The nature of these operations can be shown by a brief account of the first. When the war began in 1689 it was felt that the French plantations in America, and more especially those in Hispaniola, represented a portion of the enemy’s resources which it was desirable to diminish. The English officers in America were ordered to molest the French to the utmost of their ability. In order that they might be the better able to perform this duty they were reinforced by a squadron from Europe. It consisted of one third rate, seven fourth rates, one fifth rate, and of two fireships, and was commanded by Captain Lawrence Wright, an officer of some five-and-twenty years’ standing, who had been in the West Indies before. His orders were to ship the Duke of Bolton’s regiment of foot at Plymouth, and to sail for the Leeward Islands, that is the more northerly of the Lesser Antilles which stretch from the Virgin Islands to Dominica. Here he was to co-operate with Colonel Codrington, the governor, whose headquarters were at Antigua. The governor was to add what forces he could, and attacks were then to be made upon the French. Elaborate directions were given to Wright—that he was to be guided by a council of war, to act in so far as operations on shore were concerned, under the general direction of the military officers, to spare what sailors he could for operations on land, and not to send ships from his squadron without consent of the governor and council, lest the islands should be “exposed to insults.”
Thus directed, and with these limited powers, Captain Wright sailed from Plymouth on the 8th March 1690 with a number of merchant ships under his protection. Storms scattered the convoy immediately after it left the Channel, but it arrived safe at Madeira on the 2nd of April. On the 11th May it reached Barbadoes. Though only two months had passed since the squadron had left England, and it had stopped at Madeira, the crews were so sickly, presumably from scurvy, that Captain Wright was compelled to land many of his men to be cured, and could not sail till the 27th May. On the 30th of the month he reached Antigua. Colonel Codrington joined him with some soldiers, and a series of buccaneering operations was begun against the French at St. Christopher, and St. Eustatius to the west of Antigua, and at no great distance. Men were landed, forts taken, plantations plundered and burnt, negroes carried off. No attempt was made to hold the French islands, and this form of purely destructive warfare went on till about the middle of July. The hurricane months (July, August, and September) were now upon them, both sailors and soldiers were sickly, and the expedition returned to Antigua. Wright went out to Barbadoes, and there remained till the 6th October. The island lies out of the usual track of the hurricane, and that danger is considered to be “all over” in October, though there have been some notable and destructive exceptions to these rules.