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Updated: May 8, 2025
After the two crushing defeats of Cartagena and Boca-Chica, the troops from the colonies who still survived embarked upon their ships to return home; but while homeward bound a malignant fever broke out among the soldiers which destroyed nine out of every ten men on the ships. But few of those from Carolina lived to see their native home again.
So that now, through Boca-Chica, we enter the Interior Harbor or Harbors. There ensue five days of intricate sea-work; not much of broadsiding, mainly tugging out of sunk War-Ships, and the like, to get alongside of Castle Grand, which is the chief obstruction. "April 10, Castle Grand itself is got; nobody found in it when we storm.
Till April 5th, here are sixteen days of furious intricate work; not ill done: the physical labor itself, the building of batteries, with Boca-Chica firing on you over the woods, is scarcely do-able by Europeans in that season; and the Negroes who are able for it, 'fling down their burdens, and scamper, whenever a gun goes off. Furious fighting, too, there was, by seamen and landsmen; not ill done, considering circumstances.
This expedient of an admiral's removing his flag, and retiring from the action while his own ship is engaged, however consonant to reason., we do not remember to have seen practised upon any occasion, except in one instance, at Carthagena, where sir Chaloner Ogle quitted his own ship, when she was ordered to stand in and cannonade the fort of Boca-Chica.
Here the English admiral lay inactive till the ninth, when the troops were landed on the island of Tierra Bomba, near the mouth of the harbour, known by the name of Boca-chica, or Little-mouth, which was surprisingly fortified with castles, batteries, booms, chains, cables, and ships of war.
We find Don Blas in a very prepared posture. We spend the next five days in considering and surveying these Performances of his: What is to be done with them; how, in the first place, we may force Boca-Chica; and get in upon his Interior Castles and him.
The admiral, however, in order to demonstrate the impracticability of taking the place by sea, sent in the Gallicia, one of the Spanish ships which had been taken at Boca-chica, to cannonade the town, with sixteen guns mounted on one side, like a floating battery.
Nor do we know how many of those who at the king's call left home and country to fight a foreign land ever returned to their native shores; but we do know that these Carolina troops took part in the disastrous engagements of Cartagena and Boca-Chica; and that King George's troops saw fulfilled Walpole's prophecy made at the time of the rejoicing over the news that Parliament had declared war with Spain: "You are ringing the joy bells now," said the great Prime Minister, "but before this war is over you will all be wringing your hands!"
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