Enfilade

From the Fraunces Tavern Museum:

Craig S. Chapman, The American Experience in the West Indies, 1740–42
Online, Fraunces Tavern Museum, New York, Thursday, 16 June 2022, 6.30pm (ET)

Thirty-five years before the battles of Lexington and Concord, the British colonies in North America raised a regiment to serve in the British Army for an expedition to seize control of the Spanish West Indies. The expedition marked the first time American soldiers deployed overseas. In this lecture, Craig Chapman will discuss the Americans’ role in the conflict, their terrible suffering, and the awful results of the expedition. This lecture will be held via Zoom. Registration ends at 5.30pm on the day of the lecture.

The talk is based on the author’s recent book, published by Potomac, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press:

Craig Chapman, Disaster on the Spanish Main: The Tragic British-American Expedition to the West Indies during the War of Jenkins’ Ear (Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books, 2021), 426 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1640124318, $30.

Disaster on the Spanish Main unveils and illuminates an overlooked yet remarkable episode of European and American military history and a land-sea venture to seize control of the Spanish West Indies that ended in ghastly failure. Thirty-four years before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, a significant force of American soldiers deployed overseas for the first time in history. Colonial volunteers, 4,000 strong, joined 9,000 British soldiers and 15,000 British sailors in a bold amphibious campaign against the key port of Cartagena de Indias. From its first chapter, Disaster on the Spanish Main reveals a virtually unknown adventure, engrosses with the escalating conflict, and leaves the reader with an appreciation for the struggles and sacrifices of the 13,000 soldiers, sailors, and marines who died trying to conquer part of Spain’s New World empire. The book breaks new ground on the West Indies expedition in style, scope, and perspective and uncovers the largely untold American side of the story.

Craig S. Chapman spent thirty years managing dual careers in telecom network sales and the U.S. Army and National Guard. He is the author of Battle Hardened: An Infantry Officer’s Harrowing Journey from D-Day to VE Day and More Terrible Than Victory: North Carolina’s Bloody Bethel Regiment, 1861–65. Chapman lives and writes in Raleigh, North Carolina.