Queen Anne’s War was the American counterpart of the European War of the Spanish Succession. The most important early battles entailed attempts by the British in South Carolina (1702) to capture Spanish St. Augustine, Florida, and the Spanish attempt to conquer Charleston (1706). Both failed, at great cost to the attackers. In 1703 South Carolina governor James Moore successfully organized 1,500 Yamasee Indians to destroy the Spanish mission among the Apalachee Indians on the Chatahoochee River in West Florida; more than a thousand Apalachee were enslaved or resettled in Carolina.
In the North for the first four years of the war, proFrench Indians raided the New York and New England frontiers. Their surprise attack on Deerfield in February 1704 left the town uninhabited; 40 were killed and 111 captured. However, Massachusetts learned from the enemy: “flying columns” of militia relieved sieges of Lancaster, Haverhill, and a repopulated Deerfield, while one under Benjamin Church launched a successful raid against Grand Pre, a French outpost in Acadia (Nova Scotia).
The scale of war increased in 1707. Directed by Massachusetts governor Joseph Dudley, 1,000 volunteer New England troops, mainly drawn from his colony, unsuccessfully attacked Port Royal, the most important French base in Acadia. The following year Scottish merchant Samuel Vetch persuaded the British government to aid another Massachusetts attempt on Canada. The expedition of 1709 was a disaster because a diversionary strike by New York and the Iroquois never occurred. After raising troops and gathering supplies, the promised British force sailed to Portugal instead.
Britain did come through in 1711, when a huge expedition of 11,000 soldiers and sailors in 15 warships and 46 transports joined 1,500 colonials in an attempt to assault Quebec. However, with British pilots unable to navigate the treacherous St. Lawrence River, the force withdrew after eight transports and more than 800 men perished in a shipwreck. The New York diversionary force of 2,000 soldiers disbanded as well when they learned the news.
Queen Anne’s War brought some success to the British in North America. The Peace of Utrecht gave Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay to Britain. However, where Acadia ended and Canada began was never established, and the British mistrusted the AcADlANS until they deported them in 1755. Frontier warfare persisted into the 1720s and resumed in the 1740s along both the Carolina and northern frontiers.
Further reading: Philip S. Haffenden, New England in the English Nation, 1689-1713 (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press, 1974).
—William Pencak
World History
