manuel Lucena-Giraldo is research scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid; director of the Chair of Spanish and Hispanic Heritage from the Universities of Madrid; adjunct professor in the IE (Instituto de Empresa) Business School/IE University; former visiting scholar at Harvard University; and author of many publications including the book 82 Objetos Que Cuentan un País: Una Historia de España (Taurus, 2015) and the chapter “Renaissance, Reformations, and Mental Revolutions” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the World (2019).