ABSTRACT
The Caribbean When war broke out in 1793, the Royal Navy’s immediate dispositions indicated Britain’s strategic concern for the Caribbean. Since no line ships were stationed in Jamaica and the Leeward Islands together, a squadron of seven ships of the line left England on 24 March 1793 before any
reinforcements went to the main naval concentrations in the Mediterranean and Channel.1 When the principal French West Indian islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique did not, under the somewhat distant promise of royalists’ influence, throw themselves under British protection, the ministry decided upon a major expedition to capture them.
