The treaty ending the war had already been signed. Nobody in the Caribbean knew that yet. On the morning of February 24, 1720, the 36-gun San Jose appeared off Nassau harbor, followed by a flotilla of warships and privateers carrying somewhere between 1,300 and 2,000 soldiers. The governor of Cuba had decided that the British colony on New Providence had to go. What he had not accounted for was Woodes Rogers - a former privateer turned colonial administrator who had spent the previous two years driving pirates out of the Bahamas and pouring his personal fortune into a fort that would now have to earn its keep.
Woodes Rogers arrived in Nassau in 1718 with a mandate from the Crown and a problem that would have discouraged a lesser man. The Bahamas had become one of the Atlantic's most notorious pirate harbors. Rogers suppressed the pirates through a combination of pardons and hangings, reformed the colonial government, and set about restoring legitimate trade. But cleaning up the islands made them worth taking, and Rogers knew it.
In February 1719, word reached him that Spain intended to conquer the Bahamas outright. Fortune intervened: the Spanish were diverted to recapture Pensacola from the French, buying Rogers precious months. He used the time to rebuild Fort Nassau, completing the work in January 1720 - just weeks before the threat materialized. By then, the War of the Quadruple Alliance had turned the Caribbean into a theater of open aggression between British and Spanish ships. The governor of Cuba, Gregorio Guazo, watched Rogers consolidate his hold on the islands and assembled a force to take Nassau by overwhelming strength.
Guazo's expeditionary force was formidable on paper. Three frigates of the Armada de Barlovento formed the fleet's core under Admiral Francisco Javier Cornejo, bolstered by nine privateer vessels including brigantines and sloops. The land forces numbered approximately 1,300 to 2,000 men, supplemented by 1,400 regular soldiers. Against this, Rogers could muster roughly sixty guns mounted in Fort Nassau, a hundred soldiers, five hundred militia of varying reliability, and two frigates - the 32-gun Delicia and the 24-gun HMS Flamborough under Captain Jonathan Hildesley.
The math favored the Spanish by a wide margin. But warfare in the age of sail rarely reduced to simple arithmetic, and the waters around New Providence had a way of complicating plans hatched in Havana's more sheltered harbor.
Cornejo sailed through the Florida Straits and approached from the north, anchoring his two largest warships, the Principle and Hercules, in deep water while he advanced on the harbor aboard the San Jose. The sight of the Delicia and Flamborough gave him pause - Rogers had to personally persuade Hildesley not to withdraw the British frigate, which would have left the harbor far more vulnerable. Cornejo hesitated, and the Caribbean weather did not forgive hesitation. A storm forced the Spanish to cut their anchor cables and run for open sea.
They tried again, this time attempting a flanking maneuver around Hog Island, which sheltered Nassau's harbor. On the night of February 25, three columns of Spanish soldiers rowed quietly toward the island's backside, planning to cross the narrow eastern channel in small boats. Two sentries in a small redoubt spotted them and opened fire. The element of surprise evaporated in the muzzle flashes. A second landing force struck from the west, causing considerable damage to outlying properties before the five hundred militia pushed them back. Another storm scattered the fleet, and the San Cristoforo wrecked on the Bahama Banks. By March 1, Cornejo's armada was back in Havana. They had captured over a hundred enslaved people and seized considerable plunder, but Nassau remained British.
Rogers did not learn that the Spanish had truly departed for several weeks, spending anxious days watching the horizon for their return. When word finally came that storms had driven the fleet home, he could claim a genuine defensive victory. He had held an undermanned, under-resourced colony against a force that outnumbered his defenders several times over.
The reward for this achievement was ruin. Rogers had spent his own fortune fortifying Nassau's defenses, and the Crown showed no inclination to reimburse him. His garrison went unpaid. His health deteriorated in the tropical climate. On December 6, 1720, less than a year after the raid, he left for Charleston, South Carolina, and from there sailed to London in March 1721. He arrived to discover that a new governor had been appointed in his absence. The man who had cleaned the Bahamas of pirates and defended them against a Spanish invasion was thrown into debtor's prison. The fort he built with his own money would stand for nearly two more centuries. The gratitude of the empire lasted considerably less.
Located at 25.06N, 77.35W on the north shore of New Providence Island, Bahamas. The raid centered on Nassau harbor, visible as the main port area along the island's northern coast. Hog Island (now Paradise Island) shelters the harbor from the north - the Spanish attempted their flanking maneuver around this island. The Bahama Banks where the San Cristoforo wrecked extend to the north and east. Nearby airports: Nassau/Lynden Pindling International (MYNN) approximately 10nm west. Approach from the north through the Florida Straits to follow the Spanish fleet's route. Caribbean weather with generally good visibility; afternoon convective storms remain common - the same weather pattern that twice scattered Cornejo's fleet.