The Unsuccessful Invasion of Puerto Rico – April 1797

In February 1797, Rear-Admiral Henry Harvey and Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby had captured the Spanish island of Trinidad in an assault that that been largely bloodless due to excellent intelligence. Following instructions from the government, the two commanders-in-chief next turned their attention to the Spanish island of Puerto Rico, the most northerly of the chain of Leeward Islands. Here, a lack of intelligence and poor planning would prove their downfall.

Sir Ralph Abercromby

The expedition congregated at Martinique throughout the early spring, with Abercromby calling in as many troops as could be spared from the neighbouring islands, and Harvey assembling his fleet of four sail of the line, two frigates and assorted smaller vessels and transports, the latter under the superintendence of Commander Adrian Renou. Local speculation had the mission targeting various enemy colonies, including Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, and Surinam. Secrecy remained key – on 28 March an embargo was placed on all vessels leaving Martinque. The force arrived off St. Kitts on 10 April to await the Arethusa 38, Captain Thomas Woolley, which had been sent to Tortola and St. Thomas to secure guides and pilots. After a short delay, the fleet of 60 vessels set off for Puerto Rico a few days later.

Appearing off the principal city and port, San Juan, at 6 a.m. on 17 April, the fleet anchored to the east of the city near the rock-strewn Cangrejos Point, whilst the commanders sought a sandy beach onto which 3,000 troops (including German mercenaries, French Royalists and black pioneers), could be landed. A direct attack on San Juan had been deemed impossible due to the strength of the Morro Castle protecting the entrance to the harbour. However, the sloops Fury and Beaver, together with a number of lighter vessels, were able to find and navigate a narrow channel through the reefs into a bay some ten miles from San Juan. Under their protective fire the men got ashore the next morning in the face of mild resistance from a hundred enemy troops covering the beach. Whilst Abercromby and his force began their march towards San Juan, the navy, despite the long-range fire of a Spanish battery, carried the heavy artillery and stores ashore through a heavy surf. Three hundred seamen were then landed to man the batteries under the command of Captain Thomas Totty of the Alfred 74, and Commander Richard Browne of the sloop Beaver, while a party of marines guarded the beach. Meanwhile, the frigates Tamar and Arethusa, together with the storeship Roebuck and the brig Requin, blocked up the port of San Juan, with the sloop Pelican patrolling to windward.

So far all had gone to plan, but unfortunately for the British, the Spanish had prepared well for an assault on their city. The walls mounted 376 cannons, 35 mortars and 4 howitzers, whilst two key bridges were covered by a couple of floating batteries mounting two 15-pounder cannons. As soon as the British fleet had been spotted, the Spanish plans for resisting an attack had been implemented, with orders flying out to all parts of the island requiring able-bodied men head for San Juan. The garrison comprised only 200 men, but they were supplemented by 4,000 militiamen, 200 veteran troops, and up to 2,000 labourers armed with their agricultural tools . Also available were the crews of a dozen gunboats under the command of naval Captain Don Francisco de Paulo Castro, and a number of French privateersmen, numbering around 300 in total. It was not surprising, therefore, that Governor Don Ramón de Castro y Gutiérrez courteously but firmly rejected Abercromby’s demand to surrender when it was delivered by one of the frigates that morning.

Their initial advance completed, the British troops established a position that was protected by the sea to the right and a lagoon to their left. Here ten batteries were erected, and the troops began preparing for their advance on San Juan. Soon the effectiveness of the Spanish defences became evident as the British position came under fire from enemy gunboats on the left flank and two redoubts on the landward side of the island on which San Juan sat. A bridge that would have enabled the men to cross the channel to reach the town was destroyed by the Spanish, whose men began filling the trenches to the rear of the redoubts. An attempt was made to bombard San Juan from a position further to the southward, but the long distance involved meant that the fire was ineffective.

By the 30th, after almost two weeks of trying to breach the Spanish defences, Abercromby concluded that there was no possibility of the British prevailing. By now he might also have received intelligence that the Spanish were preparing an attack on him. Accordingly, the order was given for the siege to be raised and the troops to be re-embarked. The British forces reportedly retreated in good order , taking four captured Spanish brass fieldpieces, the stores, and most of their artillery, bar a dozen damaged pieces that were spiked and left behind. Once aboard Harvey’s fleet, the force retreated to Martinique. Abercromby reported the army’s casualties as 31 men killed, 70 wounded and 124 taken prisoner or missing.

In the first week of June the sloop Fury, Commander Henry Evans, arrived at Portsmouth with Abercromby’s and Harvey’s dispatches, and while she was undergoing quarantine, excited reports began appearing in the British newspapers to the effect that San Juan had been captured in the face of a ‘feeble and contemptible resistance’, and that five Spanish sail of the line had been made prize. Information then started to emerge suggesting that the mission might not have been as successful as first believed, and only when Abercromby’s dispatch, dated ‘2 May aboard the Prince of Wales off Puerto Rico’ was published, did the truth became clear.

There appeared to be few recriminations over the failure of the mission, with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl Spencer, asserting that he had always had doubts over the supposed weakness of the Spanish defences. Clearly, whilst superior intelligence had resulted in the capture of Trinidad, it was lacking in the case of Puerto Rico, and Abercromby (evidently keen to seize on valid reasons for the failure of the mission) reiterated as much in his letter to the secretary of state for war, Henry Dundas, stating that ‘we have to regret that the intelligence we received in England with regard to this island was scanty, and that the information we got in this country has proved erroneous’. Indeed, the general would later claim that the Spanish could have sustained a fire ten times more powerful than that which he was able to mount against them.

Principle ships involved: